Premier Inn Customer Service: Journey Stages and Impact Analysis

This report delves into the customer service strategies of Premier Inn, a leading UK hotel chain. It examines the five stages of the customer journey: awareness, consideration, decision, retention, and advocacy, and how Premier Inn utilizes each stage to enhance customer experience and build brand loyalty. The report emphasizes the significance of customer service in fostering customer satisfaction and retention, highlighting the impact of effective customer care on repeat business and positive word-of-mouth marketing. It provides examples of effective customer care practices, such as staff training and feedback mechanisms, and concludes that focusing on customer journey stages is crucial for success in the competitive hospitality industry. The report references relevant academic sources to support its analysis.

Premier Inn Hotel and its
customer service importance

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAINBODY...................................................................................................................................3
Determine stages of the customer journey...................................................................................3
Significance of customer service and impacts on customer experience......................................5
Identify and example of effective customer care.........................................................................5
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................6
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................7

INTRODUCTION
Customer service is the process of taking care of user’s requirements and needs by
offering and delivering quality of services. To understand role of customer service has an
example of Premier Inn. It is British hotel chain and the UK’s largest hotel brand. It runs it’s
hotel in a number of locations including airports, suburbs and city centers. In this report will
discuss over stages of the customer journey in the hospitality industry.
MAINBODY
Determine stages of the customer journey
There are five stages of customer journey that are discussed below:
 Awareness
It is primary stage of customer journey that is used by hospitality sector organizations like
Premier Inn to aware it’s potential customers that if they have need or issue then they can
directly communicate with customer support to resolve their issues or company will actively
seeks to resolve their issues as soon as possible (Bowie and et.al., 2016). Generally, it is the first
stage of customer journey that practices by organization to give first impression on customers. It
is important stage as compared others because it builds trust between customer and service
organization by delivering whole actual information to the users.
 Consideration
It is the second stage of the customer journey as in first stage provides options to the customer
wherein, they can select from. In the consideration stage customers or buyers compares price and
product services with others to meet their solution in the hospitality sector. When customer finds
hotel service and it’s product according their budget and perception they decide to buy
hospitality services. Premier Inn hotel takes this factor in consideration and focuses on customer
needs so that it can offer best quality product and service to it’s guest. It is one of the best hotel
brand among others that offers it’s services into multiple country nearby transportation place
which has already become solution point for the guest and influences them to take services.
 Decision

Decision is the third stage of customer journey whereas potential customer ready to choose from
available option to make purchase. Customer review is highly important for this stage. It is the
psychology of the customer that they prefer to buy only those options or hotel services which has
rating 5 star or other customer has reviewed good (Freeman, 2020). Based on the review and
hotel service rating decides to buy hospitality services by customers. Premier Inn takes actual
reviews of customer about it’s service and products and provides consultation and coupon
services to keep it’s customer happy. Such service encourages prospective customers to buy
hospitality services.
 Retention
It is second last stage of customer journey that support to retain potential customer prolong time.
Most of the hospitality companies takes this stage in practice to retain it’s potential customers.
For example, Premier Inn has provided review section in it’s official site and encourages them to
share their experience and gives suggestion for the product and services so that if they visit gain
then it can give standard quality services to them (Keshavarz and Jamshidi, 2018). Front office
manager’s staff of the Premier Inn always follow up satisfaction phone calls which makes feel
valuable to the customer and retain them for long time with the hospitality services.
 Advocacy
It is last stage of customer journey that is quite hardest to gain. In the stage customer act as active
advocate for the hotel brand. In other word, when a customer has good experience with the hotel
services and it’s products then they have will to spread the word and suggests other peoples or
customers to buy hotel services. It is most powerful referral and word mouth marketing strategy
that practices by most of the hospitality industry to build trustable brand image among
customers.
From the above discussed point has been analyzed that to get success in the hospitality
industry requires to keep concentrate on stages of customer journey by Premier Inn then in
exchange will generate high revenue on it’s product and services in the UK market.

Significance of customer service and impacts on customer experience
Customer service is essential for the business because when service sector organizations gives
high quality customer services and brings satisfaction in it’s customers then it can retain them for
long time with company’s services and gets values of the brand from them effectively. Customer
service theory is all about to attract guests and retain them with hospitality organization prolong
time. It is simple concept when company offers value-based customer service to the customer
that brings loyalty in them, in that state they ready to pay extra cost to get high quality services.
To offer high level customer service conducts training session by Management of Premier Inn
for the staff members (Taheri and et.al., 2017). The main goal of the training session is that
individuals learns to give high standard customer service as well as develops new skills so that
they can bring level of satisfaction in it’s guests at the workplace. Effective customer service
impacts on customer experience such as when customer gets high quality product and hospitality
services that makes their experience ore good then they will revisit to buy hotel services again.
When a customer has good experience then they always prefer to buy only those options in
which they have great experience either other hotels gives extensive service or not. Premier Inn
practices customer service theory to focus on customer’s needs and expectation for the product
and hospitality services which helps to meet customer’s needs and influence their great
experiences.
Identify and example of effective customer care
Premier Inn hotel provides effective customer care services to it’s guest pre-purchasing,
on-going and post-purchasing because it believes on loyal users and good word of mouth
marketing so, it always conducts customer training program for the staff member which is one of
the integral parts of hotel’s customer service strategy (Tran, Arneault and Clark, 2019). Thus,
Premier Inn always practices customer service stages to give great experience to the customer.
360-degree feedback strategy is another strategy that also follows by Premier Inn to maintain
wellbeing of customers and employees.
CONCLUSION
This report has been summarized about customer journey stages such as awareness,
consideration, decision, retention and advocacy that used by successful service companies like

Premier Inn to retain it’s customers for long time. Significance of customer service played
effective role in improving customer experience that has concluded in this report.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Bowie, D and et.al., 2016. Hospitality marketing. Taylor & Francis.
Freeman, J., 2020. On Determining the Value of Online Customer Satisfaction Ratings–A Case‐
based Appraisal. Data Analysis and Applications 3: Computational, Classification,
Financial, Statistical and Stochastic Methods, 5, pp.195-214.
Keshavarz, Y. and Jamshidi, D., 2018. Service quality evaluation and the mediating role of
perceived value and customer satisfaction in customer loyalty. International Journal of
Tourism Cities.
Taheri, B and et.al., 2017. Mood regulation, customer participation, and customer value creation
in hospitality services. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management.
Tran, X., Arneault, G. and Clark, C., 2019. Social Media and the Gap Model of Hotel Service
Quality. Changing the ‘Rhythm’of Marketing: Are We Listening?, p.93.