Essay: Tourism industry

1.INTRODUCTION

In first chapter, we will present background of research topic, formulate the research question, aim of the thesis and limitation of the study.

1.1 Background

Today, tourism industry is the most valuable industry in the world economy because it has significant impacts on the social and economic development of a region or country (Holjevac Ivanka, 2003). Tourism industry worldwide generated US $ 944 billion sales in 2008 or it was 30% of the world’s exports of services. In 2008, international tourists’ arrivals reached 922 million and World Tourism Organization (WTO) forecasts that approximately 1.6 billion new arrivals of international tourists are expected in 2020 worldwide. Tourism industry is in fourth rank after fuels, chemicals and automotive products among export category. Above facts and figures shows that tourism industry is key industry in world’s economy because it contributes to employment directly and indirectly and thousands of families rely on the income of tourism industry. For small islands or specific regional and local destinations the importance of tourism is more significant where tourism is the key to economic sector (WTO 2009 Publications).

In tourism industry, hotels are one of the most important organizations for providing services. In this respect, quality services depend on employees. According to Sperdin and Peters (2009), customers expect professional services and also want satisfying experiences with good performance in purchasing hotel services because service performance is the core of every service.Hotels industry has more frequency of interaction with customers as compared to other service industries (Hoffman & Chung, 1999).

According to Chen and Yu (2009), service employees are the presenter of the organization and service employees who are knowledgeable and caring can influence the perceptions and thinking of the customers. Moreover they stated that, customer service employees can influence the five dimensions of service quality which are reliability, responsiveness, assurance, empathy and tangibility dimensions. Customer service contains verbal and non verbal behaviors between service provider and customers (Clive Muir, 2008) and effective customer service is achieved through combining these four areas: the services provided by service sector, the customer service employees hired by service companies, the customers served by service companies and the service managers hired by service companies; customer service can be broken if there is any disturbance in one of these four areas (Layman, 2001).

Service employee behavior and actions are more important in a service company among all attributes of service delivery process because service employees are the source of connection between organization and its customers and create long term relationships with customers (Gwinner et al., 1998). Employee behaviors are defined as various consequences of actions carried out within an organization (Hanna et al., 2004).

Ljander (2000: 162-171) pointed out the importance of customer contact employees in hotel industry as they have more interaction with customers. He stressed that managers should give more attention to CSEB like (customer service representatives, waiters, door man, bell men and maids). Therefore, key to competitive advantage in hotels is delivering superior customer services through front line staff (Kattara et al., 2008).

According to Chun Min Kuo (2007), CSEB is very important factor for customer satisfaction and there is a relationship between CSEB and customer satisfaction. Moreover, he stated that CSEB is the key factor of customer satisfaction among nine factors in running successfully hotels. He recommended for getting high degree of customer satisfaction, employees should concentrate customer solving problems with well and quick way, always thinking about the customers’ needs during serving and also offer suitable services during service delivery process.

According to (Anderson et al., 2008), customer satisfaction has effects on market share, profitability, positive word of mouth, and customer retention, they stated that satisfaction level of every customer vary with customer characteristics (age, gender, price). According to Skogland & Siguaw (2004), customer satisfaction includes service quality, product quality, price and location. Moreover, among these dimensions service quality (people factor) which includes tangibility, reliability, responsiveness and empathy is more salient factor for determining customer satisfaction and repeated purchase behavior in service industries.

Customer satisfaction is essential for every service industry to achieve long term objectives because it leads to repeated purchases and positive word of mouth recommendations (Salzar et al., 2004). Moreover, they described that behavioral intentions is one of the most important factor in hotel industry because hotel industry is very sensitive to word of mouth communications. A non satisfied customer tells his/her experience to 9 to 20 persons and obviously this will influence the hotel image in long run. Therefore, behavioral intentions of customer service employee are the basis of customer satisfaction. On other side in hotel services, customers show more satisfaction when service employees interact them with full empowerment and solve customer problems at the spot as described by (Sparks et al., 1997).

Moreover, service employees behaviors show two behaviors negative or positive and these behaviors have relations with overall customer satisfaction (Kattara et al., 2008), and results of this research showed that employees behavior have great effects on the overall customer satisfaction in hotel sector.

Therefore, we will investigate the impact of CSEB (customer service employees’ behavior) on customer satisfaction in hotels of Visby, as it is mentioned earlier that people factor is the most important factor for the customer satisfaction.

1.2 Problem Formulation:

In hotel industry, customer service is the backbone of customer satisfaction. According to Rafaeli (1993), customer service employees are the key players in molding customer experiences as they finally manage the manners in which the service transaction delivered. Employees deliver tangible services in the form of delivering food, helping customer to his room in hotel and also deliver intangible services in the form of making visit again to the hotel. In customer services, CSEB is the key ingredient for the satisfaction of customers in hotel sector. A research conducted by Clive Muir (2008), showed that employees smiling faces have strong impact on customer satisfaction in hotel industry.

For customers, customer service employees are the organizations because they are the effective representatives of the company and customer can easily judge the entire company with their actions and behaviors. For example, a cheerful “Good morning” and “Good evening” with courteous manner and sincere “thank you, and please come again”, have strong effects on customers and desire to return back. Moreover Rafateli (1993) observed that customer contact employees create first impressions, create cognitive frames for service assessment, shape and influence the customer´s assessment of service quality that they receive from service employees. There are two kinds of behaviors during service delivery; positive behaviors and negative behaviors. Positive behaviors include smiling, friendliness and enthusiasm. Negative behaviors include sadness, glare and anger.

Lemmink and Mattson (1998) have developed research about friendly employee’s behavior with customer satisfaction. Their study showed that personal warmth by customer service employees leave positive impacts on customer satisfaction. So it is argued that, CSEB have significant impacts on hotel customers to remain with particular service company.

There is strong relationship between CSEB and customer satisfaction with respect to customer gender, age, nationality, purpose of stay, number of stay and time period of stay. So the authors of this thesis are going to conduct research about influence of customer service employee’s behavior on customer satisfaction and want to know to what extent customer service employee’s behaviors have influence on satisfaction of customers in hotel industry.

For conducting this research, authors have selected region of Visby situated in Gotland. Visby is popular and attractive place for tourists especially in summer season, where tourists not only come from Sweden but many come from other European and Asian countries.

The intention of this research is to investigate the impact of customer service employees’ behavior on customer satisfaction in hotels of Visby. Actually the main reason to conduct this research is that authors are interested to know that to what extent customers are satisfied with the behavioral intentions of customer services like behavior of front line staff, waiters and sweeper in hotels. So, this research will be helpful for hotel managers to motivate employees to behave positively with customers through customer service training and through implementing effective tools about customer satisfaction and their impact on hotel industry.

According to Tsai and Huang (2002), positive behavior of customer service employees have strong influence on customers to return back and pass positive comments to friends. Also employee personality, politeness, friendliness and courtesy are the important factors of customer satisfaction (Kong & Jogaratnam, 2007).

1.3.Research Question:

Following research question had found after formulating the research problem,

“To what extent customer serviceemployees’behaviors have influence on customer satisfaction in hotel industry”.

1.4.Research Purpose:

The main objective to conduct this research work is to find out the influence of customer service employees behaviors on customer satisfaction in hotels of Visby. Authors of this thesis want to know that customers from different regions visited, are they satisfied with service intentions of service employees or not and how much service employees are contributing to satisfy the customers? As stated by (Kattara et al., 2008), positive and negative behaviors of employees have strong influence on customer satisfaction.

1.5.Limitation of the Study:

This research work is restricted to hotels situated in Visby, Gotland. This thesis will conduct research with only customer perspective because as above sated, due to close interaction between customer and customer service employees, service attitudes and behaviors plays a vital role in customer satisfaction and leave effects on customer´s mind.

1.6.Thesis outline:

We have divided our thesis into five chapters. In first chapter, introduction of research topic is presented which consist of background, problem formulation, purpose and limitations of our study. Second chapter will discuss the methodology which includes research strategy, qualitative, quantitative methods and data collection methods. In third chapter, authors will present the literature review and previous work of different authors. Fourth chapter will discuss the results and findings of research work; we will present our findings with the help of primary and secondary data. In the last chapter authors will demonstrate the conclusions and limitations of the research work.

2.Research Methodologies

This chapter will present the research strategy with different research methods. These research methods will be discussed in this research.

2.1.Research Strategy:

Research strategy means general direction for conducting business research. There are several strategies for conducting research. This research involves inductive and deductive methods of reasoning. In inductive methods of reasoning, research is based on specific observations and become specific later, thus observation and finding leads to creation of theory.

Observation/Finding → Theory

In opposite, deductive method of reasoning starts with general idea and become specific later, thus theory leads to observations and findings (Bryman & Bell, 2007).

Theory → Observation/Findings

2.2. Qualitative and Quantitative Methods:

There are different ways for the collection of data; qualitative and quantitative methods. Authors of this thesis have selected both qualitative and quantitative methods for the collection of data.

According to Bryman & Bell (2007), qualitative research usually emphasizes words rather than numbers in the analysis and collection of data in research strategy. Qualitative research method is used to create understanding of attitudes, beliefs, motivation and interpretation of studied problem, collecting and analyzing data that cannot be expressed in numbers.

In contrast, quantitative research methods are based on quantification in the collection and analysis of data. According to Zafar and Rehman (2009), quantitative method is used to find exact answers in the form of Yes or No option and research work is the combination of qualitative and quantitative research methods.

To find the influence of CSEB on customer satisfaction in hotels of Visby, both qualitative and quantitative research methods will be used at the same time. Both methods would give more understanding about our findings.

2.3.Primary and Secondary Data:

There are two different sources for collection of data; primary data and secondary data sources. According to Strömgren (2007), primary data is directly related to study purpose and consist of interviews, surveys from different respondents. On the other hand, secondary data contains theoretical study which includes journals, books, articles and other publications.

Throughout research work, authors had used both primary and secondary data sources. Primary data was collected from different hotels in Visby through distributing questionnaire developed for this research and interviews with hotel managers to know about the importance of service employees in their hotels. Secondary data was collected through websites and books recommended by University for collection of data. For this purpose we have used Library at Gotland University and found different journals, articles through Google scholar, Scrius, Science Direct and Sage Journal.

2.4. Literature review

The literature study is very important aspect during research work because it is used as a tool for providing the better understanding and knowledge of the research topic. Literature study provides better understanding of procedure and research approach, also provides guideline that what future development is possible. In our research work, we had collected and analyzed information through previous literature, scientific journals, articles and books. We had discussed the services, customer services and its attributes, Customer service employees, customer satisfaction, theories and customer satisfaction dimensions, relationship of CSEB with customer satisfaction in hotel industry.

2.5 Research sample:

2.5.1 Sample location:

We have started collect primary data from hotel customers in Visby. We selected five famous hotels among different hotels in Visby and contacted hotel management to get permission for fulfilling our questionnaire from hotel customers. At the start of our survey, some hotels refused us that you are not allowed to fulfill questionnaires from our customers but after describing our research purpose they agreed with us and gave us permission. The interesting thing which we observed during fulfilling our questionnaire from hotel customers; most of the hotel customers showed their deep interest to fulfill questionnaire after looking the research topic.

2.5.2 Sample size:

In our research work, sample size was 100 respondents. We had selected five famous hotels in Visby. At first we had divided our questionnaire randomly in each hotel with total number of 100 questionnaires.

2.6 Questionnaire:

2.6.1Questionnaire Development:

The questionnaire was developed under such idea that could be easy for answering questions from respondents as well as to get the authors intentions. Therefore, we had designed questionnaire for the purpose of our study and we had also designed our questionnaire in Swedish language. The idea behind this strategy was to get participation and get better findings from those respondents who are unable to fill it in English version. The questionnaires were based on customer service employee’s behavior and customer satisfaction with respect to age, gender, number of visits, purpose of visits etc. According to (Parasuraman et al., 1991) for understanding the unique nature of services and quality of services, one well known instrument is used for this purpose, SERVQUAL. We had designed our questionnaire through applying SERVQUAL model. There are 22 statements under 5 dimensions of SERVQUAL which includes tangibles, reliability, assurance, responsiveness and empathy. A detail of SERVQUAL will be discussed in next chapter.

We had divided our questionnaire in three parts. First part includes the demographic characteristics of respondents related to customer stay, age, gender, purpose of stay and number of stay. The second part of the questionnaire includes 22 statements by following 5 dimensions of SERVQUAL related to service employees’ behaviors with customer satisfaction. In this section 5 point likert scale was used with agree, strongly agree, neutral, disagree and strongly disagree options to answer each statement.

The third section includes 5 statements based on SERVQUAL model and were asked from customers to rank the impact of service employees behavior on their satisfaction level. Under third section, two statements were designed to find at what level hotel customers have influence on their satisfaction and want to retain relations in long run with that hotel due to service employees’ behavior. Also under third section of questionnaire, respondents have opportunity to share their experiences about service employees’ behavior on their satisfaction in the form of open ended question.

2.6.2 Survey Duration:

We had distributed our questionnaire in different working days to get better results like in weekends and week days. Actually the main idea behind this strategy was that to analyze the deviation among visitors with respect to age, gender and how many people visited hotels on weekends and on weekdays.

3 Literature Review:

Introduction:

Service industries are constantly seeking different ways for creating and building competitive advantage through their offered services and trying to achieve customer satisfaction and build long term relations with customers. On other side, customers are continuously seeking those companies whose are fulfilling their basic needs, expectations and giving them prestige after purchasing services in a service company.

In this respect, customer service employees are the most important part in hotel industry which is the best way for creating competitive advantage because these personnel are the representative of the company. In hotel industry, customer satisfaction is the most important infrastructure.

According to Loverlock & Wirtz (2007), it is important for every organization to recognize suitable procedures that satisfy the customers. SERVQUAL model has been recognized as an efficient means for measuring service quality of customer service employees and customer satisfaction in service organizations. For this purpose this chapter will present services, customer service features, customer service employees and its importance, customer satisfaction definitions, theories and relationship between customer service employees and customer satisfaction.

3.1 What are services?

Different definitions have been introduced for services. Some definitions for services are as follows:

“The action of serving, helping, or benefiting; conduct tending to the welfare or advantage of another (Loverlock & Wirtz, 2007, p. 14)”.

Services are the “acts, deeds, performances, or efforts” (Rathmell, 1996).

Another definition was presented by Loverlock & Wirtz as follows;

“Services are economic activities that offered by one party to another, most commonly employing time-based performances to bring about desired results in recipients themselves or in objects or other assets for which purchases have responsibility and in exchange for their money, time, and effort, service customers expect to obtain skills, facilities, networks, and systems; but they do not normally take ownership of any of the physical element involved”. (Loverlock & Wirtz, 2007, p. 15).

3.2 Specification of services:

According to Liverlock & Wirtz (2007), following features distinguish services from goods,

3.2.1 Intangibility:

Services are intangible in nature such as processes; internet based transactions, and the attitudes and expertise of service personnel. Customers cannot taste and touch these elements and they are unable to see them.

3.2.2 Difficult to Visualize and understand:

Service described as “mentally intangible”, it means that it is not easy for customers to visualize the experience before purchasing and to understanding what they are getting.

3.2.3 Perish-ability:

Services are perishable and cannot be stored as inventory after purchasing or after using. Actually overall customer´s demand changes frequently and it is not possible for service companies to store these demand through making inventory.

3.3Customer service definition:

Jim Sullivan defines customer service as “the manner in which the customer is treated, a perceived value based on type of product, price, environment, and manner” (Sullivan, 1991, p.16).

Another definition of customer service was presented by Schechter (1994), that “smiling, getting customers, names right and remembering their likes and dislikes”.

According to (Kattara et al., 1999), customer service is not only politeness and helpful attitude but also includes helping customers with no hassle, with no delay in service delivery and be treated in a way that customers want with respectful manner.

3.3.1 Customer Service attributes:

According to (Stamatis, 1996), the acronym COMFORT is the best acronym for presenting the importance of customer service;

COMFORT stands for,

1. Caring
2. Observant
3. Mindful
4. Friendly
5. Obliging
6. Responsible
7. Tactful

It is argued that these are the most basic attributes of customer service and without these basic attributes; a true customer service is not possible. All these attributes depend on interpersonal skills, communication, empowerment, knowledge, sensitively, understanding and some kind of external behavior of service employees.

1.Caring:

Caring shows that service companies must spend time with customers to recognize their real need, wants and expectations. It means care the customers with every aspect and recognize their needs wants and expectations through different ways.

2.Observant:

Service company must be observant; it means when service companies deal with service related items, observations are giving more contribution to satisfy the customers than direct communication of service employees. Customer service employees must be actively listen the customer what the customer is communicating and more important for customer service employees is that, listen actively what the customer is not communicating.

3.Mindful:

Customer service must be mindful. It means that service employees and service organization exist to satisfy the customers. Without the customer´s need, customer service do not have a job and the organization does not have service to provide. If the organization does not recognize urgency, sensitivity, uniqueness, expectations, and influence of the customers, customer service will not be successful in satisfying the customer.

4.Friendly:

Customer service must be friendly. Friendliness in customer service means that providing guidance and information about the related services in a friendly way. Friendliness behavior in customer service encourages customers to tell the right problem openly without any hesitation.

5.Oblige:

Customer service must be obliging and patience is the key word to customer satisfaction. Sometimes customers do not know what they want. Customer services are serving as guinea pig for their decisions. During obliging the customer, it is important for service employees to educate the customers without hesitation.

6.Responsible:

Customer service must be responsible. Customer services must provide relevant information in a clear, concise, and easy to understandable manner. Responsibility shows customer service attention towards customer satisfaction.

7.Tactful:

Customer service must be tactful. During service delivery, there may be many problems between customer service and customers. Customer service must resolve customer problems through appropriate process and productive way to satisfy the customers which can be achieved through tactfulness. Tactfulness means that listen the customer conflicts actively, be patient and exchange ideas through proper way and clear the situation during service encounter.

3.4 Customer Service Employees:

3.4.1 Service employees are crucially important:

The old adage, “people are your most important asset,” is wrong. The right people are your most important asset. (Jim Collins).

Customer satisfaction results from the realization of high levels of value compared to competitors ….Value is created by satisfied, committed, loyal, and productive employees. (James L. Hesket, W. Earl Sasser, Jr., And Leonard L. Schlesinger)

According to Liverlock & Wirtz (2007), in service firms, the most important demanding jobs are front line positions. Employees are expected to be fast and efficient in conducting operational tasks, as well as become courteous and helpful in dealing with customers. In this context, front line employees are the key input to deliver service excellence and become competitive advantage especially in hotel industry.

3.4.2 Service personnel; source of competitive advantage:

From a customer´s perspective, the encounter with service staff is the most important aspect of the service industry. From a firm´s perspective, the service levels and the how service is delivered through front line service personnel is important source for creating competitive advantage. Service employees are important with respect to customer and firm perspective because front line staff is:

Is a core part of the product:

Service employees are the most visible element of the service during delivering service and significantly responsible for quality of service.

Is the service firm:

From the customer’s perspective, a front line employee is the service firm.

Is the brand:

The service which provided by front line employees are the core part of the brand.

3.5 Characteristics of customer service employees:

According to (Liverlock & Wirtz, 2007) following are the important characteristics of customer service employees;

3.5.1 Boundary Spanning:

In every service company, customer service employees are boundary spanning. It means that they link the inside of the service organization to the outside world. In boundary spanning, customer contact employees focus on operational and marketing goals. Service employees perform triple roles, creating service quality, improving productivity, and making sales. This multiplicity of roles in service jobs creates role conflicts among service employees which must be identified by management of the organization to improve their performance.

I.Sources of Conflict:

Service employees have three main causes in role stress: person/role, organization/client, and inter-client conflicts which can affect their performance towards customer satisfaction.

II.Person/Role Conflict:

Service employees have conflicts between their job requirements and their own personality, self perception, and beliefs. For example, service job require smiling with customers even with rude customers and they must show friendly behavior with rude customers. These factors create personal conflicts between service employees and management.

III.Organization/Client Conflict:

Service employees face the dilemma in many cases when they should follow the company´s rules or follow to satisfy the customer demands. This conflict is called two bosses dilemma. This dilemma arises due to exceptions in customer demands as it violates the organizational rules. So in this case customer service employee’s faces conflicting customer needs and requests, as well as organizational rules, procedures and requirements.

IV.Interclient conflict:

This conflict is stressful and unpleasant because it is difficult to satisfy both sides. When service employees trying to satisfy the both sides like customers and organization during service delivery process, inter client conflict creates.

V.Emotional labor:

Emotional labor means that service organization are expecting to show emotions in front of customers. Customer service employees are expected to be cheerful and sincere with customers. Emotional labor occurs when there is a discrepancy between front line staff way of behavior and the emotions that management requires them to show in front of employees. The main aspect in emotional labor is that services firms must know about the ongoing emotional stress among their employees and train employees how to deal with such stress and to cope with pressure arise from customers.

3.6 Customer Satisfaction:

Many service firms are putting a lot of efforts for achieving customer satisfaction. Customer satisfaction should be achieved through firm´s customer service policies. When firm provides intangible services to their customers through customer service employees, how do they know their customers are satisfied with the services? Can a firm measure the customer´s level of satisfaction, and if so, what measures does the firm use?

There are numerous studies showed about the customer satisfaction definition. With this context, following definitions are presented as follows,

A broad and widely accepted definition presented by Oliver in 1997:

“Satisfaction is the consumer´s fulfillment response. It is a judgment that a product or service feature, or the product or service itself, provided (or is providing) a pleasurable level of consumption-related fulfillment, including levels of under-or over fulfillment”. (Oliver, 1997).

In this definition, focus is on consumer rather than a customer. Actually consumer uses a product or service but customer pays for a product or service. So we need to be aware that the concept of customer satisfaction is about consumer satisfaction. And it is also feeling, thought and short term attitude which stays in the consumer mind and satisfaction level could be higher or lower.

Another definition was presented by Liverlock & and Wirtz (2007) in such a way,

“Customer satisfaction is a short term emotional reaction that leads to specific service performance”

Different researches define customer satisfaction in different ways; a list of customer satisfaction is presented as follows;

SOURCE	DEFINITIONAND ITS FOCUS
Oliver 1997	The consumer´s fulfillment response. It is a judgment that a product or service feature, or the product or service itself, provided (or is providing) a pleasurable level of consumption-related fulfillment, including levels of under-over fulfillment (p.13) Oliver´s focus was on product or service.
Mano and Oliver 1993	(Product satisfaction) is an attitude – like post consumption evaluative judgment (Hunt 1997) varying along the hedonic continuum (Oliver 1989; Westbrook and Oliver 1991) (p.454). The main focus was on product.
Fornell 1992	An overall post purchase evaluation (p.11). Main focus was on product.
Oliver and Swan 1989	No conceptual definition. (With a salesperson) a function of fairness, preference, and disconfirmation (pp. 28-29).

3.7 Customer satisfaction theories:

The two well known theoretical theories are presented by (Oliver, 1980) for the examining of customer satisfaction.

3.7.1 Confirmation-disconfirmation theory:

According to confirmation-disconfirmation paradigm, customers measure their satisfaction level through comparing their actual experiences with their previous experiences, expectations, and perception of the product´s performance. Oliver stated that three outcomes of this evaluation are possible:

1. Confirmation occurs when the actual performance meets the standard, which leads to neutral feelings;
2. Positive disconfirmation occurs when the performance is better than the standard and it leads to satisfaction;
3. Negative disconfirmation occurs when the performance is worse than the standard and it leads to dissatisfaction.

3.7.2 Comparison level theory:

This theory stated, for the consideration of satisfaction consumers use comparison levels. The comparison level is “the standard against which a member evaluates the ‘attractiveness’ of the relationship”.

3.8 Dimensions of Customer Satisfaction:

According to Siguaw & Skogland (2004), following are the common dimensions of satisfaction, service quality, product quality, price, and location. Among these dimension of satisfaction, “people factor” (service quality) in terms of tangibility, reliability, responsiveness, assurance, and empathy is the most important factor for determining the overall customer satisfaction in all service industries.

3.8.1 Service Quality:

Service quality is the first step to understand performance of business achievement with the excellence of the delivery of service quality through service employees. According to (Strömgren, 2008), service quality has been identified as one of the most important means for building competitive advantage and it represents that high service quality increases the customer satisfaction which leads to market share and profitability of the service company.

It has been found that service quality is based on multiple dimensions (Parasuramun et al., 1985) and they developed a standardized instrument for measuring the quality of service that is named SERVQUAL. They are defined as reliability, responsiveness, assurance, empathy and tangibles. Reliability describes the accurate and reliable working procedures task for customers served by service employees. Responsiveness describes the willingness to help customers and provide prompt services. Service employees also recover the angry customers through professionalism in case of any service failure. Assurance includes the knowledge and courteously of service employees and their ability to create trust and confidence. It also includes politeness and respect for the customer and effective communication with customer. Empathy describes the caring and individual attention the organization provides its customers. It also includes the effort to understand customer´s needs. Lastly tangibles represent the physical appearance of service employees like their dressing.

3.9 Relationship between CSEB and Customer Satisfaction:

Many studies have tried to examine the relationship of service attitudes of employees with customer satisfaction in hotel industry. (Trumble, 2004, p.1) argued that according to norms of culture, smiling is a “mask exchanged out of politeness”. Researchers found different effects of smiles in business studies. Some are presenting with themes of the summary;

“A Smile Is Really a Simple Thing—An Expression of Welcome, No Cost Involved” (Hendrie,

2005);

“Celebrating With a Smile: Customer Service Week” (Berry, 2007);

“Making Your Customers Smile” (Blank, 2007).

“Avoid the Dark Side of Service With a Smile” (Vey, 2005)

“Smile Is a Learned Behavior” (Verret, 2005).

According to (Kattara et al., 1999) human interaction is salient factor for determining customer satisfaction. When the customers are satisfied, they may be forgiving other problems. Hospitality industry majorly depends on the customers’ responses and the positive customer experiences. In hotel sector, superior services are dependent on employees and employees are the foundation of competitive advantage. They stated that actions of customer service employees are the foundation of service quality and customer satisfaction in hotel sector. Because customer service employees increase hotel image, actual and perceived service quality. They also found that hotel managers should focus on employee development through allocating resources.

(Chun Min Chu, 2007) determined four factors of customer service employee’s behavior in his study with perspective to CSEB and customer satisfaction in hospitality industry:

1. Friendliness
2. Empathic feeling
3. Enthusiastic service
4. Problem solving

He concluded that service companies must give more attention to front line employees with proper training and emotional support which is necessary for them to cope with the increasing demands of customer service.

4.Data Analysis:

In this chapter authors will analysis the data derived from questionnaires. The data will be analyzed in three parts as mentioned earlier questionnaire was developed in three sections based on SERVQUAL model.

Part 1: Respondents profile and their characteristics:

1.1Age, gender and Social Status:

Authors had distributed the questionnaire among different famous hotels in Visby. Regarding the gender distribution from our 100 respondents, we had found 57 percent male respondents while 43 percent were female. We had distributed questionnaire unintentionally to take participation of both gender in this study. Our respondents belonged from different age groups where 40 to 50 years old demonstrated highest parentage (31.9 percent), and the age group between 30 to 40 represented 29.3 percent and then from 20 to 30 years old, 21.2 percent found. From 50 to 60 years old presented 9.6 percent population in hotels of Visby.

Respondents profile is presented in table 1:

Respondents Profiles:

Age Group	Percentage	Gender	Percentage
< 20	0.00	Male	57
20 – 30	21.2	Female	43
30 – 40	29.3
40 – 50	31.9
50 – 60	9.6
60 – more	0.00

1.2 What is your purpose of stay?

This question was included in our questionnaire, what is the main purpose of customers to stay in hotel. There were three options like work, holiday trip and other. Regarding answering this question, the majority of customers (60 percent) showed work purpose as their primary purpose in hotels of Visby. The reason behind huge tendency of businesses tour was due to official meetings, while 19.9 percent customers indicated that they stayed in hotels for holidays trips on weekends and only 5.5 percent showed other purposes.

1.3 How long are you planning to stay in this hotel?

This question was asked from hotel customers about the purpose of their stay time period in hotels that how long usually they stayed in hotels. This question had solved authors’ two main intentions. One was that to know that how frequently people visit Visby hotels and second was that to know what kind of trend exists in Gotland society about staying in hotels. There were four options in this question like one night, two to four nights, five to seven nights or more than a week. Majority of customers (65 percent) were stayed between 2 to 4 nights while 16 percent stayed between 5 to 7 nights, remaining 12 percent stayed only 1 night and 3 percent were planning to stay in hotel for more than a week. Why there was huge tendency towards 2 to 4 nights because most of the customers were stayed for work or business purposes in winter and spring seasons.

1.4 Is this first time you are staying in this hotel?

In this question the authors want to know about staying of hotel customers that is this first time, second or third to stay in particular hotel. Actually the reason behind in this question was that authors want to know about the loyalty of customers towards specific hotel. There were two options YES and NO. Majority of customers (70 percent) indicated that they stayed in hotel more than one time like two or three times to ten times, while only 30 percent marked that it was their first stay in this hotel.

Characteristics of stay are showed in table 2:

Table 2.

Purpose of stay	Percentage	Number of stay	Percentage	Length of stay	percentage
Work	60 %	1 night	10 %	First time	30 %
Holiday trip	35 %	2 – 4 nights	65 %	Other	70 %
Other	5 %	5 – 7 nights	20 %
		More than a week	5 %

Part 2:

Analysis of the Questionnaire based on the five dimensional model of SERVQUAL:

As mentioned earlier that we had designed our questionnaire on the basis of SERVQUAL model instrument and our research purpose is to know what extent service employees’ behavior have influence on customer satisfaction in hotels of Visby. This method was performed 22 statements of service features and used for measuring the impact of customer service employees behaviors (CSEB) on customer satisfaction. We had distributed our questionnaire among 100 respondents in region of Visby, Gotland.

Reliability representing dimensions:

Five statements are designed to measure the impact of service employees’ behavior on customer satisfaction under reliability dimension; following results are presented in table 3:

Table 3:

Statement	Satisfied	Neutral	Dissatisfied
1. When I need help, service employees listen me carefully.	95%	5%	0%
2. Service employees take action of my needs well and quickly.	88%	11%	1%
3. Service employees resolve my complaints with honest behavior.	83%	3%	14%
4. Service employees perform accurate service in first time.	71%	20%	9%
5. Service employees focus on error free services.	59%	9%	32%

Note:

Satisfied includes the rating agree and strongly agree option, Unsatisfied includes therating

dissatisfied and strongly dissatisfied option and Neutral represents that unable to answer.

According to table 3, highest score was recorded (95 percent) in statement 1 where customers are satisfied with this behavior of service employees while lowest score (59 percent) was recorded in statement 5, where huge number of hotel customer (32 percent) were dissatisfied with error free service behavior of service employees and lowest score was 0 percent recorded in statement 1. On the other hand, highest score was taken in reliability dimension that 20 percent were neutral in statement 4. Moreover, only 3 percent represented lowest neutral score in statement 3. Mean average was 79.2 percent in this dimension, authors had analyzed that most of the customers were dissatisfied regarding resolving customer complaints with honest behavior and error free services from service employees.

Responsiveness:

Four statements are designed to measure the impact of service employees’ behavior on customer satisfaction under reliability dimension; results are presented in table 4:

Table 4:

Statement	Satisfied	Neutral	Dissatisfied
6. Service employees call me with my name.	90%	6%	4 %
7. Service employees respond my phones in a helpful tone of voice.	88%	11%	1%
8. Service employees are always ready to resolve my problems.	83%	3%	14%
9. Service employees give me individual and personal attention.	90%	6%	4%

Under responsiveness dimension, satisfied customers represented high score (90 percent) in two statements 6 and 9, where 83 percent was lowest score in the answer of statement 8 that service employees are always ready to resolve customer problems. Regarding dissatisfaction factor, there were 14 percent hotel customers were dissatisfied in statement 8 and lowest was in statement 7 under responsiveness dimension. In statement 7, maximum 11 percent answered in neutral way, however only 3 percent represented in statement 8. The mean average 87.75 percent showed satisfaction level of customers. So facts showed that under responsiveness dimension most of the customers were satisfied with the service employees’ behavior except 14 percent dissatisfied with resolving customer problems.

Assurance:

Four statements are designed to measure the impact of service employees’ behavior on customer satisfaction under assurance dimension; following results are presented in table 5:

Table 5:

Statement	Satisfied	Neutral	Dissatisfied
10. Service employees have the ability to build long term relations.	55%	25%	20%
11. Service employees have complete knowledge to answer my questions about products and services.	70%	5%	25%
12. The behavior of service employees instills confidence in me.	72%	20%	10%
13. Service employees always show polite behavior.	90%	4%	6%

An obvious number of 90% satisfied customers were agreed in the answer of service employees polite behavior statement no.13 however 55 percent of customers in statement 1 showing lowest satisfaction level. A large number of customers (25 percent) were dissatisfied about service employees’ knowledge to answer the question in statement 11 while only 6 percent were dissatisfied in statement 12 showed the lowest score. The statement no. 10 showed a large neutral answer, while 4 percent lowest neutral answered in statement 13. Here mean average was 71.75 percent showed that customers were satisfied with assurance dimension. Moreover, both neutral and dissatisfied mean averages were approximatley similar 13.5 and 15.75 percent respectively.

Empathy:

Four statements are designed to measure the impact of service employees’ behavior on customer satisfaction under empathy dimension; following results are presented in table 6:

TABLE 6

Statement	Satisfied	Neutral	Dissatisfied
14. Service employees greet me with a friendly welcome and big smile.	89%	5%	6%
15. Service employees talk politely with me.	88%	10%	2%
16. Service employees make a good eye contact with me.	83%	17%	0%
17. Service employees listen to me with empathy and respond me in a good manner.	40%	25%	35%
18. Service employees allow me to feel special when I enter in hotel.	50%	30%	20%

According to table 6, there was almost huge tendency showed satisfaction level, 89 percent, 88 percent and 83 percent in statements 14, 15 and 16 respectively. However, 35 percent respondents were dissatisfied for statement 17, followed by only 0 percent in statement 16. Under empathy dimension, large neutral answered 30 percent in the answer of statement 18 and lowest only 5 percent were recorded. The mean average was 70, 17.4, and 12.6 of satisfied, neutral and dissatisfied customers respectively.

Tangibles:

Four statements are designed to measure the impact of service employees’ behavior on customer satisfaction under tangibles dimension, following results are presented in table 7:

TABLE 7

Statements	Satisfied	Neutral	Dissatisfied
19. Service employees have neat and clean appearance.	95%	4%	1%
20. Service employees avoid smoking and chewing gums during the service.	89%	7%	3%
21. Service employees take minimal waiting time during check in procedures.	70%	20%	10%
22. Service employees use positive body language during service.	85%	10%	5%

Under dimension tangibles, most of the customers (95 percent) were satisfied due to service employees neat and clean appearance, many were satisfied in 20 and 22 statement. Respondents almost showed similar results in tangible dimension of dissatisfaction where 10 percent highest and 1 percent lowest. Moreover 20 percent were neutral in statement 21 and 4 percent in lower limit in statement 19. Under tangibility dimension, 84.75 mean average of satisfied customers were calculated which showed huge tendency of satisfaction under this dimension while only 4.25 percent were dissatisfied.

Part 3:

In part three of the questionnaires, according to prioritizing of 5 features of service employees behavior, hotel customers were asked to ranked each service feature from highest priority (rank no. 1) to lowest priority (rank no. 5) on their satisfaction level.

Table 8

Respondents %	Service employees behaviors in hotel
17%	1. Service employees’ ability to perform the promised service accurately.
36%	2. The service employees’ willingness to help and provide timely services.
13%	3. The knowledge and courtesy of the service personnel and their ability to convey trust and confidence.
8%	4. Service employees’ ability of caring, individual attention, friendliness and always greeting with a big smile
26 %	5. The appearance of physical facilities, equipment used by service employees, personnel and communication materials of service personnel.

According to table 8, there were 36 percent hotel customers given first priority to feature 5 that service employees were willing to help them and provided timely services. The second priority was given to feature 5 with score of 26 percent that customers were satisfied with the appearance of physical facilities, equipment, physical appearance and communication of service personnel. The third priority was ranked to feature no one as 17 percent with satisfied with service employees’ ability to perform the promised service accurately. In contrary hotel customers were ranked the feature no three as the fourth priority presented 13 percent. Lastly, fifth priority in hotel customers were ranked the 4rd feature (8 percent) as they were satisfy with the knowledge, courtesy and ability to convey trust and confidence from service employees in hotels of Visby. So the authors had analyzed that customers were more satisfied due to service employees’ responses. During ranked the 5 features of service personnel, authors had observed that few respondents showed their satisfaction due to service personnel caring, individual attention and their greeting during service delivery process.

In second part of section three of the questionnaire, two statements were designed to find what extent hotel customers have strong influence on their overall satisfaction and want to retain relations with that hotel due to service employees’ behavior. The reason behind this question was that to find the behavioral intentions of hotel customers in the form of their satisfaction toward service employees’ behavior in hotels. There were two points in this question. These two points are ranked by numbers from 1 to 5 in the following way strongly agree 5 4 3 2 1 strongly disagree.

In both statements of this question, 80 percent customers had given 5 marks to both statements and 13 percent respondents had given 2 marks to both statements. So the facts and figures showed that service employees in any form like front desk staff, waiters, door man etc have strong influence on their satisfaction and important for building long term relations.

Analysis of the open ended questions:

This was the third part of the authors’ questionnaire. In this question, respondents have opportunity to share their experiences about service employees’ behavior. These questions give us more intention about our findings in Visby. We had merged our two open ended questions in one question.

In first part of the question, most of the customers had shared their experiences about service personnel behavior. We observed that most of customers showed their positive experiences during staying in hotels of Visby but few complaints about service employees’ knowledge and courtesy during delivering services. Some told us that there were deficiency in behavior of friendliness and greetings of service personnel. According to one of the respondents;

“He visited particular hotel of Visby after 1 week regularly, at that timehis visit was 10th time in that hotel. According to that respondent, reason behind to return back in that hotel is the service employees courtesy, timely services, cleanliness and service employees appearance”.

One more interesting experience had observed from one more respondent;

“Sometime Waiters and sweepers are doing same job and their behavior in both jobs is well appreciated according to job roles”.

On the other hand, we observed that some of the hotel customers did not share their experiences regarding their stay in hotel.

In second part of the question, most of the customers had mentioned they should be treated with courteous manner all the time because as other people like be treated in a respectful and faithful manner. Almost 70 t0 75 percent customers focused on three things, timely services, accuracy and authority of service employees. Moreover, they stated that service personnel should have authority to resolve problems at the spot with timely and with accurately manner.

Interview with different hotel managers:

The primary objective of this thesis was to analyze the impact of service employees behavior on the customer satisfaction. So according to the statement, main data was collected from hotel customers. Even we could not ignore the importance of service provider that what kind of trainings and development they are conducting for service employees’ behavior. How they are motivating the service employees to mold their negative behavior into positive behavior during dealing with customers. For this purpose we had sent emails to different hotels in Visby by

using their official websites.

We had presented our objectives about research work and requested them to arrange a meeting with one of their responsible person who could communicate with us. Different hotel management gave us positive responses of our emails. We had meet different hotel mangers and asked them about service employees’ behavior and customer satisfaction. Most of the managers told us that they give more focus on customer feedback and train the service employees in such a way that they should be able to satisfy the customers through creating friendliness environment during service delivery process and ready to cope any service failure.

Previous research and current survey:

Authors of this thesis had tried to build a connection of the current survey with previous research. A number of previous findings support current survey. The results of current survey confirm the findings of (Chun Min Kuo,2008) that service attitudes of service personnel have relationship with customer satisfaction. He showed that four behavioral factors of service personnel (friendliness, empathic feeling, enthusiastic service and problem solving) are the basic attributes of customer satisfaction. Current study is consistent with the findings of (Sparks et., 1997) that empowerment is very salient behavioral feature of service employees for the customer satisfaction. For example (Sparks et., 1997) argued that fully empowered employees produced more customer satisfaction than the other conditions but when they used an accommodating style of communication.

This study also supports the research conducted by (Rafeli, 1993) and (Cliv Muir, 2008) that service employees’ behaviors smiling leave positive impacts on customer satisfaction. Smiling is very challenge for front line staff during service delivery process. Our study also supports the research conducted by (Kattara et., 1999), either service employees behavior are positive or negative have strong impact on customer satisfaction in long run and human factor is critical determinant of customer satisfaction in hotel industry.

Chapter 5:

Discussion and Conclusion:

The objective of this thesis was to investigate that what extent service employees’ behaviors have influence on customer satisfaction in hotels of Visby. After collecting questionnaires from different hotels in Visby, authors had found following conclusions.

Overall, results of the current study illustrated that all employees behavior have strong influence on customer satisfaction. Moreover, authors had traced the service personnel behaviors impact on customer satisfaction. Based on customer profile and characteristics of visit, authors had accomplished that service employees’ behaviors have strong influence on customer satisfaction with respect to customer gender, purpose of visit, number of visits and time period of visit.

After analyzing the data derived from questionnaires, authors had found different facts and realities regarding impact of service personnel on customer satisfaction.

Under reliability dimension authors had found, hotels in Visby are performing best practices regarding the reliability dimensions as they listen their customers’ needs attentively, take actions well and quickly against customer needs and demands, service employees show honest behavior during resolving customer complaints. Overall attitudes of service employees toward delivering services are better except error free services in hotels of Visby. For example service employees made mistakes during billing function.

Authors had found that under responsiveness dimension, there were huge tendency of customer satisfaction due to service employees behavior as compared to other dimensions. It means that hotels in Visby are giving more satisfied results in this dimension and more focusing on customer responses with respect to the name of customer, resolve customer complaints and build long term relations for creating loyalty.

Under assurance dimension, results revealed that large numbers of customers were dissatisfied from service employees’ behavior because they do not have complete and concrete knowledge about products and services. In this context, service personnel need to get complete knowledge about products, services and mold their behavior in such a polite manner. Hotels in Visby need to make improvement this kind of behavioral dimension for service employees.

In empathy, authors had observed that customers showed lowest satisfaction level in contrast to other dimensions of SERVQUAL. As observed that service employees did not listen customers and did not respond their needs on time, also show weak behavior when customers enter in hotel.

Thus management needs to train the service personnel for improving these weak behaviors.

Lastly, tangibles dimension showed that service employees had second highest tendency on customer satisfaction among hotel customers in Visby. It means that the equipments which used by service employees are up to date. In conclusion, authors had confirmed that service employees behaviors have significant effect on customer satisfaction and when customers are satisfied them want to build long term relations which leads to customer loyalty.

Authors view about Service employees’ behavior on customer satisfaction:

After analyzing facts and figures from 100 respondents authors have traced the impact of service employees’ behavior on customer satisfaction in hotels of Visby. The authors of this thesis have identified that service employees behavior either negative or positive have highly correlated with customer satisfaction. According to authors view point, CSEB is very important factor in hospitality industry because hospitality is very sensitive to word of mouth communication. Hotels in any region should adopt the best practices of service behavior among their customer service representatives, waiters, door man, bell main, maids.

Limitations:

After analyzing and studying the behavioral intentions of service employees towards customer satisfaction, authors had found that these findings could be different in other regions in the world. Also observed that these findings are related to hotel service sector and behavioral intentions of customer satisfaction due to service employees’ behavior may be vary in other service sector like mobile phone services, insurance services and banks. Our findings were based on hotel customers in region of Visby, Gotland.