Customer Service Management for Tourism and Hospitality

TASK 1

Different components of the CRM Model to build relationships with customers

The term 'CRM' can be defined as the strategy of the business with outcomes that focus on optimising profitability, customer satisfaction and revenue (Horner and Swarbrooke,2016). For this process, it organises around segments of consumers, fosters their behaviour and implements customer-centric processes. In the context of tourism and hospitality, hotel industries adopt the concept of CRM technologies. It enables them to increase customer access, interact with targeted audiences in a more effective manner and interact throughout all channels. The Pig is considered a part of the Homegrown Hotels Group or a collection of various small restaurants and hotels. It believes that a valued customer is the most loyal one, who gives regard after acquiring services. Therefore, the main business strategy of this hotel is based on the campaign, 'A simple word- Thank You from The Pig'. For this purpose, all its marketing strategies are focused on customer-centric. In order to promote this campaign, its managers first analyse the purchasing power and preferences of the targeted audience.

It has been observed that a company mainly develop a CRM model when it wants to expand its business market in other locations. It helps in building strategies through which a firm can improve its services and exceed the satisfaction level of customers. The Pig Hotel is always focused on providing value to its customers and it leads to gain high occupancy rate every year. As it currently wants to launch three more hotels in different cities in the UK, its managers have developed a specific CRM model. It is based on the Gartner Competency Model which includes vision, strategy, valued customer experience, organisational collaboration, technologies and other processes (Torres, Fu and Lehto, 2014). Through this model, managers of The Pig Hotel can develop policies to gain its set goals and objectives.

Components of CRM: There are several different elements of customer relationship management which furnish their contribute to organisational success (Components of CRM, 2018). Each division has its own important role in a specific process. Here explaining the major components in above statements:

Sales force Automation: This is the primary element of CRM that includes demand forecasting, sales process records as well as customer preference. It assists in knowing profit generation opportunities and makes it feasible to obtain timely. Sales analysis and workforce utilization, focus on the overall development of an organisation.

Human Resource Management: Its focal point basically seeks to more effective utilization of all resources and skills of humans. HR managers ensure people match with the given tasks according to their skills and professions. It is essential with every organisation whether they operate on a large or small scale. Companies need to hire effective people to design these strategies for accomplishing further aims and development.

Lead Management: It focuses on sales leads along with product distribution to potential customers in the market. This effective management plays a significant role in sales and marketing business units by providing relevant information (Bowie, Buttle, Brookes and Mariussen, 2016). It includes campaigns, creating customised firms and an e-mail list which helps in capturing maximum sales leads in potential markets.

Customer Service: This function considers gathering customer information about buying behaviour and purchase patterns. In this step, marketing and sales departments need to understand consumers' preferences which will aware of their complaints as well as required needs. It enables quick decisions along with timely solutions that help in raising company standards in the target market.

Marketing: It is the most essential component of CRM, that is directly addressed to promotional activities. Every company adopt this technique to promote their potential product and services in the market. It conducts through several implementing strategic plans to sell products in an effective manner.

Workflow Automation: Managers are concerned with this process to manage cost and effective processes in an organization. This function helps reduce extra expenditures and prevents product material wastage in the production department. Moreover, it supervises worker's efforts by rectifying recurring errors at work station.

Business Reporting: After completing all tasks and projects, employees should give a report of customer care. It provides insight into operational and production-related activities to management (Manhas and Tukamushaba, 2015). Through this report, the company can analyse their position in particular instances so managers can enable further sales forecasting to increase productivity.

It is essential for CRM developers of The Pig Hotels to include all components of the model. It helps in running a business towards success because every component is unique as well as plays an undeniable role in improving processes.

Importance of CRM as a business strategy and the need to look at various fragmented approaches:

CRM is not just an application of technologies, it is considered as a strategy by which a company can understand its customer's preferences. Through this process, corporations can develop strong relationships with their targeted audience and influence them to acquire services. In today's commercial world, hotel industries mainly focus on the importance of retention of existing customers. With this assistance, business expansion is paramount for them. Therefore, CRM helps managers of The Pig Hotels to generate an insight into customer's behaviour. With this technique, they can modify service operations in order to ensure that tourists are served in the best possible manner (Zaitseva, Goncharova and Androsenko, 2016). In addition to this, it is also essential for hotel industries to adopt fragmented CRM approaches. It helps in recognising the value of tourists and capitalises in improving customer relationships. Therefore, it has been analysed that the better a company understand its targeted audience, the more responsive it can be to their needs.

Some major practices within hotel sectors:

The hospitality sector is subjected to extreme competition. However, the objective of these businesses is to provide extreme care and utmost hospitality to their customers. This sector has witnessed a substantial change in its practices. Traditionally, the emphasis of hotels and restaurants was primarily on the physical products and services they had to offer. The current scenario, however, is different. Businesses in these sectors are focusing more on customer's demands and are emphasizing developing strong customer relationships. It is essential for a hotel or restaurant to implement good and ethical practices within the organisation (Tsai and et. al., 2015). This would help the business to satisfy more customers and achieve its business objectives.

Below are some examples of good practices followed in hotels in the UK.

• Face time focus: Social media has been a factor of heavy dependency for people currently. For Example: Hilton Hotel has focused on creating a strong online image through the use of interactive websites and real-time feedback from customers. Moreover, the firm has employed a set of skilled technical staff that keep innovating new methods to connect personally with the customers.
• Staff Happiness: The most important aspect of achieving great customer relationships is keeping the employees who are working in the hotel sector. For instance: Holiday Inn Manchester has done just that. They provide bonuses periodically and keep a daily check on the satisfaction level of the staff. No staff is indulged in the same department for longer than a week or two, and timely rotations help the firm to achieve the employee's maximum input when comes to satisfying customers.

Thus, it is essential to establish good and ethical practices in hospitality to function appropriately and reduce the chances of failure.

TASK 2

Values created by CRM Model

Customer relationship management (CRM) helps corporations to generate insight into the customer's behaviour as well as modify their business operations. This process, it mainly concerned with ensuring that the targeted audience is served in the best manner (Maggon and Chaudhry, 2015). Moreover, it also gives support to businesses in recognising the value of its consumers. In general, customer relationship management can be obtained by:

• Identifying purchasing power, needs and preferences of potential customers.
• Profiling targeted customers to increase sales
• Create changes in operational activities to improve customer service and marketing

In context with The Pig Hotels, includes a long chain of small restaurants and lifestyle hotels. All such hotels are concerned more with informality and authenticity of design, presentation of food and quality of service. To enhance market share and generate high profitability, The Pig Hotels group seeks to establish three more new hotels in the next two years. In this regard, it is necessary for managers to develop CRM strategies. For example: The building blocks of Gartner for CRM help in forming a framework which consists of the most essential elements for successful business expansion (Riley, 2014). It includes- vision, customer experience, organisational collaboration, business strategy, insight, technology, processes and metrics. These eight components are essential for improving the effectiveness as well as the long-term success of CRM programs.  

Gartner CRM Model-

CRM vision: In order to develop a CRM Model for driving a relentless focus on customers, requires broad-level vision and leadership. The vision starts for this purpose with an overall value proposition for customers. In general, it is considered a mix of capabilities of hotel industries that attract customers to acquire specific products or services. Without this vision, customers, employees, suppliers and all other stakeholders of The Pig Hotels will not get a clear understanding of-

• The value proposition of the corporation
• Targeted customers with whom the company wants to develop relationship
• Concept and benefits of CRM for business strategies
• Nature of experience received by customers

CRM strategy: This phase of the CRM model mainly focuses on creating and maintaining a customer base, that considers as most valuable asset of a company. It is totally based on a marketing strategy which provides direction in other operational areas (Ye and et. al., 2014). It includes HR, IT and production strategies, which helps in exploring how customer value is to be delivered. In this regard, such techniques aid The Pig Hotel in building a strong position in the marketplace. Since this hotel mainly focuses on getting customer loyalty to increase profitability. Therefore, its managers have to be woven into CRM strategy into marketing techniques. For this assistance, the strategy of the customer relationship model can be created by:-

• Customer segmentation
• Building customer portfolio
• Auditing the current position of business with respect to loyalty, value and satisfaction level of customers
• Define metrics to monitor the execution process of strategy

Valued Customer Experience: In order to earn the loyalty of customers, it is necessary for The Pig Hotel to anticipate their demands and needs. For this process, its managers have to monitor the expectation level of customers and act on their feedback. This would help them cater to the needs and demands of customers as per their preferences.

Organisational Collaboration: To enhance the customer base and gain their retention, it is necessary for managers of The Pig Hotels to create some changes in the organisational structure. In this regard, by creating modifications in systems and techniques, they can provide better services to customers. As any change in system or techniques directly impacts the working process of employees. Therefore, giving training to each worker helps them understand the way to serve the targeted audience. It also helps in developing collaboration among staff members through which managers can increase the efficiencies of business (Ali and Amin, 2014). Along with this, monitoring the expectations of customers aids managers how in exceeding the same and gain their high satisfaction.

CRM Processes: If functionality processes fail to deliver value of business then customers and other stakeholders may get poor experience. Therefore, CRM demands The Pig Hotels to adopt an effective approach to business processes, for delivering greater customer value. It assists managers in recognising each and every feedback of customers. This would help in determining the experience of customers who avail of its services.

CRM Information: It refers to the main key of CRM which defines the needs, attitudes and behaviours of potential customers. For developing a strategic approach, related to customer information, managers of The Pig Hotels are required to make planning. It includes what type of data they need to gather for desired analytics and operational processes. True CRM demands the support of communication and action-oriented insights. Therefore, it is necessary for this hotel to create an effective communication system which drives customer interaction.

CRM Metrics: To become customer-centric, it is essential for The Pig Hotels to set measurable and specific objectives for CRM. For this assistance, metrics gauge the level of success and provide feedback to customers. This would help in the continuous development of tactics and CRM strategies.

CRM Technology: Customer data, communication and CRM technologies, aid marketers of The Pig Hotels to come close to the targeted audience. It also helps in reducing the inefficiencies of mass marketing and consolidates information related to customer interaction and purchasing behaviour (Van der Wagen and White, 2018). By developing infrastructure related to hardware, software and networking systems, this hotel can develop high interaction and relationships with customers.

Thus, apart from many benefits, CRM technology also creates cohesive and a coherent body of information. It drives the value proposition of The Pig Hotel for targeted customers. Its main benefit is to create development of better relations with existing customers. This would lead to increased sales performance by catering needs of potential customers. It also helps in determining the needs of the targeted audience more appropriately. In addition to this, for cross-selling other unspecified products or services, the CRM concept highlights and suggests ways through which the same can be delivered. This would lead to better marketing of unspecified products by creating modifications.

Benefits of Implementing CRM Strategies

• Improve Sales Performance: The main beneficial point of developing the CRM model is that it provides strategies by which a company can improve and increase its sales productivity (Zhou and et. al., 2014). For this process, by introducing the best technologies and CRM software, The Pig Hotels can make better connections with its customers and maintain relationships with them also.
• Identify new customers: Organisations which deal in the hospitality sector always seek to attract new customers, who are willing to get services at any price. Therefore, it is another benefit of CRM strategies that it helps in reaching new customers. Through this process, The Pig Hotels gain opportunities to gain the attention of the targeted audience and retain them for a longer period.
• Customisation: Through CRM technologies and organisational collaboration, managers of The Pig Hotels can customize its services as per demand of potential customers. For example: Leisure tourists are willing to pay to get high accommodations like transport facilities, Casinos and more. Therefore, customising services according to their demands gives opportunity to The Pig Hotels to exceed their satisfaction as well as get retention.
• Better Customer Support: Through the framework of the Garter CRM model, managers of The Pig Hotels can develop effective strategies. They can gather proper information about preferences and needs of potential customers through which better services can be served to them.

Good Practice in Pig Hotel for Effective Customer Services:

• Fulfilling Expectations: The Pig Hotels mainly focus on reviving their strategies every once in a while according to changes in their customer's preferences. It focuses mainly on increasing customer satisfaction through timely feedback and offering at least one extra service to the customers as thankfulness for their visit (So and et. al., 2016). Such a strategy of satisfying the customers beyond expectations helps the firm to retain its clients and have an impressive customer share.
• Customer Acquaintance: It also aims at personally knowing each customer walking in through their gates. They provide each customer immediate attention throughout their stay and emphasize knowing them personally to make them even more comfortable with the staff and the managers. This has resulted in the hotel developing one of the longest customer relationships.

Conclusion

It has been summarised from this assignment that profitability and growth of business, can only acquired by providing the best services to customers. Today corporations which deal in the hotel and tourism industries, are needed to develop CRM models. It helps them understand the behaviour of customers and techniques by which a firm can cater for their needs as well. CRM strategies help organisations in defining the expectations of customers and their feedback. Through this process, managers of such companies can respond to feedback and opinions of the targeted audience. Along with this, as in the commercial world, retention of existing customers is more important rather than new ones. Therefore, the CRM model gives opportunities to run a business in a better manner. It provides ways such as social media, online sales and others, that aid industries in making interacting with customers and aware them of services.

Here are some of the best Marketing Dissertation Topics for you to base your dissertation on.

References

Books and Journals

• So, K. K. F. and et. al., 2016. The role of customer engagement in building consumer loyalty to tourism brands. Journal of Travel Research. 55(1). pp.64-78.
• Zhou, L. and et. al., 2014. Refreshing hotel satisfaction studies by reconfiguring customer review data. International Journal of Hospitality Management. 38. pp.1-10.
• Van der Wagen, L. and White, L., 2018. Event management: For tourism, cultural, business and sporting events. Cengage AU.
• Ali, F. and Amin, M., 2014. The influence of physical environment on emotions, customer satisfaction and behavioural intentions in Chinese resort hotel industry. Journal for Global Business Advancement. 7(3). pp.249-266.
• Ye, Q. and et. al., 2014. The influence of hotel price on perceived service quality and value in e-tourism: An empirical investigation based on online traveller reviews. Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Research. 38(1). pp.23-39.
• Riley, M., 2014. Human resource management in the hospitality and tourism industry. Routledge.
• Maggon, M. and Chaudhry, H., 2015. Revisiting relationship marketing and customer relationship management in leading tourism and hospitality journals: research trends from 2001 to 2013. Journal of Relationship Marketing. 14(1). pp.53-77.
• Tsai, C. Y. and et. al., 2015. Work environment and atmosphere: The role of organizational support in the creativity performance of tourism and hospitality organizations. International Journal of Hospitality Management. 46. pp.26-35.
• Zaitseva, N. A., Goncharova, I. V. and Androsenko, M. E., 2016. Necessity of changes in the system of hospitality industry and tourism training in terms of import substitution. International Journal of Economics and Financial Issues. 6(1). pp.288-293.
• Bowie, D., Buttle, F., Brookes, M. and Mariussen, A., 2016.Hospitality marketing. Routledge.
• Manhas, P. S. and Tukamushaba, E. K., 2015. Understanding service experience and its impact on brand image in the hospitality sector. International Journal of Hospitality Management. 45. pp.77-87.
• Torres, E. N., Fu, X. and Lehto, X., 2014. Examining key drivers of customer delight in a hotel experience: A cross-cultural perspective. International Journal of Hospitality Management. 36. pp.255-262.
• Horner, S. and Swarbrooke, J., 2016. Consumer behaviour in tourism. Routledge.

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