Knowledge and Skills Sharing in the Food & Beverage Industry Report

This report delves into the critical role of customer service within the food and beverage industry, emphasizing the importance of service recovery strategies and knowledge sharing. It highlights the significance of effective communication and teamwork among employees, especially in restaurants, to enhance customer satisfaction and address service failures. The report underscores the value of training and skill development programs in improving customer service standards, focusing on topics such as customer relationship management, employee training on customer interaction, and the importance of creating a positive customer experience. It examines various aspects of service failure, from unmet expectations to negative social media feedback, and provides insights into how effective service recovery can protect a restaurant's reputation. The study also emphasizes the need for trained and skilled employees, friendly interactions, and innovation in customer service to foster strong customer relationships. The report concludes by stressing the necessity of a healthy flow of knowledge and effective communication among employees, supported by well-planned training programs, to build customer trust and ensure practical application of customer service skills.

Running head: FOOD AND BEVERAGE INDUSTRY
Knowledge and Skills Sharing in Food & Beverage Industry
Name of the student:
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Executive summary
The paper studies the importance of customer service skills, which play a very important role in
the different industry across the globe. It specifically plays a very vital role in satisfying the
customers in a hotel or restaurants. The paper gives importance to training and skill development
program for enhancing the customer service standard in a restaurant in specific. Moreover,
effective communication and working together in restaurants help the fresh employees get close
to the things in a very practical way.

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Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Service recovery..............................................................................................................................3
Importance of effective service recovery........................................................................................4
Importance of working together & effective communication in restaurant....................................7
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................7
References........................................................................................................................................9

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Introduction
Customer service is an essential part of a food and beverage industry. Customer service is
indeed constructed with various strategies such as repairing the damage of a service failure of
any kind (AbuKhalifeh and Som 2012). In this regard, knowledge management and sharing
comes apart as a potential option to rectify and repair the damages done by a service failure (Kim
and Lee 2013). This particular study also focuses on the service recovery with the help of
different supportive materials. The main purpose of this assignment is to identify what service
recovery is. Moreover, the study also focuses on the importance of knowledge management and
sharing in relation to service recovery in a restaurant.
Service recovery
Many operations across different organisations on this world believe in repairing the
damages done by a service failure. Additionally, it is also important to have a knowledge on the
perceptions that customer develops after they experience a service failure or a service recovery.
Importantly, the hospitality industry is widely known for a high standard customer service,
which is why customers have the perceptions that they will be treated with utmost care. They are
hurt when they find a slight of error in such perceptions (Mithas, Krishnan and Fornell 2013). In
such scenario, it is imperative for the hospitality industry that they use an appropriate and
effective service recovery strategy to restore the lost image and repair the damages done. Such
strategies can be produced with the help of knowledge sharing and management. The role of
training and development program becomes imperative as well in such cases (Chien and Tsai
2012).

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Service recovery can only be performed if the types of complaints are known. There are
ample numbers of complaints that can arise in a restaurant. There are different kinds of themes
for the restaurants such as for sports restaurant or a luxury restaurant. Both will have the same
basic amenities; however, customers might have different set of service expectations form the
two different kinds of restaurants. Service failure can be such as not meeting the expectation of
the customers in any term whether the products or the service (Susskind and Viccari 2011).
Nevertheless, the severity of service failure is that it compels the customers for sharing negative
views of them in public through any social media sites. This is undoubtedly threatening to the
reputation of the respective restaurant or a bar. Service recovery therefore is highly important for
a fact that it gives a chance to repair the damages done and provide an opportunity to the
responsible body to protect their reputation in the market (Komunda and Osarenkhoe 2012).
Importance of effective service recovery
Customer experience can be defined as an interaction that customers use to have while
interacting with the different people, product and service of a specific organisation. It can also be
defined as an experience that customers have after interacting to the people, product and service
of the respective organisation. Customer experiences if those are bad need to be managed with
an utmost service recovery strategy as this will help in compensate the damages that have been
done. Managing anything requires a clear understanding of the issue first. In such cases,
knowledge transfer throughout the organisational premise along all the employees keeps a high
importance. Knowledge should be shared with the less in experience employees. There can be
many ways of knowledge transfer such as being vocal to the less in experience employees or by
training those that requires the understanding of the knowledge management in the food and
beverage sector (Ryals 2013).

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Customer relationship management is a strategy that is used to retain the potential
customers or to add more new customers on a continuous basis. This is extremely important for
enhancing the business profitability. Companies perform different strategic planning to gather
the insights of the customers. They do such thing in order to understand where the problem is.
Moreover, this will help the company in putting forward an utmost and improved customer
service to the customers. In the food and beverage sector, it is extensively important to supply
an utmost customer service in order to retain the majority of the customers that visits on a daily
basis. It is important that customers have positive experiences of being in a particular hotel or a
restaurant (Mohammed and Rashid 2012).
Relations with the customers can be managed with the help of following different
strategies:
Trained and skilled employees-
Trained and skilled employees are utterly required in a job where interaction with the
customers is very evitable such as in sales jobs or the hospitality sector. Employees should be
trained on how to interact with the customers, how to take the orders and how to behave with the
different kind of customers. There are varied of customers that throng to a restaurant. It then
becomes important for the employees to know the etiquettes of interacting with the different
customers. For example, a drunken customer will have a different mindset and will be expecting
a different customer service. There are many other kinds of challenging customers. It is because
of all such reasons it is necessary to have trained employees in hotels and restaurants. This can
be done in numerous ways such as by training the employees on the basics of customer service
and by managing a flow of knowledge in between the different employees. Knowledge

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management is perhaps very important in the hotel sector. If the senior member of employees is
supportive to those who are new to the industry or those that have less experience in the industry,
outcome will be different. Such atmosphere will impart the learnt experiences of the senior
members to those who are less experienced. Additionally, training the newly recruited
professionals on the utmost standard of customer service will also help the fresh employee to
grab things quickly. The training will be certified as per the industry standard. Training will be
commenced on task specific knowledge, transactive memory, task related knowledge and guest
related knowledge. After the training is over, trained employees should be encouraged for on the
job training, which will include interacting with the live customers. This is really helpful as it
will give a live experience of customer responses that can be of any type (Weber et al. 2013).
Customer service-
Customer service includes many such as presenting a good quality product to the
customer or giving them utmost service. Service may include many such as greeting warmly to
the customers, asking for the orders with smile on the faces, delivering the order in time, asking
for any other assistance before leaving the table. If a customer complaints of any product,
employees should instantly apologise for that and ask for giving another chance, so as to
compensate the grievances (Thompson 2006).
Friendly employees-
Employees are needed to be friendlier. This is really helpful especially in the hospitality
industry. Friendly nature means interacting with the customers with smile on the face.
Additionally, customers will feel that their every query will be taken care with serious concern.

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Restaurants or hotels should be innovative in inventing various new things that redefines their
friendliness (Baker, Davis and Weaver 2014).
Importance of working together & effective communication in restaurant
Working together and effective communication in between the different employees in
restaurants is immensely needed. The importance of which can be felt in the outcome. It
facilitates the flow of knowledge, which is very necessary in order to get the knowledge on the
utmost customer service. Working together helps in maintain an effective communication, which
prepares the way for the knowledge transfer (Bouncken 2002). It is imperative in restaurants that
employees have practical exposure to their works. Nevertheless, the much needed inter
communication helps in facilitate the sharing of knowledge in between the experienced and the
fresher in a very practical way. Such a practical exchange of knowledge helps the freshly
recruited professionals learn the essential thing for a restaurant job in real time. Training helps to
learn the basics of customer service; however, it is not only necessary to provide an utmost skill
in employees. On contrary to this, they are nervous when they are put into works with the live
customers (Kang and Hyun 2012).
Conclusion
In the hospitality industry specifically in hotels or restaurants, it is important to maintain
a healthy flow of knowledge to gain an utmost trust of the customers those who are the visitors.
Such a flow of knowledge is only viable with a systematic and well planned training program
and the effective communication between the different employees in restaurants. Training helps
employees know about all the soft skills, which are needed in order to make customers feel like
home. Additionally, flow of knowledge or the knowledge sharing in between the experienced

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and the fresher ensure a significant grab on the practical terms. Nevertheless, practicality is
immensely required to get close to the real job. This can be effectively achieved by working
together like a team. It really gives chances to interact with the complex issues in a very practical
way.

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References
AbuKhalifeh, A.N. and Som, A.P.M., 2012. Service quality management in hotel industry: a
conceptual framework for food and beverage departments. International Journal of Business and
Management, 7(14), p.135.
Baker, M.A., Davis, E.A. and Weaver, P.A., 2014. Eco-friendly attitudes, barriers to
participation, and differences in behavior at green hotels. Cornell Hospitality Quarterly, 55(1),
pp.89-99.
Bouncken, R.B., 2002. Knowledge management for quality improvements in hotels. Journal of
quality assurance in hospitality & tourism, 3(3-4), pp.25-59.
Chien, S.Y. and Tsai, C.H., 2012. Dynamic capability, knowledge, learning, and firm
performance. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 25(3), pp.434-444.
Kang, J. and Hyun, S.S., 2012. Effective communication styles for the customer-oriented service
employee: Inducing dedicational behaviors in luxury restaurant patrons. International Journal of
Hospitality Management, 31(3), pp.772-785.
Kim, T.T. and Lee, G., 2013. Hospitality employee knowledge-sharing behaviors in the
relationship between goal orientations and service innovative behavior. International Journal of
Hospitality Management, 34, pp.324-337.
Komunda, M. and Osarenkhoe, A., 2012. Remedy or cure for service failure? Effects of service
recovery on customer satisfaction and loyalty. Business Process Management Journal, 18(1),
pp.82-103.

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Mithas, S., Krishnan, M.S. and Fornell, C., 2013, May. Why do customer relationship
management applications affect customer satisfaction?. American Marketing Association.
Mohammed, A.A. and Rashid, B., 2012. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) in Hotel
Industry: A framework proposal on the relationship among CRM dimensions, Marketing
Capabilities, and Hotel performance. International Review of Management and Marketing, 2(4),
p.220.
Ryals, L., 2013, May. Making customer relationship management work: the measurement and
profitable management of customer relationships. American Marketing Association.
Susskind, A. and Viccari, A., 2011. A look at the relationship between service failures, guest
satisfaction, and repeat-patronage intentions of casual dining guests. Cornell Hospitality
Quarterly, 52(4), pp.438-444.
Thompson, B., 2006. Customer experience management: the value of “moments of
truth”. Customer Think Corporation white paper, Customer Think, pp.1-18.
Weber, M.R., Crawford, A., Lee, J. and Dennison, D., 2013. An exploratory analysis of soft skill
competencies needed for the hospitality industry. Journal of Human Resources in Hospitality &
Tourism, 12(4), pp.313-332.