Improving Customer Service in Premier Inn Hotel

The report focuses on improving customer service in Premier Inn Hotel. It includes an analysis of service quality using SERVQUAL and gap model, four acid tests of service recovery, and a survey report with recommendations for better customer service. The survey report includes questions related to customer satisfaction, employee behavior, complaint handling, and good night sleep promise. The report recommends Premier Inn Hotel to monitor their complaint handling department, hire new employees with appropriate skills, and analyze the reason for dissatisfied customers.

Customer service

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
Main Body.......................................................................................................................................1
Analyse service quality (SERVQUAL) with specific focus to dimensions and gaps............1
Demonstrate your knowledge and understanding of the four acid tests of service recovery
within the hospitality..............................................................................................................3
Prepare a survey report with recommendations for better customer service, after analysing
tailor made questionnaire the hotel has sent to their customers.............................................4
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................7
References:.......................................................................................................................................8

INTRODUCTION
It is essential for every company to focus on the quality of their products and services
well so that they can gain good customer satisfaction. In context of hospitality sector, it is most
essential for them to focus on the quality of their services because they can create a good brand
image by their services only (Adam, Wessel and Benlian, 2021). It is most important for a
company to consider feedback from their clients so that they will get to know what all changes
they are required to adopt for satisfying their customers in better ways. Premier In hotel is
founded in 1987 by its parent company Whitbread. It is headquartered in Dunstable, UK. The
following report will cover analysis of service quality (SERVQUAL) with specific focus to
dimensions and gaps, four acid test of service recovery and a survey report with
recommendations for better customer services within Premier Inn hotel.
Main Body
Analyse service quality (SERVQUAL) with specific focus to dimensions and gaps
SERVQUAL is a research instrument which helps to analyse customer’s perception and their
expectation regarding a products and services or even regarding a company. It will help
companies to analyse their that how much expectation their customers are having for their
products and services. In concept of Premier Inn hotel, this research instrument will help them to
analyse that how their targeted customers will expect for their services to get satisfied. There are
five dimensions of SERVQUAL which is explained below-
Tangibles- It defines physical facilities of a company which they offer to their customers. In
context of Premier Inn, they provide pillows, rooms and many other facilities to their customers
which are tangible in nature and the good quality of these things will help them to gain high
customer satisfaction (Gnewuch, Morana and Maedche, 2017).
Reliability- It is the organisational ability to perform their services accurately according to their
promises. It is essential for every hotel to perform work as according to their promises as they
have done on their promotions. In context of Premier Inn, they promise for good sleep nights to
their customers and for this they work hard to provide better quality of services to their
customers which help them to make their sleeps perfectly good as compared to their
expectations.
Responsiveness- It is the willingness of organisations to help their customers. In context of
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Premier Inn, they are willing to help their customers by listening what they want to
communicate. Handling complaints in a effective manner also help them to help their customers
to get effective services as they expected.
Assurance- It is the knowledge and ability of their employees to inspire confidence and trust.
Empathy- It shows the politeness behaviour and caring attitude of organisation toward their
customers. In context of Premier Inn, they are polite toward their customers and try to fulfill all
their expected demands (Janahi and Al Mubarak, 2017).
Gap model of service quality- This is the model which provide a roadmap to companies which
consist of overall process of service delivery. It also help to analyse what all gaps are there which
acts as obstacle for the company to provide quality services to their customers. There are five
kind of gaps within this model which are explained below-
GAP 1- Gap between management perception and customer expectation.
This is the gap which arises when service provider is unable to predict well about the
expectations of their customer's needs. This gap also occurs due to bad relationship of
management team and employees within a company. Due to insufficient market research
employees are unable to predict what actually their customers want from them.
GAP 2- Gap between service quality specification and management perception
This is the gap when employees or a management team predict correctly about the needs and
wants of their customers but they are unable to design it correctly due to inappropriate physical
evidence, inappropriate service process and many others (Raza, and et. al., 2020).
GAP 3- Gap between service quality specification and service delivery
Here, they analyse actual demand and wants of their customers but unable to deliver their
services appropriately due to insufficient knowledge of their employees. Improper recruitment is
the main reason for this gap where companies hire those employees whose skills does not
required by them to perform their tasks. Improper training of employees can also be a reason for
this gap where employees have no proper opportunity for enhancing their skills and update their
knowledge which unable them to perform their task properly. In simple words, this gap is
defined as the difference in matching supply and demand of customers.
GAP 4- Gap between external communication and service delivery
This is the gap which arise due to wrong advertisement by the company to meet their customers
satisfaction. Advertisements are great influencer for customers to use particular products and
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services. Hence, due to this reason many companies advertise their products and services by
adding those features which even not presented in their products to attract large number of
customers and when customers purchase the product or services then it will become the reason
for dissatisfaction. For example, in case a restaurant shows in their advertisements that they will
provide Italian food and have discounts on some special orders but when customers arrive the
hotel and get to know that there are only few dishes of Italian food products and there is no
discount then they get dissatisfied with such kind of services by the hotel (Kumar and Hundal,
2019).
GAP 5- Gap between experienced service and expected service
This is the gap which arises due to misunderstanding of customers related to a particular service.
For example, in Premier Inn hotel, their staff members ask their customers whether they need
any additional service or not but customers thought that staff is disturbing them again and again
with some bad intension. Here, hotel's basic aim is to check the satisfaction of their customers so
that they will make it correct on the spot if they found any error regarding their offered services.
Wrong perception of customers will create a issue for the hotel to deliver appropriate service to
them (Zhao and et. al., 2020).
Demonstrate your knowledge and understanding of the four acid tests of service recovery within
the hospitality
Service recovery is the process in which the management of a hotel takes the actions to revive all
their mistakes because of consumers are facing issues. In every hotel, there some or the other
issue which the consumers face but if these mistakes are not cured with the best solution then
this can create a negative impact on the hotel (Majchrzak-Lepczyk and Łupicka, 2019). So, to
remove the effects of such type of problems it is very important that the hotels take right
measures in order to reduce the effect of consumer problems. Service recovery can be termed as
this thing where the management taken an action on the problems which the consumers are
facing in their hotel (KLONGTHONG and et. al., 2020). Premier Inn hotel is the most reputed
one which has build its customer base because of the quality of their services that the hotel
provides. But in some cases there are some other problems also which is faced by the Premier
Inn consumers which covers the room service not taking place on time and the other
miscellaneous services which has to be provided by the hotel. Acid test technique is the best one
which will be helpful in recovering all the issues which is faced in a hotel.
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 Apologies- The first step which is the most important one covers that specific situation in
which the hotel has to make apologies. If this will not be undertaken in the hotel then the
consumer might get offended with it(Prentice, Dominique Lopes and Wang, 2020). The
reason for this is hotel industry is customer centric one in which the prior focus of the
management is to provide them the best services which make a good impact on people.
 Review- Review will cover those points by which the guest in a hotel gets offended so
that the management of a hotel get those points as in which thing they want to get the
improvement and which they have to modify. This is the most important step of acid
technique where it becomes very important to make the review of each and everything so
that the objectives of a hotel get completed.
 Fix and follow Up- Fixing the problem will always include that a solution has been
provided to the problem which has been faced by consumers. Fixing the problem in this
particular thing is very important because if the issue has not been provided with the
effective solution then in this case it will become very problematic (Jebraeily and et. al.,
2019). Problems has to be resolved on time otherwise it will not be fixed and the chances
of negative image can be spread in the market.
 Documentation- Documentation is also the another factor which plays an important role
because when all the issues are documented with the solutions provided to it then it
becomes very simple to frame other new things(Fong, and et. al., 2020). Making or
working the things in a new form is a very important specially in this industry because
consumers wants new things.
Prepare a survey report with recommendations for better customer service, after analysing tailor
made questionnaire the hotel has sent to their customers.
It is essential for the companies to conduct research on regular basis to identify whether their
products and services are satisfying their targeted customers or not (Munasinghe-Arachchige and
et. al., 2021). Research also helps identify whether new product or services will be launched in
market or not. It is also important to analyse customer’s feedback regarding customer
experience. There are few questions which can be asked by Premier Inn hotel in their
questionnaire in case of research conduction and these questions are given below-
Question 1- Are you satisfied with the services provided by Premier Inn hotel.
 Highly satisfied
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 Satisfied
 Neutral
 Dissatisfied
 Strongly dissatisfied
Question 2- Do the employees of Premium Inn are polite toward providing services.
 Yes
 No
Question 3- Are your complaints heard effectively.
 Yes
 No
 Maybe
Question 4- Rate the good night sleep promise of Premier Inn hotel at the scale of 5.
 1 (excellent)
 2 (good)
 3 (Neutral)
 4 (bad)
 5 (worse)
The above questions are made to analyse how targeted customers perceive brand image and
brand value according to their point of view. Premier Inn choose 50 customers for this survey
and analyse the result. The results are given below-
Question 1- Are you satisfied with the services provided by Premier Inn hotel. (Tick the option)
 Highly satisfied. (20 ticks)
 Satisfied. (10 ticks)
 Neutral. (10 ticks)
 Dissatisfied(5 ticks)
 Strongly dissatisfied (5 ticks)
Interpretation- From the above information it is critically evaluated that 20 customers out of 50
are highly satisfied, 10 are satisfied, 10 are neutral, 5 are dissatisfied and 5 are strongly
dissatisfied with the services provided by Premier Inn. It is recommended for Premier Inn hotel
to analyse the reason for 10 customers who opted dissatisfied and highly dissatisfaction option in
the survey to make changes in their services to opt for higher customer satisfaction.
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Question 2- Do the employees of Premium Inn are polite toward your orders. (Tick the option)
 Yes(38 ticks)
 No (12 ticks)
Interpretation- It is evaluated that 38 customers are agreeing that employees of Premier in have
polite behaviour toward their customers. Whereas 12 are dissatisfied that employees of Premier
Inn are having polite behaviour. It is recommended to Premier Inn hotel that they must analyse
the reason for opting no option from customers and take some strict actions toward those
employees who are not behaving polite to Premier Inn customers. Hiring new employees with
appropriate skills to provide better services will help them to gain high customer satisfaction.
Question 3- Are your complaints heard effectively. (Tick the option)
 Yes (30 ticks)
 No (12 ticks)
 Maybe (8 ticks)
Interpretation- It is evaluated from the above question and the response that 30 respondents are
agreeing that their complaints are heard effectively, 12 are disagreeing and 8 are not clear
whether their complaints are heard effectively or not (Kumar, Sujit and Charles, 2018). It is
recommended to Premier Inn that they must monitor their complaint handling department on
regular basis and ask a yearly report for analysing what all complaints they received most of the
time and what effective actions are taken by their customer service department to handle such
issues.
Question 4- Rate the good night sleep promise of Premier Inn hotel at the scale of 5. (Tick the
option)
 5 (excellent) (20 ticks)
 4 (good) (15 ticks)
 3 (Neutral) (5 ticks)
 2 (bad) (8 ticks)
 1 (worse) (2 ticks)
Interpretation- It is evaluated from the above question and it’s analysis that 20 respondents
choose excellent ratting to Premier Inn services, 15 chooses good, 5 are neutral, 8 selected bad
reviews and 2 selected worse review for overall service from Premier Inn hotel. This reflects that
few customers are very dissatisfied with their services. These ratings can create bad impacts
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upon organization because new customers use any hospitality service by noticing their reviews
first. Hence, it is recommended for Premier Inn to make strong strategies to maintain good
reviews of customers so that they can maintain their good brand image in markets.
Hence, it is critically evaluated from the questions and their evaluations that these type of
questions are considered in questionnaire of a survey where customers or respondents are
required to tick a option which is most preferred by them (Fan and et. al., 2017). Such type of
surveys help companies to identify the exact reason for customers satisfaction and their
dissatisfaction. In case of analysing customer satisfaction, a company is recommended to
maintain their high performance in those segments where customers gain high satisfaction. On
the other hand it also suggested to companies that they can make changes in those factors due to
which customers gain dissatisfaction by company as soon as possible. Taking corrective actions
is essential for gaining customer satisfaction in hospitality industry.
CONCLUSION
It is concluded from the above information that every company should maintain their quality of
services which further help them to gain customer satisfaction. In context of hospitality sector,
their companies are service providing companies. Hence, it is essential for them to focus upon
the quality of their services to achieve competitive advantage. It is concluded that SERVQUAL
model is used to analyse customer's perception and expectations regarding services. There are
five dimensions in this model and five gaps. There are four factors in acid test which are
apologizing, review, fix and follow up and documentation. A research is further effective activity
by an organization which helps their company to analyse what actually their customers are
perceiving regarding the products and services of a company.
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References:
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customer satisfaction in Islamic banking. Journal of Islamic Marketing.
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