Service Operations Management

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- Moment of truth for Little Viet Kitchen

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Figure 1: The Service Strategy Triad: Target Market, Service Concept and Service Delivery System Design Choices

Extracted from a research agenda, Figure 1 depicts the operation strategy triad which involves the strategic alignment of three elements: the target market, the service concept and the service delivery system (Roth & Menor, 2003). Those 3 elements all influence the service encounter, or the “moment of truth”. Jan Carlszon, former CEO of Scandinavian Airlines System (SAS) developed the term “moments of truth” (C. & Chase, 1998) as those moments when customers experience the service provided and evaluate their overall satisfaction, re-patronage intention and loyalty.

This section uses the tool “Customer Journey Mapping” to describe the author’s own experience at the establishment. This will capture the series of touch points encountered by the researcher, the moments when she came in contact with the staff – the moments of truth, which contributes ultimately to the customer experience. As Clark et al. (2000), and Johnston and Clark (2001) put it: “The nature of service means that the operation’s process is the customer’s experience”.

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Before eating out in any restaurant, the researcher often checks up the online review on social media and websites, in particular, on TripAdvisor website. Recognizing positive comments outnumbered negative ones, she made up her mind to walk in and have dinner at the restaurant. On arrival, she was warmly greeted by a lovely waitress and seated at a decent table overlooking the street. The restaurant’s layout looked nice, the kitchen and washing area was separated from the dining area with serving area in between. The interior design carry touches of old Hanoi. The kitchen staff were Vietnamese whereas waiting staff are foreigners.

When the researcher settled at the table, the waitress gave her a menu and a bottle of tap water. Having skimmed the menu online, the research still found the onsite menu quite hard to follow with a wide variety of foods and drinks because of its big-sized design. A few minutes later, another waitress came to the table to take the order. The researcher asked for recommendation as she wanted a Vietnamese signature dish. The waitress seemed to be unsure of the menu as well as the food and could not make recommendation.

Despite that fact, a “fragrant pork nem nuong” at $14 and a bowl of “pho bo Sai Gon” at $15 were ordered and brought to the table all at once in 10 minutes, accompanied with no serving instruction. However, the dishes tasted good and looked as similar as the menu description, even though they were westernized in a way since the ingredients are mostly grown and made in Australia. During the meal, the waiting staff was not really looking after the diners since tables are full of patrons at 7 p.m. After all, the service went along way with warm smiles and until the researcher paid the bill and left the establishment.

A second dining experience with the Little Viet Kitchen was to take away and via Deliveroo a food delivery service. The web interference was user-friendly and easy to catch up. Service was quick and on time. The restaurant had established a good partnership with the shipping company in order to deliver its service promise. Nevertheless, some of the plates are unavailable to take away, and the food quality is not as good as a dining-in experience.

Thanks to the quality of the food at good price and acceptable service quality at peak hours, the researcher would like to come back another time with her friends.

- Service failures at Little Viet Kitchen

The service failures at the establishment lie at the authentic food concept. The level of food authenticity could be justified by foreign diners but not by Vietnamese, in this case. It is due to the fact that Vietnamese people would expect an ethnic cuisine, a replica that represents their food at home. One of the comments extracted from TripAdvisor: “Have been a couple of times to Vietnam, and does not compare, but OK for Vietnamese in Australia” (Trip Advisor Australia). As Reynolds (1993) argues:

“Food therefore is one of the last areas of authenticity that is affordable on a regular basis by the tourist. Yet because it cannot be transported, preserved or put in a galley to be revered it is the easiest to copy and degrade” (Reynolds, 1993, p. 49)

In addition, the establishment failed at creating the organisational alignment with the factor “P” – people. Staff seem friendly and eager to help but limited experience and product knowledge showed. Since the organisations depends on employee’s enthusiasm and skills to deliver services, workforce in restaurant industry plays an important role to restaurant organisations. In his research, Brooks indicates that the percentage of customer satisfaction and loyalty that affected by their relationship with the service staff is 40 - 80% (Brooks, 2000)

Last but not least, the matter of consistency in delivering service is taken into consideration. Out of 31 online reviews from 10 June 2016 to 21 January 2017, 14 ratings were “excellent” and 11 ratings were “very good”. On the other hand, “Average” was rated 4 times and “Poor” and “Terrible” were 1 each. There are two comments of the same Vietnamese spring roll dish, one is “dry and boring” and another is “best Vietnamese rolls I’ve ever tasted” .

- Conclusion and recommendation

The Little Viet Kitchen offers a fairly authentic Vietnamese cuisine and excellent facilities and layout, also keeps up with the technology. Its service concept should detail sufficient information to clarify what the organisation is providing and what the customer is receiving. This acts as a guide to operation manager and staff to understand what to deliver and how to deliver it. The restaurant could work on its “authentic food” concept and work in integration with its food ingredients supply chain. It is needed to understand who are the various customers, take a look at its Vietnamese segment market and refine their expectation.

The second recommendation