Chapter 6: service quality and managing your people

Defining service quality

• It is only recent that literature and technology on the subject of quality has emerged.
• Quality developed in: USA, Europe, and Japan
• Quality has been defined in a variety of ways including:
‘Quality should be aimed at the needs of the consumer, present and future’ (Deming, 1982)
‘Quality is conformance to requirements’ (Crosby, 1979)
‘Quality is in its essence a way of managing the organization’ (Feigenbaum, 1993).

Service quality
• Service quality is concerned with the delivery of customer needs and expectations.
• Service quality in research (since 1980s) - Gronroos (1990), Berry (1980) and Bateson (1979)
• Kotler (1982) defines service as ‘any activity or benefit that one party can offer to another which is
essentially intangible and does not result in the ownership of anything. Its production may or may
not be tied to a physical product’.

Characteristics of Service
1. Intangibility. This means that the service cannot be directly seen, tasted, felt or heard prior to their
purchase and consumption.
2. Inseparability. Production and consumption of the service occur simultaneously.
3. Heterogeneity. There is a high level of variability in services in that each encounter is a unique
experience influenced by a number of ‘human element’ factors.
4. Perishability. A seat at the theatre or an entry ticket for an event cannot be produced and stored
today for some future point in time.
*A major challenge for any manager involved with festivals and events is to effectively reconcile all of
these characteristics with offering a high level of service quality while matching demand with supply.

The service experience – pre-event

• Awareness and interest is generated by pre-event promotional material and information
• The quality of information, accuracy of details, tone of language and the image created will influence
customers’ expectations.
• Example - accurate information regarding facilities, parking, welfare services and transport
arrangements
The service experience – Arrival at the venue
• First impression matters
• Example - Is there someone to welcome and assist customers? How clear are the signs? Are all
facilities in good working order? Do front-of-house staff have professional attitude?
The service experience – engaging in the event
• This is the time when impressions of the event itself filter into the customer evaluation process.
• In the case of performance events, it might be said that the product is the performance and the
service is simply that which enables the customer to experience the product – i.e. the management
of the venue: technical staging, booking processes, program sales, merchandising and facilities
management.
• Quality in service – ‘moment of truth’
• How customers enjoy a promotional event is very much integrated with an expression of a desire to
purchase or an interest to find out more. Conferences and exhibitions fall somewhere in the middle
where the whole experience of the event can be a service experience, the individual elements being
essential to form the complete event.
The service experience - post event
• It is when some organizers of events or festivals lose interest in the visitor and yet this is the time
when the groundwork is laid for future customer relationships
• Evaluation - Customer feedback forms, evaluation sheets and informal conversations
• ‘Thank you’ to visitors
• quality service in all events comes about through a complex interaction of all the contributory
aspects of the overall experience; in general, this will include systems or procedures quality, technical
quality, professional quality and customer communication quality.

Measurements of service quality and customer satisfaction

• Customer satisfaction measurement helps focus on improving service quality
• Satisfying the customer is the first stage in getting recommendations, developing customer loyalty
and resulting in a profitable enterprise.
• quality perceptions do not require prior experience of the particular service. Many events are
perceived as high quality by customers who have never experienced them because of the images
projected by the producers or promoters. Satisfaction, on the other hand, is experiential.
• quality and satisfaction are so intertwined that measurement needs to be viewed and managed as
one process.
• Deming (1986) developed PDCA cycle to help managers deal with measurement in a systematic
fashion

Methods of measurement
• Comment cards
• Survey methods
• Customers interviews
• Fivars (1975) – critical incidents: Customers can provide their own comments under headings such as
‘Positive Statements’ and ‘Negative Statements’.
• attribute-based measurement can help organizations to quantify the situation. Measures difference
between the customers’ expectations and the actual performance received.

- The widely cited model SERVQUAL was developed in the late 1980s by Parasuraman et al. (1988) to
measure the gaps in perceptions and expectations across the following five dimensions:
▪ Tangibles – physical facilities, equipment, and appearance of personnel
▪ Reliability – ability to perform the promised service dependably and accurately
▪ Responsiveness – willingness to help customers and provide prompt service
▪ Assurance – knowledge and courtesy of employees and their ability to convey trust and confidence
▪ Empathy – caring, individualized attention the organization provides to its customers.

• Use of more than one measurement methods

• Feedback from staff – observation checklists, end-of-duty reports
• Review of competitive performance in elements of service experience (ex. Queuing, ticketing, F&B,
emergency procedures, follow-up communications…)
• Data collection and analysis
• Setting operational procedures and targets and checking on whether they have been followed
(management needs to be trained and competent)

• Following operational procedures:

Identify customer and competition trends
Highlight service delivery weaknesses
Feed into a review of operations
Assist with the development of an overall training and management development program
Develop a blueprint for future events
Establish a basis for strategic planning.
 The result from measurements
• The results from measurement enable the service provider to accurately target areas of poor
service to enhance the customer experience.
• Ultimately this requires investment in the people providing each element of service quality.

Managing people
There are particular problems in the events industry:
• project-based and short-term,
• contractual nature of most of the key jobs,
• seasonal positions,
• staff are already doing one other job.

The importance of managing your people

• The relationship between service provider and the customer (one ‘link’).
• The service provider - the performer, the promoter or the venue, or the event organizer – their
representatives on the ground
• The internal customers - The connections with subsidiary service providers (sound and public address
suppliers, outdoor catering and security companies), will be the other ‘links’ in the quality process.
• The service connection ‘chain’ relationships are important
• From planning to operations management, the relationship between the organization and its front-
line staff is crucial in determining the quality of relationship these people will be able to have with
the visitor or external customer.

Key factors in successful service relationships

1. Communication – this needs to be open, honest, regular and using more than just written media –
training on giving and receiving effective messages.
2. Information – accurate and timely provision of information is essential to maintaining a good
relationship, as is efficient record keeping and data retrieval systems.
3. Understanding – empathy is needed not just for the external customers’ situations but the
employees’ circumstances.
4. Behavior – all human behavior has the power to significantly change communication encounters and
interactions. Staff need to feel able to respond appropriately to customer and colleague behavior.
5. Action - the real professional knows how to translate these factors into effective action for the
benefit of the customer, the event and the organization

Opportunities to enhance service relationship

1. Use training and management development to enhance the personal effectiveness of all customer
contact staff
2. Comparing competitors’ performance - reviewing promotional material, identifying ticket and
information outlets, and examining facilities management.
3. use all experience effectively – good and bad – keeping management reports, staff and customer
feedback records accessible.
4. Experiment with new ways of dealing with old customers – tell them you are experimenting and ask
for feedback

Operational issues of service quality

The customer’s overall evaluation of the quality of an event takes in to account several factors:
• Systems or procedures quality - The ‘how’ of event management;
• Technical quality - he techniques of lighting designers, sound technicians and image makers
• Professional quality - evident by the attitude and behavior of staff towards customers in distress
and of the responses to customer difficulties, complaints or indeed emergency situations.
• Customer communication quality - staff being appropriately trained, informed and encouraged
to behave in a highly communicative and enabling way with customers and colleagues
Strategy and service quality
The event manager needs to:
o know what customers to attract, what they want and the standards to set for service – by
research (ex. Database marketing)
o provide the level of service quality demanded by the customer – use internal resources (ex.
Internal customers)
* Strategic management in relation to quality takes into account the environment
* There is no single strategy for competing on service but a number of strategies in different
functional areas.

Chapter 7: Implications and use of information technology within events

Introduction
• Events can vary in size and intensity, but they have one thing in common; that is, they need to be
organized, controlled, promoted, coordinated and in many instances financially viable.
• Therefore, these issues are addressed in terms of how IT can be used within:
• Organizing an event
• Planning the event process
• Coordinating an event
• Promoting the event
• Controlling the event
• Financial implications of the event process
• Evaluation of the event.
• * The internet – a medium for: promoting all aspects of events & informing all participants

Organizing an event
In the past:
• events viewed under the ‘hospitality’ umbrella and its related activities
• Corp. events was the responsibility of secretary to the managing director
• ‘Push’ approach to distribution of data
• Email - open, manipulate and respond to electronic distribution and its attachments was
imperative
Nowadays:
• Events is an independent industry
• the ‘professional event manager’, arranges, manages, organizes, coordinates all aspects
• of the event and acts as a ‘middle person’ between the suppliers and the organization.
• The WWW and intranets have allowed a ‘pull’ process to the distribution of data
• recipients need only log on to a website to access relevant information (ex. delivery schedules,
traffic information or weather conditions.)

Planning the event process

• Planning is a prerequisite for event success which requires time, effort and skill for it to work
seamlessly.
• IT help in informing individuals on their roles.
• Participants need different information at different timings:
• Due to the size or complexity of events there will be people involved, at different stages, required
at different times and needing different levels of information and instruction (ex. event organizer,
or company, through to the client, the venue center, the suppliers and the delegates)
 The event manager is the ‘glue’ that holds all these activities and interactions together. He/she
knows the whole story, therefore ensuring that processes, participants, and products:
• Are available at the right time
• Are from the right source
• Meet the required quality
• Are in the correct numbers – quantity.
Events involve sequence of choices and decisions acted upon by various people over a set period. For
this to be successful:
• Remember who and what is involved at various stages, and their various inputs; this becomes
more difficult as the event increases in size and complexity
• Ensure that timings and any changes are communicated to all participants and agreements
reached
• Ensure that all resources are used effectively and efficiently.

• Have any ancillary services changed regarding timing, equipment or numbers?

• Have any dates altered (end date or start date)?
• Has a supplier or resource run over time or failed to materialize?
• What are the critical activities for this event in terms of differing perspectives (i.e. those
involved)?

it is imperative when planning an event, to identify activities or jobs and in what potential order they
need to occur for the event to run smoothly and meet the objectives

• Software for project planning has a number of main functions; initially, it may be the production of
some form of flow chart, which identifies activities, resources, timings, and relationships. Secondly, it
could be the allocation of resources to actual individuals, through to preparing individual schedules.
Specifically, two techniques are evident: critical path analysis (network analysis, CPA) and Gantt
charts.

Critical Path Analysis

• A network diagram where the whole interconnectedness of the resources, activities and timings
are identified and examined.
• During the course of the event, CP is likely to change from time to time, emphasizing how
imperative this type of planning is to the success of the event.
• Keeping all participants informed by breaking down an event into its constituent parts, (ex. a
banquet, conference or fund-raiser), and showing these parts separately but also highlighting
their interrelationship in the form of a network diagram.
• CPA is mainly used to sequence activities, which in turn determines the shortest time needed to
complete the project.
• CPA allows the manager to consider times and resources required to complete each of the tasks.

Gantt Chart
• Are useful for smaller events
• most software allows one to switch between different views, which will show both the Gantt
chart and the critical path.

Coordinating the event

• coordinating is dealing with the operational aspects of the event; that is, the ‘running’ of the
event.
• This will be heavily reliant upon the planning stage as a blueprint of what is supposed to happen
and in what order.
• Constant involvement, updating and rechecking of activities both prior to them occurring and
during their operation
• IT within this arena – mobile phones, portable digital assistants (PDAs), walkie talkies.
Promoting the event
• the use of IT has in some way negated the high costs involved, in terms of promotion via the web
and sales through virtual and graphical representation of the event to clients and stakeholders.
• IT help:
• once created, the event theme will be applied to all event material (cost effective)
• customers are able to ‘pull’ information from a website reduces the burden placed on the
organization.
• Computer-aided design (CAD) allows managers to offer a real-world visualization of the event for
prospective clients, customers. It is a promotional tool for organizers to show new clients what is
possible and what work they have been involved.

Evaluation of the event and IT

• Role of IT – through efficiency and effectiveness
• Efficiency is the ability to use the available resources to achieve the desired results as quickly as
possible without wasting time, money and effort.
• Effectiveness - is concerned with the correct selection and utilization of resources in relation to
the task at hand.
• Data can be collected electronically and with the assistance of IT to provide information
regarding certain activities (numbers of delegates per day, the average spend in different outlets
per day or per session)
• Prior to this occurring, the event manager must be thinking about what data is relevant to their
activities but also what data would be useful and pertinent to their customers
• Packages that would help in the analysis of data. Ex. SNAP questionnaire software.

Financial implications of the event process

• Spreadsheet packages (can be as simple as excel)

Chapter 9: Marketing information for the events industry

Information for marketing decisions

• Because of the failure to focus on information issues, few organizations know what information they
have or need.
• Berkley and Gupta’s (1995) list of what they suggest as areas of prime importance in a service-based
industry:
demands and capacities; service specifications; service history; market trends; service standards;
customer instructions; process information; knowledge; job status; security; quality control; internal
quality measures; external quality measures; complaints and compliments; service recovery; customer
defections.

• Much of the information generated in the service industry is qualitative and difficult to systematically
collect and analyze. It results from personal interaction: employee–customer, customer–customer
and employee–employee.
• Event managers are often preoccupied with delivering a high-quality program (Getz, 1998) which
provides for the visitor experience but can lead to neglect in other areas such as service quality,
visitor satisfaction, and evaluation
• Marketing information uses: improvement of all marketing activities, gain competitive advantage,
customer loyalty, secure continued political and financial support from important stakeholder groups
(host cities, governments,), gain of successful bids, and requirement by sponsors
• Marketing decision making in the events industry has traditionally relied on creativity, and intuition
sometimes supplemented by attendance figures. Yet, there is a variety of information available to
events organizations (ex. Detailed econ. Impact analysis… internet chat rooms).
 Main advantages of applying info. Tech

The information required – event marketing research objectives

• Before beginning any data-gathering exercise it is necessary to have clearly defined objectives –
why it is needed and how it will be used.
• Event objectives are stated in ‘the triple bottom line’: economic, social, and environmental
benefits
• Stage one: check if the information required already exists and is in some usable form.
• Stage two: if information does not exist already, check whether the information can be obtained
in time, at an acceptable cost, and whether the likely benefits of its use will outweigh the
resource requirements of producing it.
• Research of a program of events (run by a venue for example) needs to be in a continuous
process which rolls from one event into the next.

Marketing information needs in the events industry

• The four event-marketing research areas of market analysis, consumer research, promotion
studies and performance evaluation suggested in Bowdin et al. (2001) can be expanded upon to
provide a more comprehensive checklist of information needs:
Setting event objectives
Macro-environment analysis
Customer analysis, segmentation and targeting strategy
Customer satisfaction
Customer expectations
Competitor analysis and positioning
Tactical marketing decisions
Wider impacts
Long-term planning.

The availability and location of information – types and sources of data

• the exact data required will always be determined by the objectives of the research, which in
turn are determined by the needs of the decision maker, for example to ascertain why ticket
sales have fallen this year, to justify continued investment in the event or to identify new target
markets etc.
• The cheapest and most easily accessible type of data is that which is generated by the day-to-day
running of the organization - the starting point of a developing marketing information system;
however, caution is from becoming over-reliant on internal data and neglect vital external
sources.
• Internal quantitative data includes information on ticket sales, accounts, customer records,
costings, merchandise sales, bar sales etc.
• Internally qualitative data includes sales staff reports, sponsorship bids/feedback, minutes of
meetings, feedback from customer service staff, customer complaints/compliments etc.
An important source of qualitative secondary data are previous
• Priority of external data includes market intelligence, continuous market scanning and recurrent
stakeholder surveys
• The starting point for external data is use of secondary data (quantitative: government statistics,
online data, industry surveys, published market research reports, published financial data etc., or
qualitative: news reports/articles, trade journals, other media, websites etc.) For major events
previous bid documents are an important qualitative secondary data
• Secondary data can be used to create longitudinal data on customer trends, competitor reaction.
• Then, first-hand data provides a richer picture. It is important set objectives and ensure that they
are met within budget and time constraint because this data is costly and time consuming.
• The gathering of external primary data is vital for event organizations who have a variety of
stakeholders with changing needs and who operate in a highly competitive environment. They
help anticipate future needs and develop innovative offering.
• quantitative data, traditionally viewed as more tangible and providing ‘hard facts’, tends to be
preferred by supporting organizations, i.e. sponsors, government, arts councils etc.

Methods for obtaining first-hand information – generating data

• ‘fitness for purpose’. How will the final report be used? Who will read it and what decisions will
be based on it? Starting at the end helps to focus on the objectives
• The quantitative/qualitative mix needs to be considered, as does the sampling methods and
sample size. These again will depend upon the depth of information required and the levels of
reliability and accuracy expected.
• Useful technique is to start by detailing the ideal research design and then to trade down based
on constraints of time, budget, expertise etc. - ‘five-way tradeoff’ consisting of precision, depth
of understanding, credibility, practicality and cost.
• Once the practical design has been achieved, assess what sources of error have been introduced
and whether these are acceptable.

Main techniques for gathering first-hand data (Table 9.1)

• Surveys - to gain customer opinions post-event (Figures 9.3–9.5)
- A variation on the one-off survey is one that is repeated at regular intervals to provide longitudinal
data. useful for tracking changes over time and give better response rates. *Sampling procedure and
recognition of any error or bias in the process is important
• Focus groups/interviews - information on attitudes, opinions or motivations. The depth of data
often provides the key to problem areas which would otherwise not have been anticipated.
However, the richness and unstructured nature of the data generated leads to problems in
analysis and interpretation.
- A useful variation on focus groups is in soliciting expert opinion (members of the discussion
group are chosen based on their experience and knowledge of the topic rather than representing
a larger segment or population). Used in idea generation, causes of problems, and product
innovation. Experts can be suppliers and distributers.
• Observation – information on how the product is used, benefits gained, level of enjoyment and
satisfaction. combined with other sources, a detailed picture of prospective customer
characteristics and preferences.
• Estimating attendance - straightforward at ticketed events or at events with restricted entrance
and exit points. Complicated for non-ticketed or open access events.

Interpreting the information – analyzing, managing, and using the data

• the application of techniques for analyzing qualitative and quantitative data and the use of IT for
analysis, storage, manipulation and retrieval.
• First - initial clarification of the decision maker’s goals
• Second - check and clearly acknowledge the data validity and reliability.
• Third - data can be reduced through statistical methods for quantitative data or through
techniques such as content analysis for qualitative data.
• Forth - The reduced data can be investigated to identify trends, shapes and patterns and these
can be used to develop and build models to explain behaviors.
• Fifth - present the findings in an objective and usable manner to those who will be using it to
inform strategic marketing decisions.
• The complexity, competitiveness and volatility of the events industry creates a greater need for
marketing information to be managed within a bespoke system and this system development is a
key stage in the development of an information-based decision-making culture within events
organizations.

• To handle the increasing external and internal information flow companies need take advantage
of the information technology (IT) and information systems.
• The marketing information system must ensure a continuous flow of pertinent information to
the decision maker without restricting the creativity and freedom needed within the events
industry. Check Figure 9.9

What can go wrong?

• issues which can affect the effectiveness of the use of marketing information:
o Information overload
o Stifling creativity
o Information cost versus effectiveness gains
o Skills, training and personnel shortages
o Privacy and data protection issues.

Conclusion
• In order to succeed through strategic competitive advantage, events organizations need to make
use of marketing information.
• To do this it is necessary to firstly identify clearly and precisely their information needs in terms
of the marketing decisions to be taken.
• the sources of information can be investigated and if necessary, primary data collected.
• The information collected then needs to be organized within a marketing information system.
• This system needs to be organized so that decision makers can access a broad range of
information, to solve marketing problems.