Republic of the Philippines

CAVITE STATE UNIVERSITY

GENERAL TRIAS CITY CAMPUS
Town Proper, City of General Trias, Cavite, 4107
 (046) 437-0693
cvsugeneraltrias@cvsu.edu.ph

BSHM100: Tourism and Hospitality Quality

Management System

BSHM 100: Tourism and Hospitality Quality Management System

 Chapter II
Customer Satisfaction

Introduction

The most important asset of any organization is its customers. Increasingly, manufacturing and

service organizations are using customer satisfaction as the measure of quality. Customer

satisfaction is reflected in the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award and ISO 9000: 2005.

Total Quality Management (TQM) is an organizational obsession with meeting or exceeding

customer expectations. To attain this level, organizations must continually examine their quality

system to ensure it is responsive to ever-changing customer requirements and expectations.

What is Customer Satisfaction?

BSHM 100: Tourism and Hospitality Quality Management System

 Customer satisfaction is defined as a measurement that determines how happy customers

are with a company’s products, services, and capabilities. Customer satisfaction

information, including surveys and ratings, can help a company determine how to best

improve or changes its products and services.

Who is the Customers?

External and internal customers are two distinct types of customers. External customers can be

defined in many ways, such as the one who uses the product or service, the one who purchases it,

or the one who influences the sale. An external customer exists outside the organization and

generally falls into three categories: current, prospective, and lost customers. Performance must

be continually improved to retain existing customers and gain new ones. An internal customer is

just as important, as each person in a process is considered a customer of the preceding

operation. All processes have outputs and inputs, which are used by internal or external

customers.

BSHM 100: Tourism and Hospitality Quality Management System

TQM is an unwavering focus on customers, both internal and external, with each employee

forming a link in the customer/supplier chain. Successful relationships start with asking their

internal customers three basic questions.

Customer Perception of Quality

The TQM philosophy is based on continuous process improvement, which implies that there is

no acceptable quality level due to customer needs, values, and expectations. Consumer

magazines rate product quality before making a major purchase, and an ASQ survey showed that

product quality was the most important factor, but service ranked above price in importance.

1. Performance

2. Features

3. Service

4. Warranty

5. Price

6. Reputation

Performance

BSHM 100: Tourism and Hospitality Quality Management System

Performance involves “fitness for use”—a phrase that indicates that the product and ser-vice is

ready for the customer’s use at the time of sale. Other considerations are (1)availability, which is

the probability that a product will operate when needed; (2) reliability, which is freedom from

failure over time; and (3) maintainability, which is the ease of keeping the product operable.

Features

Identifiable features or attributes of a product or service are psychological, time-oriented,

contractual, ethical, and technological. Features are secondary characteristics of the product or

service. For example, the primary function of an automobile is transportation, whereas a car

stereo system is a feature of an automobile.

Service

An emphasis on customer service is emerging as a method to give the customer customer-added

value. Customer service is made up of many small things, all geared to changing the customer's

perception. Organizations that emphasize service never stop looking for and finding ways to

serve their customers better.

BSHM 100: Tourism and Hospitality Quality Management System

Warranty

The product warranty represents an organization’s public promise of a quality product backed up

by a guarantee of customer satisfaction. Ideally, it also represents a public commitment to

guarantee a level of service sufficient to satisfy the customer.

Price

In a highly-competitive environment, each customer's concept of value is continually changing.

Ongoing efforts must be made by everyone having contact with customers to identify, verify,

update each customers' perception of value in relation to each product and service.

Reputation

Customer satisfaction is based on the entire experience, not just the product. Customers are

willing to pay a premium for a known or trusted brand name and often become customers for

life. Marketing retention strategy can be achieved through using feedback from information

collecting tools.

Customer Service and Customer Satisfaction

Good service quality leads into customer satisfaction and, therefore, makes the firms more

competitive in the market. High service quality can be achieved by identifying problems in

service and defining measures for service performances and outcomes as well as level of

customer satisfaction.
BSHM 100: Tourism and Hospitality Quality Management System
Role of Leader and Frontline People

Frontline leadership combines the practical skills required to manage frontline workers and the

ability to make proactive decisions that will benefit the overall success of the organization. In

other words, frontline leadership describes the disposition supervisors need to bring the best out

of frontline employees.

Understanding the Kano Model

The Kano Model is a way of assessing the impact of services or product features on customer

satisfaction. The model says that a product or service is about much more than just functionality

it's also about customers' emotions.

BSHM 100: Tourism and Hospitality Quality Management System

all customers who buy a new car expect it to stop when they hit the brakes, but many will be

delighted by its voice activated parking-assist system.

The model represents three major areas of customer satisfaction: explicit requirements,

innovations, and unstated or unspoken requirements. Explicit requirements are easily identified,

expected to be met, and typically performance related. Innovations are often unexpected and

excite and delight the customer. Unspoken requirements are often vague and may not be known

to the customer.

Summary

The Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award criteria and QualitySystem Certification

Standards are important for successful TQM implementation. Quality is defined from customer's

perspective and is determined by performance, service, warranty price and reputation.

Organizations must set up a feedback mechanism to measure customer satisfaction, such as

comment cards, questionnaires, focus group surveys, customer visits, report cards and internet

reviews or comments. Communication across the organization is essential to ensure service

quality, and front line people must be carefully selected and trained. The Kano model is useful in

conceptualizing customer requirements into dissatisfiers, satisfiers and delighters.

BSHM 100: Tourism and Hospitality Quality Management System