| Author: | Tsang, Wing-sze Lancy |
| Title: | Assessing service quality requests by analysing satisfied and dissatisfied service encounters in Hong Kong restaurants : an employee's and customer's prospective |
| Degree: | M.Sc. |
| Year: | 1999 |
| Subject: | Fast food restaurants -- China -- Hong Kong -- Quality control Fast food restaurants -- China -- Hong Kong -- Management Consumer satisfaction -- China -- Hong Kong Hong Kong Polytechnic University -- Dissertations |
| Department: | Multi-disciplinary Studies Department of Hotel and Tourism Management |
| Pages: | ix, 90, [4] leaves : ill. ; 30 cm |
| Language: | English |
| Abstract: | In the restaurant business, managing service quality delivery is a particularly difficult and complex task, because of the need to combine the features of both a product as well as the service. Not only is it necessary to provide a high quality of food or beverages, but it also needs to counter the problems of service delivery through the quality of interaction between staff and customers. Service employees are therefore in an optimal position to gather information about where and how often the organization succeeds or fails to meeting and exceeding the needs of its customers. This research aims at identifying and analysing the critical service encounters, that is, finding out which service encounters deliver or fail to deliver the quality of service intended, what types of failure are most critical and with what frequency does it occur, and which kind of incidents strongly affected customers' perceptions about the restaurant. By using the critical incident technique (CIT) developed by Flanagan (1954), to identity and categorise the customers' opinion about the service encounters from the employees' point of view, managers can develop service quality criteria that reflect the customers' perception of the service quality that they expected. These criteria can also enlighten managers to develop different service quality delivery strategies that delivery failure to customers, by improving taming in service quality delivery because it must be stressed that employee-customer service encounters often by default "develop" during the encounter. A sample population of one hundred and forty-three critical incidents were collected vis-a-vis structured interviews with open-questions, and results were content analysed using NUD*IST version 4.0 software. The data was further coded and then categorised using the model of service delivery encounter designed by Kivela and Inbakaran (1999). The results revealed that the main causes of satisfied and dissatisfied service encounters were: the employees attitude; concern about the customer's needs; core service; communication; and customer's error. From the dissatisfied service encounters, not all customer problems could be solved, and if the problems could not be solved, customers tended to complain. Several implications, such as, employees as a source of customers' data, developing service culture and recovery programs, and training for quality service delivery and customer relations, human resources, encouraging complaints were suggested in recommendations to minimise the service delivery failure to customers. In addition, CIT and the model of service delivery encounter appears to be useful tools in analysing satisfied and dissatisfied service encounters in restaurants. |
| Rights: | All rights reserved |
| Access: | restricted access |
Files in This Item:
| File | Description | Size | Format | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| b14835174.pdf | For All Users (off-campus access for PolyU Staff & Students only) | 3.55 MB | Adobe PDF | View/Open |
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