THE HOSPITALITY

SERVICE DELIVERY
SYSTEM
Topics 01 Communicating for Service

02 Planning the Service

Delivery System

03 Waiting for Service

04 Measuring and Managing

Service Delivery
“Design systems that allow you to do the job right
the first time. All the smiles in the world are not
going to help you if your service is not what the
participant wants”. — Joseph J. Bannon
Challenges in Managing Information
• Creating a system that manages information effectively is one
of the most important and challenging issues facing any
hospitality organization.
• Information is data that informs; Information System is a
method to get data that informs those who need to be
informed.
• A well-designed information system gets the right information
to the right person in the right format at the right time.
• The right person in hospitality organizations could be an
employee, the manager, the guest, a supplier, a combination of
all these people, or many others.
• Information that does not add value to either the guest’s or the
organization’s decisions is useless.
A traveler was waiting for her breakfast to be
served at a business hotel. Within a reasonable time,
the server brought her eggs and bacon. She looked
at the bacon and realized it was too undercooked to
eat. She moved it to the side and proceeded to eat
the rest of her meal. During a routine visit to the
tables, the manager asked how the breakfast was.
All right, she said, except the bacon was not cooked
properly. The manager apologized and went on to
another table. A short time later, the server
appeared and asked the same question. The second
time the traveler was annoyed.
A guest wants to order a bottle of
wine and is presented with a
wine menu longer than some
novels. Hundreds of options are
provided, choices of different
varietals from regions around the
world. After pretending to study
the list for a while, the guest
simply gives up. Frustrated, he
decides to just have water with
his dinner.
Scenario 2

Scenario 1
Communicating for Service
 Challenges 1. INFORMING THE GUESTS
in Managing Information • Since service is intangible, the information that the hospitality organization provides to
help the guests make the intangible tangible is a critical concern of the information
system.
• What information should the organization provide, where, in what format, and in what
quantity, in order to help create the experience that the customer expects.

• E.g.: Formal dinner, the restaurant should organize all the information it provides to the patron
to cue the perception of a formal-dining environment (grooming of employees, ambiance of
the restaurant, tools and utensils, etc)
• The restaurant must manage the many bits of information that the guest tastes, touches, hears,
sees, and smells to be sure that each one contributes to helping that guest define the
intangible elegance of a fine-dining experience in the way that the restaurant wants the guest
to define it.

• Regardless of the hospitality experience being offered, all informational cues in the service setting should be carefully thought out to
communicate what the organization wants to communicate to the guest about the quality and value of the experience.
• If the experience is themed, all cues should support the theme, and none contradict or detract from it.
• The less tangible the service, the more important consistent communication will be.
Communicating for Service
 Challenges 2. ADDING QUALITY AND VALUE THROUGH INFORMATION
in Managing Information • Organizations can use information in many ways to add quality and value to the service
experience.
• Occasionally, information technology becomes so important that it can even transform the
organization itself.
• Information can help employees personalize the service to make each customer, client, or
guest feel special.
• Examples:
• having caller ID to allow the service representative to address
the customer by name when answering the customer’s phone
• RFID (radio frequency information device) on a gaming chip
provides the basis for recording the transaction, it also provides
a wealth of other information that enhances the service
experience for both the organization and the customer

Communicating for Service

 Challenges 3. GETTING INFORMATION WHERE IT NEEDS TO GO
in Managing Information • The challenge for hospitality managers is to gather the data that can inform, organize the
data into information, and distribute that information to people — both customers and
employees—who need it just when they need it.
• Hospitality organizations that are effective in getting information recognize that providing
information is in itself a service to guests, often as important as the primary service itself,
and a necessity for employees.
• Every organization needs a plan that not only protects sensitive information from
unauthorized access but also details other information rules, such as who can say
what to whom when a major disaster strikes, who will talk to the press when a guest
complains publicly, or who is the spokesperson for the organization on key decisions
and policy.
• When information is not managed well, the information that is in the public domain
will confuse and not inform.
• The whole challenge of information systems is to figure out exactly how to provide
only the required information just when and where it is required.

Communicating for Service

Modern PowerPoint Presentation

Graphic
Infographic
Designed
INFORMATION AND
SERVICE PRODUCT
Communicating for Service
 Similarly, sensory information can communicate a message about the guest
experience. The smell of bread baking, fresh flowers, or even antiseptic will
communicate information to guests that can help make an intangible experience
tangible.

With the dramatic growth of the Web and its use by

“TANGIBILIZING” leads guests to favorable judgments about the hospitality guests for making reservations, co-producing
quality and value of the guest experience. Just as a restaurant
experiences, and giving feedback, there is an increasing
hangs their Certificate of Excellence for TRIP Advisor all in the
concern with ensuring that the self-service capabilities of
effort to say to guests, “This experience will definitely be
Web-based services meet customers’ expectations.
good and may be a wow.”

After all, it can be just as frustrating for a guest to

Information about services offered is wait for a Web page to load as it is to wait for the
usually found within the environment phone to be answered or to be served in a restaurant.
There are many aspects of guests’ use of self-service
rather than as part of the service technologies for hospitality organizations to plan for
product itself. and manage.

Communicating for Service

INFORMATION AS PRODUCT: FRESHPOINT INFORMATION AND SERVICE PRODUCT

Giving Employees the Information

• It has moved beyond just supplying ingredients They Need
but managing the inventories of the customers.
• Employees also need relevant, timely, and accurate
Its computerized models are so accurate that information to do their jobs effectively.
FreshPoint frequently knows better than its • When you consider information to be a service
customers what they need, how much, and product, the employee is an internal customer for
when. that product.
• Through the capabilities of its information • For this internal customer, the service provided is
system, FreshPoint is able to become the delivery of the information that the employee
responsible for the freshness and adequacy of needs for making decisions about how to satisfy
fruits and vegetables for its foodservice external customers.
• This information-as-product is provided to the
customers.
internal customer by an employee or information-
gathering unit acting as an internal “service
• FreshPoint predicts demand patterns for them a and uses its decision models to monitor organization.”
called-in or Web orders for accuracy and completeness. When customers call in or log • Providing information is the service product for
onto its online ordering system, they are prompted to order items they typically request, many internal employees/customers, and all
alerted when their orders are not large enough to accommodate a big weekend or large hospitality organizations seek to provide it as
convention, advised when they made a mistake on quantity, and made aware of special effectively and efficiently as possible.
deals and products. With this information in its database, FreshPoint can call and help its
customers avoid a problem before it happens.
Communicating for Service
 Information and the Service Setting
The Environment and the
Service
• The service setting can be a source of information
related to the service itself, and that information must be
efficiently and effectively provided.
• If the tangible product in the guest experience is a
quick-service meal, the patron needs to know how to
get quick service, which quick-service meals are
available, and when the meal is ready.
• The visuals of the setting help to make the service
tangible for potential guest (Signs in the service, menus
are posted in easy-to-find, a picture of what the meal
looks like, customer order number flashed on screen,
attractive graphics on their Web sites.
The Environment AS AN CUSTOMER-PROVIDED
INFOSYSTEM INFORMATION
• In a larger sense, the service environment itself
can be thought of as an information system of • Guests do not need to wait for companies
sorts by the way it is themed and laid out. to provide information to them.
• Not only does the environment provide • There are now many sources of
information on the location of various points of information available to customers to help
interest, but the environment itself becomes part
evaluate a hospitality experience before
of the service and therefore influences the
customer’s perception of the service.
they decide to have it.
• The information embedded in the environment
can enhance or detract from the service
experience.
Communicating for Service
 Really Knowing Your Customers
Many hotels seek to provide more than just a simple clean room, and their information systems are designed Information and
to provide this extra level of guest service. The Wyndham Hotels and Resorts uses data warehousing
applications to allow customers enrolled in its frequent-guest programs to use its Web site to configure rooms
the Delivery System
to their liking.

DELIVERING FRESHNESS
In restaurants, the information system can improve service delivery by including in the database information
about the freshness of the food products used to prepare the meals. Chefs could know how fresh an ingredient
is on the basis of its freshness date.

Information on Service Quality

Acquiring this information, organizing it into a usable form, and disseminating it to managers and service
providers is critical to ensuring that service delivery and other problems are identified and resolved.

Information to the People

The information system can be used to ensure that all the people involved in delivering the service have the information they
need to do their jobs in the best possible way. . Providing the hospitality employee with the information necessary to satisfy
and even wow the guest is an effective way to add value to the guest experience.

Communicating for Service


TECHNOLOGY FOR EXPERTISE
• In many ways, information technology now
allows the hospitality organization to
provide expert skills without paying experts
to provide them.
• A concierge who knows every good
restaurant in town or how to get last-
minute tickets to a sold-out play is a
valuable hotel asset and is generally paid
accordingly.
• On the other hand, if this knowledge is
online, through a guest-room Internet
connection, accessible through a touch-
screen device in the lobby, or even
available through an employee who can
easily find it in a computerized database,
the cost to the guest and the organization
of accessing that information is reduced
while the quality of the information and
the ease of access are increased.
THE FRONT AND THE BACK OF THE HOUSE
• The hospitality service delivery information
system ties together the front of the house
with the back of the house.
• Coordination between those people and
operations serving the guest and those
people and operations serving those who
serve the guest is critical in providing a
seamless experience for the guest.
• The guest does not care that the
communications system between the cook
and the server is faulty.
• The guest cares only about the quality of the
overall restaurant experience, and the
organization is responsible for serving the
ordered food in a timely and appropriate
manner.
• E.G. Point of Sales System (POS)
Information and the Delivery System
THE DAILY COUNT
• Every guest entering the establishment is
counted and added to the total in the
establishment at that time.
• Based upon its extensive attendance database
and knowledge of arrival-rate distributions,
an establishment can accurately predict after
the first hour of operation how many guests
will come into the establishment during the
whole day.
• This can be used to inform the food and
beverage people how much food needs to be
prepared.
• Further, the same data is made available to
human resources managers to ensure that an
appropriate number of employees are
scheduled to handle the total number of
guests.
THE INFORMATION FLOW BETWEEN LEVELS
• This level-to-level flow can be as simple as
an employee newsletter or a routing slip, or
as complicated as an online, real-time, data-
retrieval and decision system.
• Information can also be provided through a
centralized database or intranet made
available through computer connections to all
employees, so they can access the specific
information they need to interpret corporate
policy, identify the dates and places of
training opportunities, or the availability of
alternative jobs.
Communicating for Service
 DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEMS

With computers collecting so much information across so many aspects of the hospitality business, many
companies are finding that they now have vast databases with information on customers and their
behaviors. Data come from centralized reservation, POS, and Mystique-type property management systems.

• Systems that go beyond getting information to the right person at the right time, and actually help improve business decisions, are called decision support systems
• Built into these systems are analytical methods and decision rules that either help a decision maker make a decision or, in some cases, replace the decision maker
altogether.
• An example of a decision system that aids a decision maker would be an automatic warning that signals a manager when an inventory level of a critical product gets
low, a computer icon that flashes on a computer screen to warn a cruise-ship engineer that a piece of equipment is heating up or malfunctioning, or a report that
alerts a manager if a worker has not received mandatory training within a specified amount of time since she was hired.
 problems encountered with
information systems
Bad information Maintaining security

Focusing on numbers Value vs. cost

Information overload Learning the system

Communicating for Service

 THE HOSPITALITY ORGANIZATION
AS AN INFORMATION SYSTEM
• The main purpose of the information network is to provide each person
with whatever information that person needs to serve the customer
when that person needs it
• Looking at the organization in that way, everyone
becomes a transmission point on the organizational
network—gathering, sending, and processing information
into a user-friendly format.
• Those responsible for designing the organization as an information
system must consider how all these network participants are linked
together along with what information each participant needs to
provide to others and what information each participant needs to have
provided by others.

• Reengineering the organization and its information system around the

customer’s needs is a necessity in our present-day competitive
marketplace. Communicating for Service

Integrated Systems
• Retail stores illustrate how organizations can
design their entire physical and recordkeeping
setup around an integrated information system.
• The system has structure and, to gain the full
benefit of the information system and its
database, the organization designs its other
functions to accommodate the requirements of
that structure.
• When all the parts of an organization are
connected via technology, the company collects a
wealth of data over time.
• The best hospitality companies use this integrated
information system philosophy to determine how
well all parts of their service operations are
working, and what can be done to better meet
customer needs, improve efficiency, and
continuously improve their service product.
THE HOSPITALITY ORGANIZATION
AS AN INFORMATION SYSTEM
Implications for Service
• The impact that these communication systems
The Primacy of Information
have on empowering frontline employees to do
• The logic of organizing around the availability and flow of information changes the way in their jobs better, faster, and cheaper is
which jobs are organized and tasks are performed. astonishing and will grow even more so in the
• It may even drive changes in the sequence of operations and the organization of departmental future.
units. • These changes have important implications for
• The organization should be designed in a way that responds to information requirements. middle managers and supervisors in the
• Jobs and departments dealing with uncertain, ever-changing, ambiguous situations require a hospitality organization, who historically were
lot of information to ensure that the managers, employees, and co-producing guests making responsible for transmitting information from
decisions in those units can get all the information they need to create a successful service senior managers to frontline employees.
product. • The impact that these technological trends
• Organizational units facing uncertainty need to add the information capacity that will allow have on organizational design, frontline-
the necessary information to be gathered, or they must find ways to reduce the need for that employee responsibilities, and need for middle
information. managers is profound.
Communicating for Service
Planning the SERVICE
Delivery System
• The service delivery system includes all aspects of
the service experience-service product, service DELIVERING QUALITY SERVICE
setting and service delivery.
• It is the manager's role to think about the whole
process to ensure delivery of service to guests as
well as an efficient system or process to make it
work flawlessly.
• The total quality movement, which emphasizes that The system needs to be checked for problems
everyone is responsible for quality has left the before people are blamed.
following learnings to the leaders, namely:

Everyone is responsible for the quality of the guest experience

Achieving total quality requires consideration of the entire system-

from initial design, to using whatever raw materials and inputs are
needed to the finished product.

PLANNING THE SERVICE DELIVERY SYSTEM

The goal of the hospitality managers is to fail no guest; delight every guest

Study your customer in minute detail Create an accurate early warning measures
for each failure point
Build a service delivery system that will provide
Engage everyone in implementing those
the experience they expect from the
organization measures
Follow up on everything that does not meet
Monitor system closely your guest's expectation.

PLANNING THE SERVICE DELIVERY SYSTEM

DEVELOPING THE SERVICE DELIVERY SYSTEM
Quality Planning - involves identifying customers, determining
their needs, creating a product or service to meet those needs,
and then developing a system to deliver the product or service
Quality control with respect to the hospitality industry means making
sure that the system is delivering the system in the most efficient
way. .Errors are usually prevented or minimized due to quality control.
JOSEPH JURAN, published the Juran trilogy in 1986,
identifying the three management processes that he
thought were required by all organizations to improve-
quality planning, quality control and, quality
improvement.
Retrieved from: https://www.whatissixsigma.net/jurans-quality-trilogy/
Quality improvement involves after-the-fact analysis of the errors and failures that
have contributed to poor quality and improving the delivery process to reduce or
eliminate future errors based on that analysis.
PLANNING THE SERVICE DELIVERY SYSTEM
 PLANNING

3
of
Phases
MONITORING

Service
Delivery ASSESSING/IMPROVING
System
PLANNING THE SERVICE DELIVERY SYSTEM
 Planning Techniques

• Planning techniques focus on constructing or diagramming a thoroughly

detailed step-by-step description of what the service delivery process
involves and the service standards that must be met.
• Planning always starts with the guest and frequently begins with the
moment when the guest becomes aware of the organization’s ability to
satisfy some need.
• Understanding customer’s expectations becomes the first step in planning
for and then providing any guest experience.
• This understanding forms the basis for the beginning of delivery system
planning.
• Detailing the delivery system by diagramming it has several immediate
benefits to managers seeking to fail-safe the delivery of their service.

PLANNING THE SERVICE DELIVERY SYSTEM

 BLUE PRINTING
• The entire service delivery
process and its subprocesses are
described in blueprint format as
if one were building a house and
needed a plan of what went
where.
5 parts
Planning Techniques
1. Physical evidence. The tangible physical parts of the service experience that can impact customer assessment of quality and value.
2. Customer actions. The actions and behaviors of customers, which drive the creation of a blueprint.
3. Onstage/visible contact-employee actions. Things that customer-contact employees do as part of the face-to-face encounter and which customers see.
4. Backstage/nonvisible contact-employee actions. Things that customer-contact employees do out of sight of customers, but which must happen for the
experience to take place; this part of the blueprint also includes nonvisible interaction with customers (e.g., a customer’s telephone call to make a reservation).
5. Support processes. Activities essential to providing the service but carried out by individuals and units that do not have direct contact with the customer (e.g.,
maintaining the company’s information systems, food delivery, managing payroll).
PLANNING THE SERVICE DELIVERY SYSTEM
 Planning Techniques
UNIVERSAL
SERVICE MAP
• a variant (and, typically, more
elaborate version) of a
blueprint that can be generally
applied to a variety of service
situations.
• It begins, appropriately, with
the guest making a reservation.

1. Line of Internal Interactions – all the

things that should happen inside the
organization to produce the service
experience.
2. Line of Visibility – separates activities
that are visible to the customers from
those that they cannot see.
3. Line of Guest Interaction – separates
those things the customer does in
Source: FORD, R., Sturman, M., & heaton, C. (2012). Managing Quality Service in Hospitality. Delmar, cengage learning. New York, usa.
service experience from those that the
service employee does. PLANNING THE SERVICE DELIVERY SYSTEM
 Planning Techniques

FISHBONE
ALNALYSIS

• It provides a way to
concentrate on the problem
areas to avoid or recover from
faulty service outcomes.
• The results of fishbone analysis
are often used to make major
changes in the delivery system.

Source: FORD, R., Sturman, M., & heaton, C. (2012). Managing Quality Service in Hospitality. Delmar, cengage learning. New York, usa.
PLANNING THE SERVICE DELIVERY SYSTEM
 Planning Techniques
PERT/CPM

• It provides to the manager a detailed,

well-organized plan combined with a
control measurement process for
analyzing how well the plan is being
executed.
• The steps in the PERT/CPM process
are (1) identifying the activities that
must be done to complete the
project, (2) determining the sequence
of activities, (3) estimating how long
each activity will take, (4) creating
and diagramming the network of
activities, and (5) finding the critical
path

Source: FORD, R., Sturman, M., & heaton, C. (2012). Managing Quality Service in Hospitality. Delmar, cengage learning. New York, usa.

PLANNING THE SERVICE DELIVERY SYSTEM

TARGETING SPECIFIC PROBLEM AREAS IN SERVICE
DELIVERY SYSTEMS
Quality Teams
Forecasting Demand Training
to Prevent Problems
Cross functional project
and matrix organization
Poka-Yokes
involves inspection of the system for possible failure points
and then finding or developing simple means to prevent, or
immediately detect and correct, mistakes at those points

PLANNING THE SERVICE DELIVERY SYSTEM

 WAITING FOR SERVICE

Waiting is part of the

experience. How will
First is to keep the wait as short as the organization The second is to ensure that the guests
possible by planning for and building manage it to ensure who are waiting have their physiological
the appropriate capacity into the minimal or no and psychological needs and expectations
service facility to minimize the wait for met while they wait. The capacity
the anticipated number of guests
dissatisfaction with decision results from a careful study of
arriving at the anticipated rate. customers/guests will the expected demand pattern.
make or break the
service experience.

2 MAJOR COMPONENTS
(Managing the wait)
 Informing the guests of when the busy and
slack times occur may smooth out demand schedule appointments or offer inducements to
customers to use capacity at nonpeak demand
times.

TIPS in
offering guests inducements to managing the
change their arrival patterns “wait”

Do Nothing
Allow the Line to Form and Then Manage the
Line by Diverting Customers
WAITING FOR SERVICE
 QUEUEING THEORY: MANAGING THE REALITY OF WAIT
The general problem for planners is that adding capacity
costs money, such as by hiring more servers, but reduces the
wait, which improves guest-experience quality, guest
satisfaction, and guest loyalty. Reducing capacity saves
money but increases the wait, which decreases guest-
experience quality, guest satisfaction, and guest loyalty
The typical approach is to sample the arrival and service patterns of guests
and use this information to simulate the distribution that best matches the
reality for the organization’s guests. A restaurant might count all its guests
over a period of time or sample them over a longer period using some
appropriate sampling methodology and let the actual guest patterns represent
the distribution of both arrival and service times.

A typical queueing theory problem facing an organizational planner might be: If

an average of forty cars arrive per hour at a drive-thru window with a single
server, and if the server takes an average of two minutes to fill an order, how
long does the average car spend in line? During an average hour, how many
minutes will the server be working and how many minutes idle? Most
applications of waiting-line theory in the hospitality industry are based on the
idea that people do not arrive in neat patterns
WAITING FOR SERVICE
 CHARACTERISTICS OF WAITING LINES

Arrival Patterns Queue Discipline Time for service

The Numbers of Guests Arriving and the
Manner in Which They Enter the Waiting
Line
How the Arriving Guests Are Served How Long It Does It Take to Serve the
Guests
WAITING FOR SERVICE
LINE TYPES

WAITING FOR SERVICE

MEASURING AND MANAGING SERVICE DELIVERY
TECHNIQUES AND METHODS IN ASSESSING
SERVICE QUALITY
Employee Service
Process strategies include various ways in which
observation guarantees organizations can avoid failing their guests by monitoring
the delivery while it is taking place, while it is in process.
• A means of comparing what is happening against what
is supposed to happen, usually, but not always,
expressed as a measurable service standard.
• Sometimes process strategies are the experience and
training that managers and employees have in
delivering the high-quality service experience that
organizations want their customers to have.
• The idea behind process strategies is to design
monitoring mechanisms into the delivery system to
find and fix failures before they affect the quality of
the guest experience
MBWA Structured guest
interview
Job performance
standards
MEASURING AND MANAGING SERVICE DELIVERY
Thought to
ponder… Being nice to people is just
20% of the customer service.
The important part is
designing systems that
would allow you to do the job
right at the first time.
- Carl Sewel
Thank you!