Customer Service In The Hospitality Industry

In the hospitality industry, excellent customer service is essentially very important. It is not sufficient to attract new customers; a hospitality organization must focus on retaining existing ones by implementing best practice policies regarding customer satisfaction and customer loyalty (Mok, Sparks & Kadampully, 2013). Focusing on creating a superior customer experience goes a long way in improving customer loyalty and impacts positively on the image of a hospitality establishment. Failure to pay attention to attributes that guests consider the most important may result in negative evaluation of a hospitality establishment thus limiting opportunity for repeat patronage which is important for success in this industry (Ford, McNair & Perry, 2009). This paper will highlight the current level of customer service in the hospitality industry, where the industry needs to go and how companies can use the Ritz-Carlton “Gold Standard” customer service model as a resource for best practices on how to implement and sustain superior customer service programs.

According to Gibson (2012), excellent hospitality organizations are those that manage to offer an “above-average” customer service experience to their customers. Such organizations are few. Most organizations in the hospitality industry offer average customer service experience; they offer “good enough” customer service which in most cases is not good enough to win customer loyalty. In this “good enough” category, businesses