Question

Case Study for Human Resources. Training and Development.

You are the training director of a hotel chain, Noe Suites. Each Noe Suites hotel has 100 to 150 rooms, a small indoor pool, and a restaurant. Hotels are strategically located near exit ramps of major highways in college towns such as East Lansing, Michigan and Columbus, Ohio. You receive the following e-mail message from the vice-president of operations.

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TO: You, Training Director

FROM: Vice President of Operations, Noe Suites

As you are probably aware, one of the most important aspects of quality service is known as “recovery”—that is, the employee’s ability to respond effectively to customer complaints. There are three possible outcomes to a customer complaint:

1) The customer complains and is satisfied by the response;

2)  The customer complains and is dissatisfied by the response;

3)  The customer does not complain and remains dissatisfied.

Many dissatisfied customers do not complain because they want to avoid confrontation, there is no convenient way to complain, or they do not believe that complaining will do much good.

I have decided that to improve of our level of customer service we need to train out hotel staff in the “recovery” aspect of customer service. My decision is based on the results of recent focus groups we held with customers. One theme that emerged from these focus groups was that we had some weaknesses in the recovery area. For example, last month in one of the restaurants, a waiter dropped the last available piece of blueberry pie on a customer as he was serving her. The waiter did not know how to correct the problem other than offering an apology.

I have decided to hire two well-known consultants in the service industry to discuss recovery and well as provide an overview of different aspects of quality customer service. These consultants have worked in service industries as well as manufacturing industries.

I have scheduled the consults to deliver a presentation in three training sessions. Each session will last three hours. There will be one session for each shift of employees (day, afternoon, and midnight shifts).

The sessions will consist of a presentation and question-and-answer session. The presentation will last one and a half hours and the question-and-answer session approximately 45 minutes. There will be a half-hour break.

My expectations are that following the training, the service staff will be able to successfully recover from service problems.

Because you are an expert on training, I want your feedback on the training session.  Specifically, I am interested in your opinion regarding whether our employees will learn about service recovery from attending this program. Will they be able to recover from service problems in their interactions with customers? What recommendations do you have for improving the program?

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Prepare your answer to the Vice-president, addressing the concerns identified in the last paragraph and presenting your own ideas on how to make the program more effective.

Answer 1

Reply to the e-mail sent by the Vice-President - Operations.

Firstly, thank the Vice-President for identifying the lacunae in our services and taking active steps in improving quality of service recovery. In addition to this, you could recommend following changes to improve the effectiveness of training program:

• Meeting the external consultants and working closely with them to prepare a training program which suits the hotel processes, culture, goals and structure perfectly. i.e. a customised approach to training employees.
• In addition to seminar based training, role play can be used to improve the effectiveness of training.
• An evaluation tests must be conducted. One before the training program and second after the training program. The first evaluation test will enable us to understand the understanding of recovery and related skills of the staff. While, the second evaluation test will help understand the effectiveness of the training program.