Overview

Customer care is nothing new. Top class nineteenth- century hotels and twentieth-century transatlantic liners were quite probably looking after their customers far better than most hotel guests are looked after today. What is new, however, is the 'industrialization' of customer care. As service businesses have become bigger, as more of the customers are dealt with by relatively untrained, perhaps uncommitted staff, frequently young and not particularly well versed in social skills, and as competition becomes more severe, the need arises for a systematic approach to ensuring that the target customers receive the service they expect.

Research by the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST) classified organizations into

• uncommitted Quality Initiatives (QI) not yet started

• drifters QI started 18 36 months ago

• tool pushers QI started 3 5 years ago

• improvers QI started 5 8 years ago

• award winners QI started probably some 10 years ago

• world class QI started probably more than 10 years ago.

  (source: Lascelles and Dale, 1993).

In the very best, the 'world class' organizations, customer care is clearly a responsibility of every single employee from the most junior to the chief executive. In other organizations, however, customer care may be the responsibility of customer service or training departments, with little direct involvement of senior management. Many of the customer care initiatives of hospitality companies tend to fall into the 'tool pusher' category, at best. One indicator is that their quality initiatives, rather than being central to the company's policy,...