Customer Service & Service Quality at Intercontinental Hanoi Westlake’s Club Lounge

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Introduction

Having been known as an extremely dynamic, fun and stimulating industry, hospitality has always become one of the fastest developed industries in the world, giving people many potential job opportunities. From the very beginning of the tourism and hospitality industry in Vietnam, the ability to utilize spoken English fluently of people was usually prioritized for employers. However, as the nature of the industry which always continuously develops and changes, the level of travelers around the world including V.I.P (very important person) has been climbing significantly thesedays, knowledge and practical skills has become one of the most focused factors. Therefore, the requirements of standardization and professional are much higher by key competitors to applicants and also, the term of “Customer Service” and “Service Quality” becomes more familiar than ever.

Welcoming the very first guests from 2007, InterContinental Hanoi Westlake Hotel from InterContinental Hotel Group has become one of the most prestigious and luxury 5-star hotels located on the beautiful West Lake, Hanoi, Vietnam. The hotel was awarded as “Vietnam’s Leading Business Hotel” by World Travel Awards 2014 and “Training and Human Capital Development” by Vietnam HR Awards in 2014.

This research provides readers a detailed look about the nature of customer service applied to InterContinental Club Lounge (or Club Lounge) in InterContinental Hanoi Westlake. Club Lounge was created as an executive private lounge with personal service for those who look for a more relaxing and unique experience. When guests purchase a package for a day, they will have the privilege to access the lounge as a V.I.P and experience all-day service with food and beverage, check-in and check-out or concierge privately and complementarily. The lounge provides the ideal atmosphere for guests to not only conduct with business but also, relax, unwind and enjoy the spectacular panoramic views over the beautiful West Lake.

The aims of this research is to comprehend the nature of customer service and service quality evaluated within Club Lounge. In addition, this analysis is going to discuss the importance of customer satisfaction levels in hospitality industry.

The objectives to obtain the aim mentioned above are:

- Through the review of literature, analysing and comparing the definitions of general and particular terms used within the research, which are available in books, articles and the Internet, to finally conceive the own statements and definitions of the author.

- Applying the theory to the chosen venue which is Club Lounge to test and find if it is effective, practical and usable.

- Assessing the overall level of service quality within the venue through observation and feedbacks from the Internet and concluding the research.

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Review of Literature[pic 7]

Customer Service

In fact, there is not any definition which is completely correct about the term of “Customer Service”. However, the author will provide certain definitions which are published and unpublished and since then making comparison and conceiving of the closest definition.

Many explanations have been offered to define customer service. Zethalm et al. (2007) simply states the term as “the service provided in support of a company’s core product” (pp. 5). This definition is simple to understand but not detailed enough for people to comprehend the importance of customer service, how it works and its influences to companies. Besides, according to Turban et al. (2002), customer service is a series of activities designed to enhance the level of customer satisfaction – that is, the feeling that a product or service has met the customer expectation. Eventually, there are some definitions emphasizing more on the significance of customer relationships and “all customer-provider interactions, other than proactive selling and the core product delivery that facilitate the organization’s relationship with its customers” (pp. 177) of Fisk, Grove and John (2000) is an example.

After revising all the available literatures, from the viewpoint of the author, customer service is defined as one of the most important elements contributing to the stable revenue of a business. It is a manner which is knowledgeable, professional, caring and sympathetic of service providers to either internal or external guests in order to make them feel satisfied, spread the experience to people and desire to return the organization and make use of the service once again.

In other words, customer service helps the organization build the strong relationships with customers, increase the profit to maintain the business in the long-term growth and as the most important reason, differentiate your business from the others.

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Characteristics of Services

Since hospitality became a very unique industry based on its nature, it was divided into four characteristics below:

Characteristic

Description

- Intangibility

Service cannot be seen, smelled, tasted or heard. Besides, service cannot be measured or evaluated before it is really purchased and consumed. Therefore, to make products more imaginable, tangible evidences such as photographs, virtual tour on the websites of hotels or model food in Japanese restaurants.

- Inseparability

Service cannot be delivered without the presence of customers. Hence, it is produced and consumed at the same time, unlike any tangible products which are manufactured in factories and distributed to customers then.

- Heterogeneity

The quality of service depends on service providers. Different levels of service can be created even by the same person, which is the reason why it is called the lack of consistency.

- Perishability

Services cannot be kept and held in the storage. By way of example, the room in a hotel is not sold today, it means the hotel will lose the revenue of the room for that