Customer Service Management Report for La Roja Bungalows Hotel in Bali

This report critically analyzes the customer service process at La Roja Bungalows, a hotel in Bali, Indonesia. It identifies customer management issues, their impact on stakeholders, and provides recommendations for improvement. The report utilizes secondary research, ServQual and Service Blueprinting models to pinpoint key issues such as employee responsibility and insufficient investment in technology. Findings highlight customer dissatisfaction due to weak air conditioning, limited website presence, and slow response times. The report recommends improved quality control systems for staff, increased investment in facilities, and a focus on closing service gaps to enhance customer interaction and satisfaction. The analysis includes an examination of the Customer Loyalty Ladder and provides actionable steps to improve the hotel's customer service strategy.

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MCs International Hosipitality Management with Professional Practice
TOU9162M – Customer Service Management
Customer Service Report for La Roja Bungalows Hotel
In Bali, Indonesia
Student: Trung Chanh Tran
Natascha McVeigh Word Count – 3275

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Contents
I. Executive Summary............................................................................................................3
II. Introduction.........................................................................................................................3
III. Customer Service Problems............................................................................................4
III. 1. Physical Servicescape – Facility and Service Issues...............................................4
III. 2. Authors Observation................................................................................................4
III. 3. Adaption of Customer Service Model: ServQual....................................................5
III. 4. Service Blueprinting................................................................................................7
III. 5. Customer Loyalty Ladder........................................................................................8
III. 6. The impact on internal and external stakeholders.................................................10
IV. Conclusion.....................................................................................................................11
V. Recommendations.............................................................................................................12
VI. References.....................................................................................................................13
VII. Appendices....................................................................................................................15
VII. 1. Appendix A: La Roja Bunglows Hotel in Bali, Indonesia....................................15
VII. 2. Appendix B: Review Summary of La Roja Bungalows on Google Review.........15
VII. 3. Appendix C: Customer review on Traveloka.com................................................16
VII. 4. Appendix D: Customer review on Agoda.com......................................................16
VII. 5. Appendix E: Customer review on Booking.com...................................................16
Table of figures
Figure 1: The Gaps Model of Service Quality (Parasuraman et al., 1985)................................6
Figure 2: Adaption of Service Blueprint for La Roja Bungalows.............................................7
Figure 3: Customer Loyalty Ladder...........................................................................................9

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I. Executive Summary
This report was commissioned to critically analyse the customer service process
of La Roja Bungalows, a hotel located in Bali, Indonesia. The purpose was to identify
potential customer management issues, its impact on internal and external
stakeholders and to provide recommendations to solve these problems in the future.
Secondary research data has been examined and two customer service management
models have been adapted to identify areas of improvement. By using the ServQual
Model as well as the Service Blueprinting Model, two key issues were allocated
which are shortage in employees’ responsibility and insufficient investing on modern
technology are the main reasons for customer’s disappointment and complaints. Also
this paper recommends several approaches such as providing staffs with an adequate
system of quality control and investing more on tangibles and facilities, which the
hotel should consider to attempt in order to close the service gaps and gain
improvement in terms of interacting with visitors.
II. Introduction
La Roja Bungalows is located in the middle of a rice terrace of Sebatu Village. The
servicescape includes wooden style interior which management perceives at unique in natural
habitat tourism. “We speak your language” – this is the slogan of the company which reflexs
their vision. It is concluded as maintaining a high level of customer safisfaction by providing
clients with value added transaction through positive customer interaction. Over a long period
from establishing, the hotel is still increasing the number of customer service staffs from 5 to
25 people in order to maintain the best quality.
In the last few years, the service sector of hotel is observed to have such a significant
development in terms of meeting customer expections. Achieving 4.6-star review on Google
is a deserved upshot for the efforts of the front-desk team. The hotel also successes in
building its reputation on the most popular booking websites such as Trip.com, FindHotel,
Etrip… with its regular appearance on the search engines. However, in terms of the guest-
service sector, the staffs sometimes fail in putting the efforts to improve customers’
gratification.
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III. Customer Service Problems
III. 1. Physical Servicescape – Facility and Service Issues
This session is aimed to identify the gaps or discrepancies between hotel managers and
the customers’ perspectives of service performance satisfaction through the analysis of
Service Quality Gap Model (Parasuraman et al., 1985). Delivering excellent service quality is
viewed as a main role of hotel business. Service quality is profit strategy. Lodging businesses
that implement successful service quality strategy not only have greater customer satisfaction,
they also enjoy greater margins and lower operational costs. La Roja Bungalows is
complimented by “excellent” by most of its visitors, with the average point of 8.9 on the scale
of ten (Agoda.com, 2019). However, in some cases, the customer service staffs did not
perform effectually in interacting with visitors or handling their expectations. For instance,
the hotel received some negative feedbacks on several booking platforms in terms of their
service:
“Good, friendly staff, one problem is that air conditioning is less cold.” (Traveloka.com,
2019).
“Good location, good people and service. But room air-conditioner is weak as it is quite
warm.” (Agoda.com, 2019).
“Two very important things for any hotel is a comfortable bed and a good shower. The sleep
was indeed comfortable but the shower was lacking pressure, the pressure was horrible.
They should definitely install some pressure pumps. The choice of breakfast is very limited- it
would be helpful to have a wider variety. Also when we entered the room, the bathroom had
a horrible horrible smell! They can still concentrate on few finer details for a better staying
experience.” (Booking.com, 2019).
III. 2. Authors Observation
In addition, according to author’s observation and experience, when customers
approach the front-desk staffs to question about the facility issues, it is believed that there
were some insufficient actions made by the staffs. Customer was looking for some
explanation about the weak air-conditioner in their rooms and expecting some compensation
from the hotel’s side. However, due to the lack of situation-handling skills, the staff
responded saying it was not their priority and a message would be delivered to the
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maintainance team. This “passing the buck” action is not appropriate and can lead customers
to a higher peak of aggressiveness. Arcording to Andreasen (1988), dissatisfaction can be
caused by something psychological as well as by something physical; therefore, the loss
suffered by the customer can be psychological as well as financial.
Beside the room-facilities problems were mentioned, another technology-related
complaint was made by customer after their experience at La Roja Hotel is it did not have an
official website for customer to research about hotel’s background and facilities offered.
Most of the transactions were made via the third-suppliers which are popular booking
platforms as Agoda.com, Traveloka.com, Booking.com,… In terms of interaction with
guests, the hotel used many social media networks as Facebook, Instagram,… to handle
customers’ querries and to promote their significant values other than creating its own
landing page. Due to a large amount of messages, delays and late responses were reported.
Also the act of relying on social media can cause many disadvantages for customers who do
not familiar with modern technology. Arcording to Gommans et al. (2001), it is more
convenient for customers to call a company for browse their website for more information.
Therefore, the hotel should not just offer social platform-based assistance.
III. 3. Adaption of Customer Service Model: ServQual
Now there are some requirements for service quality are identified and an approach
should be made to understand and analyse the related problems. During the past decades,
many scholars have recognized and investigated the subject of customer service quality.
Christopher (1994) introduced perceived service quality as a result of comparing the real
experience with the expectation of a customer before consuming the serice. Parasuraman et
al. (1985) introduced a framework for management in managing customer service quality,
namely the Gap Model. It was then refined in 1988 and 1991 to become the SERVQUAL
model which is one of the most widely used appliances to measure the customer satisfaction
in numerous industries and across differrent countries.
This paper is aimed at evaluting the customer gap, which is the difference between
customer expectation on the service and their perceptions of service performance. This gap is
the most critical and the ultimate goal should be in narrowing or closing this gap. Many
organizations can be completely blind to this gap. It can happen because of the other four
gaps, or simple because the customer perceives the quality of service incorrectly.
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Figure 1: The Gaps Model of Service Quality (Parasuraman et al., 1985)
In terms of La Roja Hotel’s interaction with their customer, the results show that the
customers are not fully satisfied by the service provided by the hotel. Hospitality as a
commercial activity is a special kind of relationship between service providers and
customers. In this relationship, the host understands the needs and the wants of customer and
gives pleasure to the customers in order that they enhance their needs and feel comfortable
(King, 1995). In this case, the irresponsibility of the front-desk service staff is considered to
be failure in enhancing customer satisfaction, which caused the appearance of gap 5 – the
customer gap.
Based on academic literature, Wuest (2001) analysed some impacts of service quality in
tourism, hospitality and leisure businesses when failure in customer service were found, it
could lead to failure in enhancing service providers’ reputation, contradicting customer
security, failure in establishing a competitive edge and saving costs; and lower market share.
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In terms of inpacts on the other area of organization, Jakubíková (2008) concluded building a
strategy of customer relationship management will help to encourage this partnership and
increases a value, which subsequently brings a competitive advantage to the company and
thus better its position on the market.
The action of telling customer that their problems are not priority and making promise
to pass it to the relevant teams could not satisfy them. In this specific circumstance, the
customers wanted some immediately efforts from the hotel side to understand their
expectations through the act of filing a complaint. Offering services below the expected level
and negative perception of the quality by customers are the reasons why the “gaps of
customers” inevitably happened. Moreover, not understanding the customers’ expectations
can be as well the result of a bad management of customers’ complaints (Veljković, 2009).
III. 4. Service Blueprinting
Service blueprinting is a technique used for service improvements and innovation, it
entails visually mapping out the service experience through the customer’s point of view
(G.Lynn Shostack, 1984). It is a useful model for analyzing the processes in which customers
took part in identifying difficulties they encountered, therefore helping the organizations in
the effort to improve customer services.
F
i
g
u
r
e
:
Adaption of Service Blueprint for La Roja Bungalows
This above figure is aimed at blueprinting the room service at hotel, it does not reflect
the whole process from beginning to the ending point. The author only evaluated on the
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W2
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process from checking-in until customers’ breakfast ordering and researched information
based on visitors’ feedbacks.
After blueprinting, there are two waiting points were found in the whole process:
Waiting point 1 (W1) - Queue time: The hotel provide a la carte breakfast every
morning as an additional service in order to enhance customers’ experience and to promote
the traditional local foods. However, due to a huge number of visitors gathering at the same
period of time, customers have to wait in long queue to make order for their breakfast. A
study by Chebat et at. (1994) suggests that mood may affect perceived waiting times
significantly. Moreover, Jones and Dent (1993) claimed that hotel guests were slightly more
sensitive to response time than restaurant customers, possibly because the typical restaurant
customer expects to queue, whereas the hotel guest does not.
Waiting point 2 (W2) – Delivery time: Because of a large number of food orderings at
the same time, the service staffs take longer than promised to deliver the foods to all
customers. Literature researchers claimed that managers are able to define specifications of
services based on the customers’ expectations. However, they should consider all the
scenarios can occur. For example, what can happen if the employees are not able to deliver
the service in an adequate way, or what can happen if there is a shortage of resources.
III. 5. Customer Loyalty Ladder
The Customer Loyalty ladder is essential instrument for marketing communicators and
business manager to identify their place in customers’ rank of choices, also to reflect the
relationship levels between buyer and supplier. The final target is to help customers to climb
up the ladder as high as possible, starting from bottom as prospects (those who have the
intent to purchase but have not yet done) and ending up at the top as advocates (intensely
loyal brand customers)
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Figure 3: Customer Loyalty Ladder
According to the loyal ladder, La Roja Bungalows Hotel was successful in transforming their
potential customers into clients as those visitors actually use their services and products. This
is the right time in putting efforts to personalize company’s service and exceeding clients’
expectations. In this specific circumstance, the company had the chance to meet customers in
the first place and had the opportunities to choose the relationship they want to build. Every
phone call, face to face or digital transaction the company have with customers is a valuable
opportunity to incrementally improve or degrade the customer’s loyalty. But trust and loyalty
are not easily achieved, it takes time and efforts to earn. Loyal behaviour may result from
inertia – customer does not move to another vendor due to comfort or the relatively low
importance of operation – if the choice has low importance, there is no point spending time
and effort searching for alternatives. Hofmeyr and Rice (2000) say that one of the reasons
that customers don’t switch brands when they are dissatisfied is that they feel that the
alternatives are just as bad as the brand they are using, or even worse. Inertia may be caused
also by lack of information about attractive characteristics of the brands (Wernerfelt, 1991).
According to social identity theory, people tend to classify themselves into different
social categories. That leads to evaluation of objectives and values in various groups and
organisations in comparison with the customer’s own values and objectives. They prefer
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partners who share similar objectives and values (Ashforth and Mael, 1989). Therefore,
sharing the passions and sympathy is an important part of the process to increase customers’
trust and ensure their repurchase behaviour. With the right marketing strategy, the willingness
to accept complaint and the reasonable attitude towards customers’ contributions, along with
personalization and high quality service, the hotel can be successful in maintaining
trustworthiness, which has a certain impact on the establishment of loyalty. Hence, it can
provide business with greater returns of avocades from the qualified clients.
III. 6. The impact on internal and external stakeholders
Based on theoretical foundation of stakeholder literature, Post el at. (2002b) formally
developed a new perspective in strategic management, the so-called stakeholder view, which
states that long-term survival and success of a company is determined by its ability to
establish and maintain relationships with its critical stakeholders (Post et al, 2002a).
According to the original framework of stakeholder view, the stakeholders of a firm are
conceptually defined as “individuals and constituencies that contribute, either voluntarily or
involuntarily, to its wealth-creating capacity and activities, and who are therefore its potential
beneficiaries and/or risk bearers” (Post et al., 2002a, p. 8). The stakeholder view assessed
long term survival and success of a company based on its ability to create and maintain
loyalty relationships with its critical stakeholders. Hence, this section will be aimed to
evaluate on three predominant stakeholders that have been directly impacted by the
organization’s problems: the hotel owner, the employees and the customer. A recent study by
Xiao et al. (2012) concluded that hotel ownership had an enormous impact on hotel operation
and financial performance. Hence, the organization’s issues will gradually lead to the
forfeiture of owner’s reputation and brand’s image. It not only causes damage of the
company’s standing in the industry sector, but also is a good opportunity for competitors to
take advange of the mistakes and leads to many other losses in terms of financial gains, trust
of out-source agencies and relationships with government and suppliers. For the staff’s point
of view, it is clearly that problems and issues in working place could lead them to stresses
and anxiety condition, which results in errors in task-performing ability. Moreover,
employees are widely considered as the most vital group in the stakeholders section arcording
to the fact that they are people who directly interacting, making transactions or providing
services to the customers, not the hotel’s owner. Also, organization’s loss of financial income
could seriously affect to staffs’ pay packet, giving the situation of not meeting their economic
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needs and putting employee’s development and loyalty under the threat. Walker (2010) stated
in his recent research that successful company is the one which can create a stimulating work
environment in which guests and employees become integral parts of the mission by
participating in goal and objective setting. Therefore, failure in employees’ training and
quality control could be failure in satisfying and retaining guests. For the customer’s
perspective, a hotel is an enterprise of commercial hospitality, which offers its services and
facilities for sale individually, or in many of combinations (Medlik and Ingram, 2000).
Recognizing and enhancing customer needs and expectations is the fundamental principle for
hotel owners to maximize their income and to spread the reputation around the world.
According to stakeholder theory (Freeman, 1984), companies should be aware of the
importance of catering for a wide range of interest groups in accordance with their specific
needs and interests (Kramer and Tyler, 1996). In addition, Morgan and Hunt (1994) found
that relationship exchange is only built on the conceptual of trust and commitment among
hospitality stakeholders. Otherwise, conflicts and stresses may occur if there is lack of
conviction or appearance of uncertainty. Only through commitment and reputation to its
stakeholders, the hotel can secure the stabilization of the relationship with customers, also
gain more respects and reliance in customer’s perspective. Also a transparent engagement
process could ensure accountability and justification for a long-term relationship, create a
meaningful interactions in order to achieve accumulative benefits for both sides.
IV. Conclusion
This research develops an evaluation of the service quality of the La Roja Bungalows
Hotel from the perspectives of customers, services staffs and management teams, which is
considerably valuable for hotel manager. By analysing the service gap model, the report
revealed that gap 5 – the customer gap is the main issue in terms of customers’ dissatisfaction
and complaints. In order to minimize the gap between the guests’ expectations and their
perceptions of actual service delivered, the service staffs and managers have to ensure that
every interactions with customers results in positive experience for the guests. It is
recommended to the hotel managers to conduct more training and engagement sessions in
order to assure employee’s high-performing skills. This aspect of the study is compatible with
the Nadiri and Hussain (2005) research as they stated that the managerial implication
includes the need for the hotel to develop human resources management stategies to train
employees to become more skilled, friendly and competent to meet customer’s need. Also it
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is suggested that the team should focus more hotel facilities and equipment. Arcording to
Zeithaml and Bitner (2003), in the hospitality industry where customers visit the
establishment to receive the services, the tangibles should be overemphasized.
V. Recommendations
It is recommended to the hotel managers to carry the proposed analysis regularly so that
they can understand more about the customers’ evaluation process, and thus meet customers'
expectations more consistently.
Arcording to the gap analysis, it is illustrated that there are a lot of requirements that
customers expected, however due to the lack of resources and shortage in employee training,
discrepancies existing is undeniable. Through the results obtained from the gap model
analysis, the following suggestions to the La Roja hotel are made:
In terms of service staffs’ attitude towards customers, the hotel should focus on the
internal issues first as they need to attemps regularly team meeting and training sessions, to
ensure that the employees always consider customers to be the core value of a successful
organization. Providing employees with an adequate system of control, awardings and
disciplinary actions is also vital in this fast moving industry, so that they could have the
ability to adapt to changes in demands of customers and develope a strong relationship on
behalf of the company.
There are also some improvements on tangibles and organization facilities that the hotel
should consider to make attempts as some comments and reviews on popular booking
platforms had reflected the gap. The first critical thing to change is making a website for the
hotel in order to ensure all sorts of customers could interact. Having a landing page is also
crucial as customers can approach with the official information and announcements from the
hotel side, therefore it can help the customers to avoid many types of high technology crimes
such as phishing, cyber scams,… Secondly, the hotel should more concentrated on room
equipments as it is easily observed by customers. Failing in performance in terms of
convenience will destroy all standards promised by the hotel and gradually lead to reputation
loss. But it does not mean to totally rely on the technological innovation alone, the company
should rather focus on their human resources to maintain the quality and stay in customer-
oriented, service-minded route.
VI. References
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