CUSTOMER SERVICE EXCELLENCE

Customer Service: Case of the Intercontinental Hotels Group



Executive Summary

In the business world, there exists the concept that “the customer is always right”, and therefore, the seller should always be keen to listen to the customer and serve them. Emphasis also placed on developing customer insight, understanding the user's experience and robust measurement of service satisfaction. While companies engage in business transactions to make profits, it is the customer loyalty that motivates them to innovate, and explore new dimensions of the quality provided, in order to maintain their customer base. The Intercontinental Hotels Group serves the differentiated market of business class with all the state-of-the-art facilities, occupying special place among the business classes' favorite destination. However, the company needs to incorporate sound marketing strategies in order to promote itself more significantly.

Customer Service: Case of the Intercontinental Hotels Group

Introduction

Customer Service Excellence is thus, the advantages a company acquires when it provides optimal customer value and superior customer services. There is a proven correlation between customer satisfaction, loyalty and profitable sales performance. Improving the customer's levels of satisfaction will drive repeat purchase at a lower acquisition cost, as they will be fewer prices sensitive, need fewer promotional inducements and will refer their family and friends.

As a Customer Services Manager for the Intercontinental Hotels Group (IHG), our task during the course of this assignment is to investigate the level of service delivered by the Intercontinental Hotels worldwide and the techniques it utilizes in creating an acceptable level of customer value. We will look into the case of the Hotels Group in order to evaluate the company about its customer value creation and see if there are any deviations from the normal, acceptable customer service that is a requirement.

Customer Service Excellence and its Importance

Customer service, especially in the shape of different organizations, is to customers one of the most visible and significant aspects of organizational performance (Williamson, 2003, pp. 10-13). For many organizations however, customer service is one of the most challenging and neglected areas of management, including those with modern facilities and infrastructures. For customers, the quality of customer service determines whether to buy, and particularly whether to remain a customer. The significance of customer service eludes many senior executives, let the methods of establishing and managing customer service standards and quality. Our own experiences as customers demonstrate all the time that many large organizations fail particularly to empower customer-facing and call-centre staff, also fail to design policies and systems to empower customer-facing staff and enable effective customer service. Often these are defensive strategies because staffs are not trusted, and because competition is feared, or because simply the policy-makers and systems-designers are too far removed from customers and their customer service expectations (Vandergeest, Idahosa, Bose, 2007, pp. 3-29).

Customer Service is thus, translated in different ways, as customers perceive in varying levels of customer service in contrasting circumstances. When the customer is valued for his feedback, attended properly, promises and commitments according to standards, then they perceive that the standards ...