Critical Incident Response: Analysis of Service Delivery Failures

This report delves into the concept of critical incidents within a business context, defining them as sudden, impactful events that can disrupt operations and affect an organization's reputation and financial stability. The report uses the Rob Jones Corporation case study to illustrate these incidents, such as staff changes and client dissatisfaction due to service delivery failures. It highlights specific instances where the hotel's service fell short, leading to client issues and potential revenue loss. The report emphasizes the importance of effective communication, task division, and staff training as preventive measures to mitigate these failures. It suggests establishing clear communication channels, defining departmental responsibilities, and implementing customer feedback mechanisms to enhance service quality and customer satisfaction. The report concludes by underscoring the significance of a self-driven, disciplined workforce under wise leadership to ensure positive customer experiences.

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Critical incident response
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Critical incident response
Introduction
A critical incident is a sudden expected or unplanned event at the work-place that pauses
great impact to an individual employee, a whole staff or an entire business organization at large.
These incidents could be accidents at the work-place, natural calamities or disasters,
cybersecurity crimes, organization’s bankruptcy, huge market losses, the untold resignation of
key employees who could be playing high profile roles, among many others (Jones and
Elizabeth, 2016). The effects brought about by the critical incidents could cause a major setback
to the business organization’s operations, reputation, and a huge fortune that could lead to
closure or termination of the business. In the cause of these situations, many business entities
have set up critical responses with efforts to ensure the operation of their businesses never come
to this point. Moreover, some critical incidents pause no major impact to the organization and
may not need the immediate action of rescue although such cases are rare to come by (Tontini et
al., 2017, pp.106-116).
Critical incidents
In the case study of Rob Jones Corporation, the corporation encounters a critical incident
when the Manager in charge of the accounts gets promoted and transferred to another chain’s
hotel. In this scenario, the incident could not be critical to other staff members nor the
management as they could have planned for a long time but it is a critical incident to Linda Hall
as the Sales manager who has to take over the accounts as well. Another critical incident is
evident when Mr. Jones cancels his next conference with the hotel. This comes as a shock to the
entire staff as it implied they will lose an important client that could lead to a bad reputation, loss

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of revenue which could possibly affect the entire business profit margins (Murata et al., 2015,
pp.44-58). This calls for attention from every member to foresee means to restore the canceled
reservation. Another incident comes in place when Linda Hall fails to make up to the meeting
she rescheduled with the important client to the corporation, Mr. Jones without prior apologies
nor any communication regarding the failure to attend the meeting. This causes another dispute
between the client and the hotel since the meeting was purported to be an avenue to restore trust
with the client thus ended up calling the need for a more serious cause of action to remedy the
situation (Chen and Sandy, 2017, pp.131-153).
Service delivery failures
A service delivery failure refers to a case where the business organization does not
provide the indented services and products to their esteemed customer within the required agreed
time. On the other hand, a service encounter is when the service firm makes an interaction with
the customer over the telephone or through social media. The contact person, the service firm
and the customer are required to work together to achieve positive service encounter (Wirtz and
Jochem, 2016, pp.15-16). This begins with delight touchpoints that sets up the pace. In relation
to service encounter Triad’s (Bateson 1985) theory, there are several service delivery failures in
the Rob Jones Corporation case study where the hotel staff makes repeated errors in
specifications of the room meetings and the food ordered for. Another case is when the staff in
charge fails to make a follow up on the agreed items that needed immediate rectification in
addition to failing to show up at an important meeting with the customer without any notice or
apology. These cumulatively leads to dissatisfaction and irritation of the customer.

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Preventive measures to service delivery failures
With reference to the case study, there was a lot of negligence among the staff members
with minor errors that later became a major concern yet they could have been addressed earlier
with minimal measures that could not incur any cost, resource, nor time (Romanosky, 2016,
pp.121-135). This implies that channel of communication at the corporation is not effective
enough to address the issues concerning the services offered at the hotel. Without efficient, well-
established structure of communication in any given organization, there will always be gaps in
conveying messages, analyzing feedbacks, taking action against any concerns, and any other
crucial information that could hinder the quality of service offered at the organization. Proper
channels of communication could help to curb these minor mistakes before they evolve into
major concerns thus the hotel should put such measures in place.
Another keynote to look at is the division of tasks and allocation of resources to achieve
them. The hotel management should have the staff divided into different departs and advocate
for collaboration of these departments in rendering service to their clients so as to ensure that no
gap is left in their line of duty. Division and allocation of work and tasks could provide a strong
supervisory mechanism that would make it easier for the central management to identify
mistakes or failures and quickly device a remedy to the problem (Khosravi, 2016, pp.116-139).
In support to this, the department heads could be assigned their assistants who temporarily stand
in for them in case they are absent. The organization should also allocate a department that could
be responsible for customer feedbacks and conduct research in the line of customer needs and
satisfaction which are essential for business growth.
The organization should also educate and train their staff in relation to the performance of
their duties and set up a standard work procedure that guides the staff with rules and regulations

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that should be strictly adhered to. They should invoke a punishment mechanism to any member
who goes against the set rules and regulations. This could act as a clear roadmap that ensures the
employees forego ignorance and negligence to remain loyal to their responsibilities and
initiatives (Pescaroli and Gianluca, 2016, pp.175-192). Developing a self-driven culture within
an existing group of employees can be a little tedious and takes some time but with the right
management that takes up the mandate to provide a wise leadership, it is totally possible. With a
disciplined staff, customer satisfaction will always be the order of the day.
References

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Chen, C. and Sandy, R., 2017. Construction and validation of the customer participation scale.
Journal of Hospitality \& Tourism Research, Volume 41, pp. 131-153.
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Murata, W., Atsuo, N., and Tomoko K., 2015. Influence of cognitive biases in distorting decision
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