Imperial Hotel Case Study - Management Essay Example

The case study is about Imperial Hotel in London. Th hotel is one of the 4-star hotels in London under the management of International chain of hotels in the UK. The hotel provides service to international visitors visiting the west end of London. The Hotel has had positive records since its inception. However, the quality of services in the Hotel has declined. The hotel is facing a number of challenges and the customer satisfactions are low. The purpose of this essay is to discuss measures to address poor customer satisfaction one of the problems facing the Imperial Hotel.

Background of the problem

Most business organization refers the customers as kings because there is always a symbiotic relationship between a business and the customer. It is hard for a business to succeed without the customer neither can the customers live well without the good and services from businesses. In the case of the Imperial hotel, a number of problems are hindering the business satisfying the customers. However, in this case, the focus is on poor quest satisfaction as one of the major problem hindering the success of the hotel. During the research, factors such as poor quality staff, long queues at the reception, slow response to quest complain, overcharging quests, dirty bathrooms, faulty showers, and noisy air conditioners contribute to poor customer satisfaction. The latest report from the monthly customer survey shows that the Imperial hotel has the lowest rate of customer satisfaction. The guest satisfaction survey for company shows that the hotel is underperforming below the 74% companys average (Case study). The present condition of the company threatens its future expansions. Theoretically, the existing customers are good ambassadors to the business when they are fully satisfied. However, for the case of the Imperial hotel, the high levels of customer dissatisfaction are worrying and may taint the image of the hotel forever. However, the management of the Imperial hotel can solve the problem of customer satisfaction if they work on customer feedback. Solving the problems facing customers starts from understanding how the customers perceive the services offered in the organization. It is also crucial for the staff to know well the expectation of the customers (Bansal, & Taylor, 2015).

Discussion of Peter Farnsworth suggestions

Peter Farnsworth suggests that it is prudent to analyze the problem from the perspective of the customer. In this case, Peter Approach is good because when the customer buys from the company and they helps generate income. Often, the problem of poor customer satisfaction hinders the progress of the organization. Besides, customer satisfaction is an important parameter that managers use to measure and improve the performance of the business. According to Orel & Kara, 2014 Customer satisfaction determines the altitude of the organization. For example, when customers are satisfied, they develop loyalty to the organization and therefore develop a repurchasing habit. Most organizations aim at providing quality services to the customer to trigger customer loyalty. For this reason, analyzing the problem from the perspective of the customer is crucial.

It is also prudent to make staff aware of customers expectations as Peter suggested. Its management should make sure the staff seeks for customer feedback to understand the level of customer satisfaction. Customers that rate the services in the organization highly is considered satisfied and with high chances of repurchasing from the company. It is possible that customers rate the services in the organization at a scale of 9 out of 10. Such kinds of customers are likely to develop customer loyalty to the services of the company. Besides, customer satisfaction is important in places where competition for customers is stiff. Few businesses survive in environments where a cutthroat competition is the order of the day. However, there are exceptional businesses that give customers satisfaction a priority and therefore compete favorably with other business organizations. Attaining customer satisfaction requires commitments and the determinations of the organization in question. Customer needs amazing experiences to get satisfied in a competitive environment.

The timely response to customer needs is also the best approach. According to Orel, & Kara, 2014 the customer lifetime value is important to an organization. Customer feel cared for when their issues are sorted by the time. When customers are satisfied, they generate more revenue than the partially satisfied customers do. For this reason, businesses need to give priority to customer satisfaction to collect maximum revenue from the customers. Ennew, Binks, & Chaplin, 2015 found that unhappy clients could easily express their bad experiences to friends and thus taint the image of the company. The management of the company has all the powers to stop the spread of the negative word of mouth by providing quality services to the customers. The spread of negative word of mouth may lead to a loss of multiple customers who get the negative information about the quality of services in the company. The management of the business needs to track the level of satisfaction among the customers to establish whether the customers are happy with the products of the company.

Peter Farnsworth also suggests that training staff to respond to customer complains is essential. In this case, Peters view holds to be true because retaining customer requires skills of personal relations. Bansal, & Taylor, 2015 found that retaining customers is cheaper as compared to acquiring new customers. For decades, successful companies have spent millions of dollars to acquire, nurture and to retain the customers. Retaining customers requires a less significant amount of dollars. For the business to retain customers there is a need to educate customers, promote loyal customers, and respond quickly to customer complaints. It is imperative for business organizations to give priority to the customer satisfaction to retain and attract new customers. It is possible to use loyal customers to bring new customers. It is the duty of the marketers and the business management to establish the easiest way to increase the number of customers.

It is also important to get feedback from customer to know whether the approach for handling their complaints is satisfactory. Often, the customer feedback is the only way of measuring the level of customer satisfaction. According to Martinez & del 2013, for one complaining customer, there are 20 silent but unhappy clients. For his research, it is apparent that the statistic of the silent and the complaining customers can be alarming. Unhappy customers are hard to convince, they either leave the company forever or spread negative word of mouth regarding the nature of services in the business.

Implication of the implementation of Peters suggestions

Theories can explain customer satisfaction from a different perspective. Expectancy-value concept and disconfirmation paradigm best explain customer behavior. The proponents of expectancy-value theory hold that customers are judgmental and use their experience to make future decisions. The customers have a tendency to focus on the attributes of the products, its benefit, and the results of consuming the product for a long time. For this reason, analyzing the problem from customers perspective is helpful because the intention is to attract and retain the customer. It is obvious that a customer tends to consumer products that give a direct benefit and those with long-term customer benefit. Studying the theory is helpful in the modern competitive market. The businesses need to learn the connection between purchases and satisfaction (Orel, & Kara, 2014). The business needs to understand the definition of quality that leads to change the customer perspective. Expectancy-value concept defines quality as the difference between customer perception of the service and their expectations.

Training staff to know customer expectation makes work easier. The proponents of disconfirmation theory hold that customers have developed standards to compare with the new service experience. The service that does not meet the set standards of the customers are sources of disappointments. The theory further educates the businesspersons to dedicate time to understand the customers set standards to avoid losing the customers. The disconfirmation theory is helpful in the case of the Imperial hotel. The problem of poor customer satisfaction witnessed in the Imperial hotel needs attention to restore the loyalty of the old customers. It is a fact that with the new management, there is hope for the restoration of customer satisfaction and the reputation of the facility.

Recommendations

The management of Imperial hotel should embrace quality. Restoring quality services in the imperial hotel is unavoidable if the facility has to compete favorably with other hotels. There is a need for an intensive research to understand the needs of the customers and the shortcomings of the hotel management. The problem of poor customer satisfaction affecting Imperial hotel originates from the management of the facility. There are pieces of evidence from the case study that the management of Imperial hotel lost focus and the goals of the business. One of the indicators of loss of focus is the laxity of management and the staff. An analysis of the case study shows that the staffs are rude to the customers. The role of staff in the Imperial hotel is to serve customers without discrimination to attract new customers and to retain the existing one. However, the reported cases of rudeness in the facility are an indication of lack of motivation to work. The staffs are likely to treat the customers the same way their boss treats them. The analysis of the case study shows that the former management of the Imperial hotel is to blame for the poor customer and staff relationship. The staff shows some signs of demotivation to work. Besides, the management has failed to educate the staff on the importance of customers in the hotel and the need to retain and attract new customers,

The management needs to address the immediate issues causing customer dissatisfaction. For the case study, the rooms in the Imperial hotel are dirty, faulty showers and poorly fitted air conditioners. It is worrying that the former manager could not renovate the facility to suit the needs of the customers. The causes of poor customer satisfaction in Imperial Hotel are straightforward. The customer complaints are important sources of ideas to improve the quality of services. Imperial hotel need to use the customer complaints to improve the quality of services

For example, the long queues when checking in and checking out of the facility discourages the customers from visiting the hotel. Untimely response to customer complaints is a failure of the management. It is easy for the customers to lose hope on seeking services from the facility that the management does not care for their welfares. Customers that feel dissatisfied with the services of the business several times may stop acquiring services from the organization forever. It will be hard for the business to win back the trust of the customers once they give up visiting the business premises (Radojevic, Stanisic, & Stanic, 2015).

The management of Imperial hotel needs to learn from other Hotels on how to handle customers (Jahanshani et al., 2014). Cases of rudeness in the Imperial hotel are sure tickets to the permanent loss of customers. The personal relationship between customers and the staff is important and boosts ratings in the customer satisfaction survey. It is evident from the case study that t...