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Five service attributes can help maintain five-star ratings.
THE BROADMOOR HOTEL and Spa in Colorado Springs, Colo. has a record of 41 consecutive years of five-star ratings from The Mobil Travel Guide. The hotel's facilities and setting certainly help, but according to Perry Goodbar, vice president of marketing for The Broadmoor, "It's the people who truly make this place special. Exceptional service quality begins with exceptional people." So how do you make sure that year in and year out some 1,600 employees maintain the superior service quality required to earn those precious five stars? To examine just how the management of The Broadmoor accomplishes this, we examined their operation through the lens of the RATER model of services marketing developed by A. Parasuraman, Valarie Zeithaml, and Leonard Berry.
The RATER model focuses on five service attributes: reliability, assurance, tangibles, empathy, and responsiveness.
Reliability. Every new Broadmoor employee, before ever encountering a customer, attends a two-and-a-half day orientation session and receives an employee handbook. Making and keeping promises to customers is a central part of this orientation. Employees are trained to always give an estimated time for service, whether it be room service, laundry service, or simply estimating how long it will take to be seated at one of the restaurants. When an employee makes a promise, they keep the promise. On the rare chance that it becomes truly impossible to keep that commitment, the employee goes into "service recovery mode" to satisfy the guest's expectations.
This initial training session also provides the setting for the most important service quality topic to be discussed-guest satisfaction. This includes learning the finest details such as the proper way to greet a guest, proper dress codes, and how to answer questions accurately. Employees are trained to never guess if they don't know the answer to a question. Inaccurate information only frustrates customers. When an employee is unable to answer a question accurately, they immediately contact someone who can. Of course, the two-and-a-half day orientation session won't be sufficient to ensure the fivestar standard of behavior, but it certainly sets the appropriate tone and lets new employees know the organization is serious about service.
At the end of the initial orientation session each new...