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Sunday, April 10, 2011

The root of most service problems is in the way you treat employees

Recently I came across some research from Cornell School of Hospitality. I suspect it is applicable to all service industries. The research said that most service problems arise from only 5 areas and these are all "employee related" :   

  1. Not defining and communicating issues
  2. Not focusing on training and educating employees
  3. Not defining and improving processes
  4. Not evaluating the results and providing feedback
  5. Not catching people doing something innovative and right and then celebrate it

Explanation  : Mistakes happen because ...
  • what employee should do was never defined.
  • communication - original or changed - never reached the employee. 
  • employees were untrained : they created service problems or missed opportunities to make a good impression.
  • Processes of interaction with customers and colleagues were ill defined or inefficient.
  • lack of evaluation - hence not being aware that the same problem is happening again and again
  • there is a lack of motivation or / and lack of visibility of seeing the effect of one’s actions on others

2 comments:

  1. Would like to know among these 5 factors of service problems what would be weightage for each factor ?

    Above all how much "work load" plays role in service industry. or in other words it affects the above 5 factors?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Interesting. Must think through before reverting.

    ReplyDelete

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