Evaluating Customer Service, Policies, and Vision at Dorchester

This report provides an in-depth analysis of The Dorchester Hotel's customer service practices, policies, and service quality vision. It assesses the hotel's customer service practices, including its engaged staff behavior and commitment to empowering employees. The report also examines the hotel's service guarantees and complaint handling procedures, highlighting the importance of addressing customer complaints effectively. Furthermore, it advises on developing suitable customer-focused services, such as personalized services, in-room technology, and proactive approaches, to improve guest satisfaction and integrate these strategies into the hotel's culture and overall strategy, ultimately enhancing the hotel's competitive advantage.

Customer Service

Table of Contents
Introduction .....................................................................................................................................1
Main Body ......................................................................................................................................1
Conclusion ......................................................................................................................................1
References ......................................................................................................................................2

Introduction
Customer service is defined as the process of offering support to the target customer
before and after they use company's product and services leading to enhance their satisfaction
level and retain them for long period of time. It is also considered as the act of determining the
needs and preference of the customers and accordingly delivering them professional and quality
services to them (Solomon, 2020). It helps the business to build positive and long term
relationship with their customers and retain them for long. For this report essay Dorchester hotel
is taken as the base hotel. The Dorchester hotel is one of the top five star and expensive hotel in
London, it was founded in 1931 offering quality services to their customers. This report
highlights the detailed description of the hotel's customers services practices, policies and
services quality vision. Also the hotel's service guarantees and complaint handling procedures is
also highlighted in this report. In addition to this, recommendations for suitable customer focused
services to enhance guest satisfaction and how these can become part of hotel's culture and
strategy is also highlighted in this report.
Main Body
Explain and assess chosen hotel’s customer service practices, policies and service quality vision
The term customer services is defined as the process of using various practices and going
above and beyond in order to make customer's happy and satisfy their needs, including resolving
their issues or answering their question with professional attitude. It also includes offering
quality services to customer's before and after buying process takes place. With increasing
competition in the market and growing number of substitute, chances of customers shifting from
one brand to another is increasing (Taghizadeh, Rahman and Hossain, 2018). In such case
retaining customers and satisfy their needs becomes essentials for the business organization.
Offering quality customers services helps the business organization to satisfy their needs and
retain them for long period of time. In case of Dorchester hotel, which is an luxury hotel chain
brand that has been acknowledged for its engaged staff behavior. Hotel ensure to offer engaging
environment for the their employees so as to provide them right talent, right knowledge as well
as skills so they are capable to offer ultimate experience to their guest. Some of the services
customer practices practices used by the company includes setting set of strong and effective
values, also Dorchester focus on recruiting or hiring hiring right and skilled people who will be
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capable enough to deliver ultimate experience to their customer's. In addition to this, chosen
hotel also allow their workforce to take important decisions in regards to their customers.
Dorchester is also effectively committed towards empowering their staff members through their
organizational structure, collectively working towards offering quality services to their customers
(Michalak and Rysavy, 2019).
The service vision is defined as the results produced for the target customers. The service
vision of an organization state the core services offered by the firm to the target customers along
with the facilitating and supporting services offered to the customers in order to enhance their
performance in the long run an achieve desired goals and objectives effectively. It also focus on
the goals that the organization desired to achiever in the long run leading them to gain
competitive advantage effectively. In case of Dorchester, the hotel is uses their USP in order to
offer quality experience to their customer, the vision and mission of the hotel determined are aim
ed at offering quality services to their customers and satisfying their needs and wants. The vision
statements of Dorchester hotel is to the top hotel management company, along with passion for
excellence and innovation, maintaining the individuality and attributes of its hotels (Copacino,
2019). Also the mission statements of the hotel is to be able to develop strong landmark for their
hotels around the globe as well as becomes the market leader.
In order to achieve their desired goals and objectives and enhance their performance in
the market place, implementation of strong and well defined service strategy plays an essential
role. A service strategy analysis each and every prospect of a service offering including its
enhancement, its distribution and its promotion. An effective service strategy offers detailed
analysis of concept of the service delivered by the organization, along with the marketing of the
services offered. In case of Dorchester hotel, the service strategy adopted by the hotel is to
deliver quality value added services to their customers. The hotel focus on offering anticipatory
services offered by their well trained and qualified staff members. In additional to this the service
strategy of the hotel focus on enhancing the satisfaction level of this customers through offering
them both after services (Stamatis, 2018).
Show chosen hotel’s service guarantees and complaint handling procedures.
A service guarantee is defined as a commitment through an organization to perform in a
certain way or a certain level. And in case of that is is not met, the organization is bound to
compensate the customer for the loss. A service guarantees is one of the essential procedures
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used by the hotel industries to encourage customer's complaints. A strong and effective service
guarantees includes both proactive and reactive marketing impact. The term proactive marketing
shows organization's ability to attract large number of customers. An organization can consider
service guarantee to proclaim the dependability of their high quality services, thus leading to
attract large customer base. Reactive marketing refers to the organization ability to enhance
customer loyalty by retaining customers (Solimun and Fernandes, 2018). Use of service
guarantees allows organization to have large number of unhappy customers. In case of
Dorchester, hotel offers wide range of service guarantees to their customers, such as the reserved
room by the customers will be available on time. The Dorchester has analyzed that, the only way
to handle the detect risk of customers through offering satisfaction guarantees. The goals of the
Dorchester is to offer 100% customer satisfaction, through offering them money back guarantees
if they are not satisfied with the services. Also offering best price warranties, additionally the
other service guarantees offered by the chosen hotel includes offering best price guarantee,
discount guarantee.
One of the essential method that can be used by the business organization to satisfy their
target customer is handling and resolving their complaints. Determining and handling the
complaints of the customers helps the business organization to create a sense of belongingness
among them as well as retain them for long period of time. In order to build an effective
customer service, business organization needs to follows an effective and well defined structure
to handle the complaints of their customers (Nguyen and Nagase, 2019). In context to
Dorchester, the hotel is focused on handling or treating any kind of complaints with utmost
seriousness. The hotel deal with any kind of complaints regarding their resident, guest or visitors
invasive violet, discriminatory behavior as discreetly and also all are handled under the hotel's
obligation under English law. The customer is allowed to make any kind of complaints regarding
the level of service or the conduct of staff, guests or visitors before living the hotel. A senior
manager of the hotel will directly contact the customers regarding the complaint within 48 hours.
Also in case of any kind of misappropriation of property, violence or intimidatory actions against
any of the guest, visitors or individual in the hotel, direct information of such information is
provided to the Duty manager (Seger-Guttmann and Medler-Liraz 2020). The hotel will take
immediate action and do needful investigation of such action and proper actions will be taken.
Also the hotel ensures that the potential sensitivity of a complaint involving hotel and individual
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is remains confidential between them. Dorchester follows a systematic and clear procedure to
handle the complaints of their customers, such as hotel promotes their customers and employees
to make formal complaints, after receiving complaints discuss or acknowledge the problem, get
the required facts related to problem and then finally offers solutions in order to resolve the
complaints. The chosen hotel also inform their target customers regarding their commitment to
regular improvement. This helps the hotel to continuously maintain their strong brand image in
the marketplace, and continue to gain competitive advantage (Budur and Poturak, 2021).
Advise on the development for suitable customer focused services to improve guest satisfaction
and how this can become part of the hotel’s culture and strategy.
Customers focused services is defined as offering quality services to their customer
keeping their needs and wants first. Effective customers service are the main element to focus on
the customers, the customers focused organisation aim at putting customers experience first in
each and every step of customers journey such as fair marketing campaigns. In context to
Dorchester, in order to enhance their the satisfaction level of their target customers there are
number of customer focused services that can be considered by the hotel. It is recommended that
in order to improve the satisfaction level of their target customers the hotel can use personalised
services such as using CSR (central reservation system) to handle the reservation across a
portfolio of hotels and enables in offering information regarding the value of the guest. Also
CRM (customer relationship management) this personalised tool will helps the hotels to analyse
the preference of the customer's. Another recommendation that can be considered by the chosen
hotel in order to improve the satisfaction level of the customers can be through using or
implementing in-room technology(Parawansa, 2018). The hotel like Dorchester, adopting new
and advance in-room technology will be exciting and game changing for the hotel, it help them
to enhance their performance and gain competitive advantage in the marketplace. The technology
like smart room keys that will facilitate guest to open their room door with swipe of smartphone
or use of effective communication technology will help the will lead to improve the customers
satisfaction. Another recommendation that can be considered by the hotel can be to offer freebies
and complimentary services such as offering guest with extra, or providing few services for free
like WiFi services will allows the hotel to enhance their performance and satisfy the needs and
wants of the customers (Seldman, Futterknect and Sorensen, 2020). In addition to this, it is also
recommended that the hotel can also use proactive approach in order to satisfy the needs and
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wants of the customers and enhance their satisfaction level. This approach will allows the hotel
to not wait for the customer complaint, and will allow the hotel to move from a reactive service
model to a proactive service that will help in enhancing the customer satisfaction and retention
effectively (Storeyand Larbig, 2018). The effective use of software like SO software will make it
easy for the hotel to keep a report of each and every guest in on the daily basis, the information
gathered about the customers will help the hotel to use for offering customised services to their
target customers. Offering customer focused will help the chosen hotel to enhance the
satisfaction level of their customers and also retain them for long period of time. This will enable
the chosen hotel to gain competitive advantage in the marketplace.
Conclusion
From the above discussion, it has been concluded that offering quality and professional
services before and after customers buys an product helps business organisation to satisfy their
needs and retain them for long period of time. It is also analysed that satisfying the needs of the
customers helps business organisation to enhance their performance and overall productivity. It
also allows them to gain competitive advantage in the marketplace. This report helps in analysing
the chosen hotel uses quality service practices and policies, also has effective quality vision
which lead them to performance better in the marketplace. It is also analysed that hotel hotel
follows effective service guarantees and complaints handling procedures in order to solve
customers problems and issues effectively. Various customer focused services such are also
recommended in order to enhance customers satisfaction is also analysed in this report.
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References
Books and Journals
Budur, T. and Poturak, M., 2021. Employee performance and customer loyalty: Mediation effect
of customer satisfaction. Middle East Journal of Management, 8(5), pp.453-474.
Copacino, W.C., 2019. Supply chain management: The basics and beyond. Routledge.
Michalak, R. and Rysavy, M.D., 2019. Assessing library customer interactions and staff
satisfaction. Journal of Library Administration, 59(3), pp.314-324.
Nguyen, T.L.H. and Nagase, K., 2019. The influence of total quality management on customer
satisfaction. International journal of healthcare management, 12(4), pp.277-285.
Parawansa, D.A.S., 2018. Effect of commitment and customers’ satisfaction on the relationship
between service quality and customer retention in rural banks in Makassar, Indonesia.
Journal of Management Development.
Seger-Guttmann, T. and Medler-Liraz, H., 2020. Does emotional labor color service actions in
customer buying?. Journal of Services Marketing.
Seldman, M., Futterknect, J. and Sorensen, B., 2020. Customer Tells: Delivering World-Class
Customer Service by Reading Your Customers' Signs and Signals. Lulu Press, Inc.
Solimun, S. and Fernandes, A.A.R., 2018. The mediation effect of customer satisfaction in the
relationship between service quality, service orientation, and marketing mix strategy to
customer loyalty. Journal of Management Development.
Solomon, M., 2020. Ignore your customers (and they'll go away): the simple playbook for
delivering the ultimate customer service experience. HarperCollins Leadership.
Stamatis, D.H., 2018. Total quality service: principles, practices, and implementation. Routledge.
Storey, C. and Larbig, C., 2018. Absorbing customer knowledge: How customer involvement
enables service design success. Journal of Service Research, 21(1), pp.101-118.
Taghizadeh, S.K., Rahman, S.A. and Hossain, M.M., 2018. Knowledge from customer, for
customer or about customer: which triggers innovation capability the most?. Journal of
Knowledge Management.
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