Customer Service

Key to the Success of the Leisure Service Organization

By Joseph J. Bannon,Ph.D.

Producing high quality programs and services benifits every one. It pleases our constituents, improves the organization's services, and allows us to expand and grow.....

The purpose of a leisure service organization is to receive and keep a viable participant base. It is obvious that without participants there is no need for the service. Peter Drucker, the renowned management consultant, states: "the purpose of an enterprise is to create and keep customers/ participants. Organizations should constantly seek to offer better or preferred products or services, through the different combinations of means, places, and processes, so that customers/participants prefer to do business with them."

No enterprise can exist successfully without a clear understanding of what the participant wants. Clear, usable information is essential in tracking participant satisfaction. This information is important in monitoring performance of key marketing assumptions of the leisure organization.

Service is valuable for organizations hard-pressed by competition. The most successful organizations emphasize good-quality service. Give a participant something worthwhile, such as service that treats him or her in a personal, individual, sincerely concerned manner, and that person will gladly return for additional service again and again.

A formal survey of the Homewood/Flossmoor Racquet and Fitness Center found that 72 percent of the members considered "speed of service and atmosphere the staff

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creates" the most important aspect of the club. Value for the money rated third, supporting the idea that club members want service first and are willing to pay for it.

How important is customer service? The Technical Assistance Programs Institute in Washington, D.C., found that one out of every four Americans is upset enough to stop doing business with an organization, and 95 percent of these unhappy individuals will switch their allegiance from an organization rather than complain for their rights.

The Office of Consumer Affairs reports the average enterprise never hears from 96 percent of its unhappy customers, and for every complaint received, 26 other customers also have problems that are not reported. It is further reported that 44 percent to 70 percent of complaining customers will do business with an organization again if the complaint is resolved, with the percentage rising to 95 percent if the complaint is handled promptly.

Service Industry's Low Rating

Why is customer service rated so low in so many surveys? There are several obstacles to customer service that at one time or another affect most organizations.

• The attitude that participants are replaceable. Taking participants for granted is long past. Participants are considered to be valuable assets secured through hard work and high dollar cost. Unfortunately, employees are often relieved when unhappy participants leave. Leisure service organizations should never act as if they have exclusive domain over their participants.

• Managers are not alert or sensitive to customer needs. Managers must continuously respond to changing situations. They must be able to make quick and accurate decisions in a workplace where skills, perceptions, values, and prejudices impact participants' needs. Given many of the human frailties, managers must monitor, train, motivate, evaluate, and retain employees so that they can accommodate and be of assistance to participants.

• Limited financial resources sometimes cause participants relations programs to fail. In many organizations, the financial resources required to meet the participants needs exist, but they are being directed to other areas in the organization. Lack of funding lessens the importance of customer service in the minds of frontline employees.

From 44 percent to 70 percent will do business with an organization again if the complaint is resolved, with the percentage rising to 95 percent if the complaint is handled promptly.

• In many organizations, there is not a strong commitment to customer service. Some provide only "lip service." Unless the hierarchy of the organization gives its full support, the success of customer relations programs will probably be in doubt.

• Customers are oversold or promised unrealistic levels of satisfaction. Forget the person who informs the customers of this false advertising and concentrate on the service involved and the organization making the claim. Leisure service organizations must strive for consistency of service, as well as honesty and accuracy of information to the participants.

• Organizations that are concerned with only the future will not listen to today's participants. Most importantly they must be open to discussion and should not be apprehensive about being proven incorrect.

• Organizations that are inundated with policy, procedures, and red tape create unhappy and dissatisfied participants. Most people do not want to hear why they cannot do something; they want problems solved. Leisure service organizations that provide successful customer service programs focus on the participants and do not let bureaucracy interfere with what is best for those involved in their programs.

Particularly in leisure service organizations, an important priority should be listening to participants and trying to understand what the are saying. According to award-winning author Tom Peters, "listening to customer must become everyone's business. With most competitors moving ever faster, the race will go to those who listen and respond most intently." According to the report "Service America," successful service-focused organizations:

• are obsessive about listening to, understanding, and responding swiftly to changing constituents wants, needs, and expectations;

• create and communicate a well-defined constituent-inspired service strategy;

• develop and maintain constituent-friendly service delivery systems; and

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Ways To Improve Service

Being nice to people is just 20 percent of providing good service. It is important to design systems that allow you to do the job right the first time. All the smiles in the world are not going to help you if your service is not what the participant wants.

Evaluate your participant service programs. Whether the customer service operation is treated as a cost center or a profit center, quantitative performance standards should be set for each element of the service performances.

Be efficient first and nice second. Given the choice, most participants would rather have efficient resolutions ot their problem than a smiling face. Efficiency is not intended to minimize the importance of a smile, however.

Educate your employees. In many organizations, employees view the participant with a problem as an annoyance rather than as a source of information. A well-planned participant relations program is often needed to change such negative attitudes and to convince employees that customers are the ultimate judge of quality but also that their criticism should be respected and acted upon.

Get key participants involved in creating the service they want. Be sure that they see this involvement as a bonus for them.

Limit the number of rules and regulations that affect your participants. For the rules you do have, your employees must be able to explain to the participants how each rule benefits them.

To guide your organization into the next century, you must examine the external environment in which your participants exist. Consider the following: technological changes, transportation and communications, legislation, the consumer movement, political environment, social environment, and economic environment.

Ask participant-based questions. Top both the participant's experiences (what happened to you?) and the participant perception (how do you feel about what happened to you?). The participant's specific personal experience and interpretations enlighten far more than open-ended general questions such as "on a whole, or how was your leisure experience?"

Thank participants when they give you comments and suggestions. Thanking them for their feedback says that you heard what they had to say and value their opinion.

• hire, inspire, and develop constituent-oriented frontline people.

Obtaining Participant Information

There are many techniques that can be used to collect information about our participants. When selecting a technique, it is important to consider costs, resources, time frame, and the organization's capabilities.

Telephone surveys. Phone surveys are an excellent method to use if quickness in obtaining the information is important, the questions are not too intrusive, and the survey is not too long. Training of the interviewer needs to be thorough, so questions are asked in a consistent manner. Efforts must be made to verify the phone numbers with respect to the demographics profile being targeted.

Phone surveys have some limitations such as the amount of time passing since the complaint was made, so that recalling important details of the complaint may be difficult. Telephone surveys have a tendency to be fast paced, and this pace may result in short, inaccurate answers. The validity of the survey can be affected if the interviewers do not follow directions precisely. Often people find telephone surveys intrusive and therefore give a negative response.

Mail surveys. Mail surveys can take longer than phone surveys because respondents can complete the questions at their convenience. Mail surveys allow for the collection of a large amount of information. They also allow the participants to respond anonymously.

However, their response rate is usually much lower than phone surveys. Sometimes the questionnaires get lost in the mail. As with phone surveys, it is important that a random sample of your participants is drawn, which will ensure the accuracy of your answers.

Personal interviews. One of the simplest and best ways to get information from your participants is to ask them personally. This technique

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allows the interviewer to observe firsthand reactions to the questions. While personal interviews are very effective, their primary limitation is that they require a significant number of interviews in order to complete the project within a reasonable length of time.

Focus groups. Focus groups consist of individuals brought together to participate in discussions concerning a series of topics, questions, or services. A moderator directs the questions and discussions and asks probing follow-up questions.

Focus groups are particularly effective in assessing the validity of participant issues. Factors that can affect the validity of focus group feedback are: one person influencing the opinions of the entire group; an ineffective moderator; and not selecting proper focus-group participants. Overall, this method may be the quickest way of getting participants feedback.

Comment cards.

You see them in restaurants and in hotels. These cards can be very useful if well designed and part of an overall comprehensive program. When combined with surveys, the comment cards can provide a continuing profile of participants experience and attitudes.

Frontline contact. Persons who are in daily contact with participants should be given the opportunity to interact with them. This contact provides an excellent forum to get new ideas about improvements and new services and programs.

Measuring Customer Service Effectiveness

Assessing your organization's participant service program is critical to growth and survival, because most organizations are dependent on the success of these efforts. It is important to determine if the customer service program in your organization contributes to your organization's success and if so, how?

An assessment of customer service is helpful in guiding management to allocate resources efficiently to those areas with the greatest opportunity or greatest need. It helps to identify relative strengths and weaknesses by putting them in proper perspective. Many managers expend considerable effort supervising and/or performing many customer service-related tasks. But seldom is such intensity directed toward determining how well these tasks are performed.

Without such an evaluation, an organization may not know why some programs are effective and others are not. A number of market research specialists have been trying to develop measurement systems that will be applicable to service quality and participants satisfaction from focus groups and survey research in a variety of organization. They offer a list of five factors that they contend can be used to assess the effectiveness of a participants service program.

1. Reliability. The ability to provide what was promised, dependably and accurately.

2. Assurance. The knowledge and courtesy of employees and their ability to convey trust and confidence.

3. Empathy. The degree of caring and individual attention provided to participants.

4.Responsiveness. The willingness to help participant solve programs.

5. Tangibles. The physical facilities, equipment, and appearance of personnel. •

Joseph J. Bonnon, Ph.D. is the president of Sagamore Publishing in Champaign, Illinois. Dr. Bannon's most recent book 911 Management: A Comprehensive Guide for Leisure Service Managers is available from Sagamore Publishing, by calling 800.327.5557. Dr. Bonnon is Professor meritus from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign's Deportment of Leisure Studies, where he served as head of the Department from 1973 to 1990 and as a faculty member for 32 years.

This article is excerpted from 911 Management with permission granted from the publisher.

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