curriculum.naf.orgcurriculum.naf.org/packaged/assets/downloads/hospitalit… · Web viewDirections: You will be assigned to one section of Student Resource 12.2, Reading: Cruise

AOHT Delivering Great Customer Service

Lesson 12Customer Service Issues in

Hospitality and Tourism

Student Resources

Resource Description

Student Resource 12.1 Notes: Cruise Customer Service Topics

Student Resource 12.2 Reading: Cruise Customer Service Topics

Student Resource 12.3 Analysis: Comparing Great Customer Service

Student Resource 12.4 Reading: Luxury Cruise Customer Service Case Study

Student Resource 12.5 K-W-L Chart: Customer Feedback 2.0

Student Resource 12.6 Reading: Customer Feedback 2.0

Student Resource 12.7 Organizer: Exploring Online Customer Feedback Sites

Student Resource 12.8 Assignment: Customer Feedback on Client Businesses

Student Resource 12.9 Assignment: Interview/Site Visit Summary

Copyright © 2007–2015 NAF. All rights reserved.

AOHT Delivering Great Customer ServiceLesson 12 Customer Service Issues in Hospitality and Tourism

Student Resource 12.1

Notes: Cruise Customer Service TopicsStudent Names: Date:

Directions: You will be assigned to one section of Student Resource 12.2, Reading: Cruise Customer Service Topics. You need to read your section and fill out the section of the note-taking sheet that relates to your topic. You will use information you get from your classmates to finish the rest of the notes.

Name of Section Food and Beverage

What are two things that are difficult about serving food on a ship?

What kinds of choices are available for food/beverage on a ship?

How does meal service usually work on a ship?

How is waiting tables on a ship different from waiting tables on land?

How do ships accommodate people with special dietary needs?

Name of Section Hotel Services

What does a purser do?

What does a steward do?

Who handles customs and immigration issues?

What other hotel services are offered on board?

How do ships handle medical problems?



Name of Section Cruise Activities

List three types of employees who work under the cruise director’s supervision.

1.

2.

3.

List three examples of scheduled daytime activities that might happen on a ship.

1.

2.

3.

List two examples of nighttime activities that might happen on a ship.

1.

2.

List three examples of “unscheduled” daytime activities that might be offered on a ship.

1.

2.

3.

List three examples of activities that might be offered for teenagers on a ship.

1.

2.

3.

Name of Section Technical and Environmental Issues

List four different types of machinery a ship’s engineer might have to fix.

1.

2.

3.

4.

Besides having trained engineers on board, what else does a ship need to do so that it can handle mechanical problems when it’s at sea?

How did cruise ships dispose of their waste 30 or 40 years ago?

What are the two ways that modern ships dispose of waste?

1.

2.

How do ships ask their passengers to help them be more “earth-friendly”?



Name of Section Internal Customer Service

List two reasons why internal customer service is so important on a cruise ship.

1.

2.

Why does a ship need someone like Carnival’s Family Member Coordinator?

Why is a clear chain of command so important on a ship?

What is one way working on a ship is different from working in a land-based hospitality business?

List two rules that crew members must follow.

1.

2.




Reading: Cruise Customer Service Topics

Food and Beverage On a cruise ship (we’re talking about cruise ships in general, rather than luxury cruise ships), food and beverage service is very complicated. First of all, imagine how much food 3,000 people will eat on a week-long cruise. Every meal and every snack has to be brought on board. When it’s time for dinner, staff has to serve 3,000 dinners in a very short period of time. And on a ship, there’s a limited amount of space. If a ship wants to have multiple swimming pools, a water slide, a spa, and room for 2,000 guests, that doesn’t leave much space for the kitchen!

But that doesn’t mean that guests eat small or boring meals on a cruise ship. On a modern ship, you might have a choice of three soups, two salads, a pasta dish, seven entrées, a cheese course, and six different types of dessert! Cruise ships have to be very careful about what food they serve—there isn’t enough space for leftovers and they need the space for the fresh food—especially things like fruit that can spoil if not stored properly.

Food service on a cruise ship has another important difference: the staff serves the same people every day. A talented and experienced cruise ship waiter learns to pay attention to his guests’ preferences—who likes apple juice for breakfast instead of orange juice or who takes cream in their coffee. It’s not unusual for a good cruise ship waiter to earn $3,000 a month in tips alone!

On a typical cruise ship, you will have assigned meal times and even assigned seats in the main dining room. These dining rooms have “theme nights,” where the food, the music, and even how the guests dress are based on a theme, and they may have formal dining rooms where you are expected to dress up. Most ships will also offer a casual dining option or options. As people’s food expectations have changed, ship menus have changed as well. Nowadays, many ships offer vegetarian entrées and meals prepared for people with special dietary needs, such as people with heart conditions or diabetes.

Hotel ServicesThe purser has a job that doesn’t exist in a hotel. The purser is a combination of a hotel front desk clerk and an accountant. The purser’s primary responsibility is managing money for the customers and crew— in some cases, the purser may handle more than $500,000 each week. Some ships are moving to the use of credit to allow guests to pay for things without using cash; in that case, the purser handles tracking the customers’ credit transactions. The purser, like a hotel’s front desk clerk, also often answers guest questions and solves problems. If you want to upgrade your cabin, find that jacket you left in the dining room, or ask how to get to the hotel spa, you would probably visit the purser’s desk. The purser also handles customs and immigration issues, so if you go shopping in a foreign port, the purser will help you figure out what things you can or can’t bring back to the United States.

On a ship, the stewards supervise cleaning the cabins (guest rooms) and interior public areas, delivering food to cabins (if the ship offers in-cabin dining), laundry services, and transporting luggage. Stewards are sort of a cross between a hotel’s housekeeping staff and their bell-people. Imagine a ship with 4,000 passengers—that might mean 12,000 pieces of luggage to handle, and everyone wants to get on and off the ship at approximately the same time! Other hotel services provided on board may include a casino, a group of photographers, a beauty salon, and gift shops. In some cases, outside companies may provide these services, but in other cases, these services are supplied by the ship’s crew.

A ship has to be prepared for medical problems, which can happen when they are in port or at sea. The ship has a doctor and a medical clinic or infirmary. Typically, medical problems include sunburn, seasickness, or the flu, but more serious problems can occur, especially if the ship has a lot of older



passengers. Some ships have more elaborate equipment like X-ray machines and are even prepared to perform some operations, like appendectomies (removal of the appendix), onboard. Other ships have plans to evacuate ill passengers to the nearest hospital. You may have seen reports on the news about “flu-like” illnesses on cruise ships. Because a ship is a confined location (you are around the same people for multiple days), diseases can spread fairly quickly onboard. However, most of these diseases are usually not serious.

Cruise ActivitiesEvery ship has a cruise director, who supervises a team of entertainers, musicians, shore excursion leaders, youth activity directors, newsletter editors and, on some ships, a print shop and a television crew. There can be 50–70 people working in the cruise activities department of a large vessel.

If you take a cruise, each night you will receive a copy of the ship’s daily schedule in your cabin. This daily schedule tells you what activities will be offered tomorrow, either onboard the ship or on land if the ship will be in a port. These activities may include tours of local sights and attractions on land, lectures, dance lessons, bingo games, tours of parts of the ship, and activities for special target populations, such as retired people or teenagers. At night there may be theme parties, musical extravaganzas (some ships even bring in scaled-down versions of Broadway musicals), DJs, comedians, dances, and more.

Ships also offer “unscheduled” activities including several pools, water slides, a wave pool where people can surf, a rock-climbing wall, and an ice-skating rink. Most ships nowadays offer a gym and a spa as well.

Activities for kids are very important. Parents like the idea that their kids can be occupied and hang out with other kids while they get a chance to relax. Today, most ships offer an age-based program that offers different activities depending on your age. On a Carnival cruise ship, they offer Club 02, which is designed specifically for people ages 15–17. Club 02 has its own lounge on board and offers specific activities including basketball, volleyball, pool parties, teens-only short excursions, karaoke parties, and special teen-oriented entertainment (DJs and other entertainers) performing in the lounge at night.

Technical and Environmental IssuesA ship has lots of machinery: in addition to the ship’s engines, there is a heating plant, an air conditioning plant, a desalinization plant that removes salt from sea water, a sewage disposal plant, plumbing for all the rooms, electrical systems for all the rooms, fire and safety systems, closed-circuit TV, telephones, computers, refrigerators, cooking equipment, and more! A ship may have more than 30 engineers onboard to solve problems—anything from a broken TV set in a customer’s room to a malfunctioning generator that causes the ship to lose electricity. The ship also carries 11,000 different spare parts—everything from light bulbs to a spare heater for the sauna. Because when you’re out at sea and somebody’s toilet gets stopped up, you can’t call Roto-Rooter!

Disposing of trash is another issue. Thirty or 40 years ago, ships just dumped their waste (garbage and “sewage” water from toilets) into the ocean. But as people all over the world have become more aware of the ways we can damage our planet, cruise ships, like all other hospitality businesses, have had to find ways to “go green.” On a new cruise ship today, more than $10 million may go towards paying for the waste disposal facilities, which may be more than three stories tall and require a crew of 10 or more people just to operate them. These systems treat every type of waste on a ship in one of two ways: either they process the waste until it is safe to release into the ocean (because it is biodegradable and non-poisonous) or they compact and store the waste until they reach a large port where they off-load the waste and send it to a landfill. Ships also work hard at educating their passengers and their crew about how to handle waste and why it’s a bad idea to throw things overboard. They show educational films about polluting the ocean, use biodegradable packing for their toiletries (cardboard instead of plastic bottles), and even offer recycling bins so that guests can help them keep the planet a little healthier.



Of course, many cruise lines continue to cause major damage to the environment by dumping their waste and engaging in other harmful activities. You can find out which cruise lines follow sound environmental practices and which ones don’t by visiting this site, which summarizes information so that consumers can pick cruise lines with good environmental report cards: http://www.foe.org/cruise-report-card.

Internal Customer ServiceInternal customer service is a big deal on a cruise ship. Why? Because the employees not only have to work together—they live together, too! Cruise ship employees share rooms and work long hours without much time off. If you work on a ship, you might work 10 hours a day, seven days a week, and not get a break until your ship gets back into its home port. Cruise ship crews come from all over the world, so many of the cultural communication issues we have talked about become really important on a cruise ship. It can be stressful for some people because they have to leave their families and loved ones behind, but many people form strong friendships or even find a spouse onboard their ship.

Carnival cruise ships actually have a Carnival Family Member Coordinator—a person whose entire job is taking care of the employees. This person is there to talk to the employees when they get lonely, to make sure they don’t do something stupid when they go ashore in a foreign country, or to give them advice if they’re having a hard time adjusting to life onboard the ship. A land-based business like a hotel doesn’t have a position like that because the hotel employees have their own separate lives and separate homes. But on a cruise ship, the employees are colleagues and roommates, all in one.

Another important difference in internal customer service on a ship is the need for strict discipline. A ship has to have a clear chain of command. If you work in a hotel, you can ignore something your boss asks you to do. It isn’t a good way to advance your career, but you can do it. On the other hand, if you ignore an order from the captain of the boat, you may be endangering your life and the lives of everyone on board. So it’s very important that the crew listens to the captain and follows the rules.

Rules on a boat are strict, too. Crew members on a boat are not supposed to drink, use drugs, gamble, swear, get in fights, or socialize with the guests. Most land-based businesses have similar rules, but if you work at a business like that, you only have to follow their rules when you’re working—typically, eight hours a day. On board a boat, you will be following these rules 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The rules also require crew members to participate in drills for basic safety procedures, such as fighting a fire or evacuating a sinking boat, so that they can protect themselves and the passengers.


http://www.foe.org/cruise-report-card



Analysis: Comparing Great Customer ServiceStudent Name:_______________________________________________________ Date:___________

Directions: After you have read or viewed the luxury cruise customer service case study, use the questions below to compare the cruise ship’s approach to customer service to that of Manny’s Pizza Parlor, which you read about in Lesson 10. Model your answers according to the example below.

Questions Spirit of the Seas Luxury Cruise Manny’s Pizza Parlor

Example: What is one element each business identifies as being key to its success? Do you see any similarities?

The cruise wants to take really good care of its employees and its guests. It’s similar to Manny’s, because Manny also takes good care of his employees to show that he values internal customer service.

Manny wants to treat his employees well because he believes they will then treat the guests well. It’s similar to the cruise, because they want to give really good service to the crew AND the guests.

Customer satisfaction = meeting or exceeding expectations. Name two examples of how customer expectations are met or exceeded at this company.

Give one example of how customer service at this company is different from the service you’d get on a typical cruise or at a typical pizza parlor.

Internal customer service is a key element of the superb external customer service that both of these companies provide. What is one thing each of these companies does to promote great internal customer service?

How does the cruise staff respond to customer feedback? Do you think Manny’s staff responds in the same way? Why or why not? (HINT: You were not told directly how Manny’s handles customer feedback, so you need to infer based on what you read.)




Reading: Luxury Cruise Customer Service Case Study

Today we are going to look at a case study that examines customer service on a luxury cruise ship. Pay attention to three important things:

• What customer service is like on this ship

• Why this company thinks customer service is so important

• How this company uses customer feedback



The Spirit of the Seas is one of a small number of ships run by Poseidon Cruises, Inc. Poseidon has been repeatedly voted the best luxury cruise line in the world. This company makes a big effort to create a unique, one-of-a-kind experience for its guests. How does it do that?

#1: Its boats, like the Spirit of the Seas, are big enough to hold 500 people, but they only take 250 guests on board. A typical cruise ship may hold 2,500 guests!

#2: Every cabin is a suite. That means it isn’t just a room for sleeping; the cabin has a bedroom, a living room area, a full bathroom, a little kitchen area, and a balcony with a view of the ocean. The size of the cabins can be anywhere from 300 to 600 square feet. A typical cruise ship has a limited number of suites; they are the most expensive, so most people won’t book one. A regular cruise ship cabin might be 150 square feet, while a typical cruise ship suite might be 250 square feet. So the smallest cabin on the Spirit of the Seas is larger than a suite on a regular cruise ship!

#3: Common destinations for cruise ships include the Bahamas, the Caribbean, Hawaii, and Alaska. The Spirit of the Seas sails to more unusual or exotic places, and because the boat is smaller, it can sail to smaller ports or in shallower waters.

#4: It charges a lot! Sailing on the Spirit of the Seas will cost you $1,000 a day, compared to $150 a day on a traditional cruise ship.



People’s expectations of customer service depend on how much they are paying. That’s true of hospitality businesses on land as well as cruise ships. If you’re eating at Burger King, you don’t expect waiters to bring you your meal, candle light, and cloth napkins. You’re not paying for that experience. On the other hand, imagine you’ve saved up to have a really nice dinner before prom. If you’re spending $50 or $100 per person, you’d be pretty disappointed if they handed you some fast-food burgers in a paper bag and expected you to eat in your car.

High prices are also usually connected to good service because it is expensive to provide really good service. It usually requires more staff, which means more paychecks to pay. So if the Spirit of the Seas charges people $1,000 a day to sail, it can afford to hire more crew members to make sure its guests have a really amazing experience. There is one crew member for every two guests (compared to one crew member for every four on a typical cruise line).

But good service isn’t enough. People who can afford to sail on the Spirit of the Seas can afford to go elsewhere. So the company has made it its mission to offer the most outstanding, memorable, personalized service it can. The company’s vice president says, “That’s what makes us stand out. Our service is what people talk about—why people who have cruised with us decide to take another cruise, or why they tell their friends. Our service is the secret of our success.”



Remember the “rules” of customer service?

#1: Treat others the way they want to be treated.

#2: Make a good first impression.

#3: You need good skills AND a good attitude.

These extra touches connect to the first three rules. If you can have your favorite snacks whenever you want and get a neck massage whenever you want, that is a perfect example of treating a guest the way the guest wants to be treated. If the customers observe a crew member walking around offering massages or gets a phone call before their trip asking about the type of snacks they want, the customer perceives that the crew is trying to take good care of them. And if a guest walks on the boat and is greeted by a glass of champagne, that makes a good first impression.

Also, think about the connection between what guests are paying and the type of service they get. These special touches are expensive. They pay crew members just to give head and neck massages—not to steer the boat or clean the cabins, but just to give massages. They pay their employees to call each guest in advance and find out what their favorite snacks are; then they buy those snacks and offer them free of charge. They give every guest a glass of champagne when they arrive, and offer free drinks throughout the trip.



You may notice that these beliefs sound a lot like what we’ve been talking about in this course. Taking care of internal customers means having good internal customer service, and exceeding a guest’s expectations means treating the guest even better than he expects to be treated—in other words, going beyond the Platinum Rule!



The plan includes the following statements:

• Any crew member who receives a complaint “owns” it. That means if a guest complains to you, you are responsible for getting it fixed. If you can’t fix it yourself, you need to make arrangements to have someone else fix it and follow up with them and with the guest until you are sure the problem is solved and the guest is satisfied.

• Always remember the importance of teamwork and service to your co-workers.

• Communicate guest problems to colleagues and supervisors.

• Take responsibility for your own behavior.

• Don’t be afraid to make a mistake as long as your efforts are a sincere attempt to do your job to the best of your ability.



The meeting follows a specific agenda. First, the head chef or head waiter reads aloud any negative comments. For example, maybe one guest said the breakfast muffins were a little dry, or another guest thought the service was slow at dinner time. When each comment is read aloud, the rest of the staff is allowed to comment on it. They aren’t supposed to argue with the comment, but evaluate it. For example, if the chef was trying a new muffin recipe and guests complained about it, the chef might make a note not to use that recipe in the future. If the guests thought the service was slow, the waiters might discuss how to adjust the staffing so they have more people to serve during peak dinner hours. The meeting focuses on “How do we solve this problem?” rather than “Whose fault is this problem?” or “What’s wrong with this guest?”

For example, one guest complained that he couldn’t order a meal from room service when he was sitting at the pool—he had to go to his room to order it. The head waiter acknowledged that the ship doesn’t have enough waiters to serve room service at the pool. “But if you’re spending $10,000–$15,000 on a cruise, that’s not a good answer,” he told the meeting. “So what do we do?” Some of the other waiters made suggestions. After a short discussion, they were able to solve the problem. They still didn’t offer their entire room service menu at the pool, but they were able to offer a limited menu for people who wanted to eat poolside. That way they could still serve the guests without overwhelming their staff or cutting down on their dining room service.



Why is the company so successful? The company president lists three reasons:

#1: Our guests aren’t buying a cabin on a ship—they’re buying an experience. The more personal the experience is, and the more unique it is, the more the customer is willing to pay for it. Even though it’s expensive, our customers rate our cruise as a great “value”—because they believe you get what you pay for. They pay a lot, and they get a lot.

#2: We treat our employees the way we want to be treated. Our managers have to accept that and understand how to manage and coach employees in a respectful way—or we don’t hire them.

#3: We involve our employees in shaping our product, so they share in the “pride of ownership.” We give our employees feedback and we review our own feedback on a constant basis so everyone knows how they are doing. We try to find a way to connect our company goals to our employees’ individual goals—that way everyone wins.




K-W-L Chart: Customer Feedback 2.0Student Name:_______________________________________________________ Date:___________

Directions: Complete the What I Know section based on the case study you just read, what you know from personal experience, or what you remember from previous AOHT courses. In the What I Want to Know section, write down questions or identify things you don’t know very much about. You will complete the What I Learned section as you talk in class and while reading Student Resource 12.6.

What I Know What I Want to Know What I Learned

…about collecting customer feedback.

…about how companies respond to customer feedback. (Think about how the cruise ship handled its feedback—is that typical?)

…about Yelp (how it works and how businesses can use it).




Reading: Customer Feedback 2.0Picture this: you are planning a trip to visit some colleges in a nearby state. How are you going to decide where to stay? Where to eat? How do you know what places are good? Nowadays, you might visit Yelp, Citysearch, Urbanspoon, OpenTable, or any number of websites that offer recommendations and reviews by real people who have stayed at those hotels or eaten at those restaurants. In this reading, we are going to focus on Yelp as an example.

How It WorksYelp relies on reviews from “normal” people—that is, not professional travel writers or restaurant critics. In fact, you can provide reviews of local businesses yourself. Yelp collects feedback on a wide range of businesses, but hospitality businesses, especially restaurants, are some of the most commonly reviewed companies.

You probably have your favorite places to eat or hang out. Maybe you know which day is the least crowded at the local amusement park, or your cousin who works at the mall gave you a tip about which shop has the best sales. You can use Yelp to share that information—to spread the word about a great new store or to warn people about a restaurant with bad customer service. When you write a review, you rate the company by giving them stars (one star is terrible, a three-star rating is neutral or “okay,” and five stars is outstanding). You also need to write something about the business. Yelp doesn’t want just star ratings with no explanation. Did the spa get a one-star rating because it lost your appointment? Or because you didn’t like the lotion it used in your massage? Did the tour company get a five-star rating because the tour guide was terrific? Or because the company took you to see some amazing sights? Or both?

Yelp encourages people to post both positive and negative reviews, although the company says that the majority of their reviews are neutral or positive (in the three- to five-star range). Yelp evaluates the reviews that are posted, but says that it does not remove reviews unless they are blatantly unfair or inappropriate. If you post on Yelp on a regular basis, your reviews may be ranked higher, since you are an established reviewer, rather than a first-time visitor.

How It Works: A Company’s PerspectiveLet’s look at Kayode and Imani. They are a brother and sister who opened a restaurant featuring the African recipes they learned from their grandparents. How can they use Yelp?

Yelp offers special services for business owners. Kayode and Imani can open a business owner’s page. This will allow them to post additional information about their restaurant, like photographs or announcements of special events. They can also track how many people are looking at information about their restaurant on Yelp.

Kayode handles the customer service/customer outreach for their restaurant. He makes an effort to look over the restaurant’s Yelp reviews, and he tries to respond to most of the reviews. Yelp allows business owners to respond publicly or privately to customer reviews. Last week, Kayode found two new reviews for the restaurant on Yelp. The first one was a pretty typical review: the reviewer liked the restaurant well enough, but thought the entrée was too spicy. Kayode sent a private message to the reviewer, thanking her for the review and letting her know that he would speak with the chef about the amount of spice in that particular dish.

The second reviewer was unhappy: he said his date had food allergies and no one could tell them which dishes were safe to eat. That bothered Kayode; he also has food allergies, so he made sure that the menu identified which dishes were safe for diners with allergies. So he felt like that review was unfair. He responded publicly to that review; he was careful not to be rude, but he pointed out that the menu did



identify which meals would have been safe for the reviewer’s date and he invited the reviewer to visit the restaurant’s website to see the menu for himself.

Kayode doesn’t always enjoy managing the company’s information on Yelp. It can take a lot of time and sometimes he feels like there is a lot of bad or unfair information out there. “If someone is having a bad day and they eat at our restaurant, they might give us a bad review, even if we didn’t do anything wrong,” he says.

On the other hand, his sister, Imani, thinks Yelp is great: “I love that we can get feedback right from our customers. Sure, somebody can give us a bad review, but we have to be proactive in responding to those reviews. If you read a bunch of Yelp reviews about a business and they all have similar complaints, you can see that business has a particular problem—bad service, bad food, whatever. But I think most people are smart enough to realize that if our restaurant has a couple of bad reviews mixed in with a whole bunch of good ones, that those reviewers were having a bad day, or maybe we were having a problem, but we fixed it. I think potential customers are smart enough to do that.”

Kayode isn’t so sure. But there’s nothing they can do about it—businesses cannot remove themselves from Yelp. So he tries to keep up to date on the reviews, although at busy times, it might be several weeks before he has a chance to respond. “This is the new way of doing business,” he says, “and we have to do the best we can with it.”

How This Connects to Social Media and Customer ServiceYou have already learned about using social media for customer service, and interacting with customers via Yelp or other review sites is similar to that. Information about your business is being shared with the whole world, whether you like it or not. Your responsibility is to maintain a friendly and professional tone, to respond to problems honestly, and to correct inaccurate information. Unlike other types of social media, Yelpers aren’t looking for immediate interaction or a fast response. If a customer tweets about a problem at your business, you need to respond quickly. A Yelper who posts a bad review wants to hear back from you, but doesn’t necessarily expect a response within the hour. However, it’s important not to let the Yelp reviews pile up without a response—that can look like your business doesn’t care!




Organizer: Exploring Online Customer Feedback SitesStudent Name: Date:

Directions: Complete this organizer as you explore the website.

A Customer’s PerspectiveYou need to plan a special outing for someone you care about—a relative, a friend, a boyfriend, or a girlfriend. Imagine that you have been saving up for this special occasion and you’ve been able to come up with $150. You need to pay for a meal at a restaurant and an activity (tickets to a show, going to an age-appropriate club, visiting a museum, going to an amusement park, etc.) for the two of you. Because this is a special occasion, you need to pick a different restaurant and a different activity—in other words, this doesn’t mean you take your best friend to your favorite pizza parlor and then see a movie. This should be something unusual. You may wish to plan your outing in a different city that you could drive to or take public transportation to visit. Use Yelp to find the business or businesses that you will patronize.

Complete the chart below to identify at least two businesses that you would patronize on this special occasion and one business you looked at on Yelp that you would not patronize. Keep in mind that good reasons for using (or not using) the business might include the reviews, the price, did (or didn’t) like what the business posted on Yelp, etc. Two examples are provided.

Business Name Choose, Not Choose, and Why I Did (or Didn’t) Choose It

Café Deliciosa I would not choose it. The reviews said they got really bad service.

Isn’t It Romantic Carriage Rides

I would choose this. I thought this would be a really nice thing to do after our dinner out, and the prices were reasonable.



A Company’s PerspectiveImagine you own a business. Click the link “Business Support” (at the bottom of the homepage) and read the “Business Owners” section and find the answers to the following questions.

What are two things you can do as a business owner to promote your business on Yelp?

How does Yelp suggest you respond to a bad review?

Does Yelp think you should give customers a coupon or freebie if they give you a good review?

Imagine you get an unfair review. What does Yelp suggest you do about it?




Assignment: Customer Feedback on Client Businesses

Student Name: Date:

Directions: Use this assignment sheet to help you learn about how your client is reviewed and represented on customer review and feedback websites. Before you begin, read through all of the instructions on this sheet, and read the assessment criteria at the end of the sheet to make sure you understand how your work will be assessed.

Summary: What You Need to DoAs part of your evaluation of your client company’s customer service, you need to see what average customers are saying. You also need to see how your client company does or does not use these websites to respond to their customers and attract new customers.

Step One: Determine which sites you will research.

Step Two: Read the reviews on one or more sites.

Things to Think About:

Are the reviews mostly positive? Negative? Neutral? What are common problems people complain about? What are common compliments or good points people identify about the business?

Evaluate how the reviews compare to what you observed in your site visit/heard about in your interview/experienced as a customer yourself.

Determine whether or not your client business is providing information to the site or responding to feedback on the site.

Based on what you learn from the site(s), identify any problems or recommendations you might want to address in your final presentation.

You will use this information as you put together your final presentation.

Step One: Determine Which Sites to VisitNot every business appears on Yelp, and in some cases, you may get better information from other, more specialized websites. Below is a list of some nationally recognized review websites that may be helpful.

General Sites Yelp (http://www.yelp.com) Citysearch (http://www.citysearch.com) Trip Advisor (http://www.tripadvisor.com/)

Restaurant Reviews OpenTable (http://www.opentable.com) Urbanspoon (http://www.urbanspoon.com) Zagat (http://www.zagat.com/)


http://www.zagat.com/

http://www.urbanspoon.com/

http://www.opentable.com/

http://www.tripadvisor.com/

http://www.citysearch.com/

http://www.yelp.com/


Cruise Reviews Cruise Reviews (http://www.cruisereviews.com/) Cruisemates Reader Reviews

(http://www.cruisemates.com/articles/memreviews/#axzz0qBr1PkVm) Cruise Critic Member Reviews (http://www.cruisecritic.com/memberreviews/)

Miscellaneous Reviews Skytrax Airline and Airport Review (http://www.airlinequality.com/) Virtual Tourist Hotel Reviews (http://www.virtualtourist.com/book_travel/hotels.html)

Choosing SitesYou already know how much information Yelp has about your company. Do you think Yelp can be a valuable resource for your group?

Things to think about when choosing other sites:

Are there a lot of reviews? The more reviews of your business, the more helpful the site will be.

Do the reviews include a range of opinions? If the business has only a few reviews, and they are all extremely positive, you may not get an accurate picture of the business from that site.

If you think Yelp can be a valuable resource, assign one or more group members to do more research about your company on Yelp. Then use the list on the previous page and any other sites you know about to choose other sites to research. Each member of your group should have one or two websites to research; use the table below to write down the assignments.

Student Name Site(s) Assigned for Research

Keep in mind that not every site is going to have information on your business, and some sites may have lots and lots of information, so you may need to revise these assignments as you start exploring the sites.

If a website has 20 or more reviews, you can have two people work on it. If a site like Yelp has a substantial number of reviews for your company (e.g., more than 50 reviews), you can ask your teacher if your entire group can focus on Yelp. Note that if a bad review is more than a year old and more recent reviewers do not complain about this issue, it indicates that the problem has been resolved. When possible, note how the company fixed the problem—it shows how hard the company is willing to try to respond to customer complaints.

If you explore all the recommended sites and can find very little or no information about your company, ask your teacher about an alternative assignment.

Once you have finished assigning sites to each group member, split up and do your research.


http://www.virtualtourist.com/book_travel/hotels.html

http://www.airlinequality.com/

http://www.cruisecritic.com/memberreviews/

http://www.cruisemates.com/articles/memreviews/#axzz0qBr1PkVm

http://www.cruisereviews.com/


Step Two: Read the ReviewsUse the table below to help you organize your research.

Question Answer

Client company name

Website name

How many reviews of your client company are on the site?

What is your company’s overall rating? Note: If the site doesn’t offer an overall rating, skim the reviews and determine whether the majority of them are positive, negative, or neutral.

Read at least 8–10 reviews of your client company (if available). Can you identify any common complaints or problems? What are they?

Can you identify any common compliments or good points? What are they?

How do the reviews compare to what you heard in your interview/observed in your site visit? Do the reviews match up with what you saw/heard? Are there big differences?

Has your client company responded to any of the comments on this website? How can you tell?



Question Answer

Does the client company look like it has an active presence on this website? Describe the presence (if there is one). Look for whether the company posts ads, information about the company, or responds to customer reviews.

Based on what you have seen on this website, can you identify any problems or areas of improvement that you want to include in your final report?

Make sure your assignment meets or exceeds the following assessment criteria: The assignment provides a complete description of how many reviews have been posted and

what their overall ratings of the client business are.

The assignment identifies and explains at least two to three common customer complaints.

The assignment compares and contrasts the student’s personal experience of the client business with the feedback provided on the website.

The assignment evaluates the company’s presence on the website.

The assignment is neat, legible, and presentable.




Assignment: Interview/Site Visit SummaryDirections: Now that you have completed your interview and/or site visit, you need to write a summary of what you learned from that experience.

Why Write a Summary?Writing a summary can help you organize your thoughts. Notes can be messy and difficult to read, but if you use your notes to write a summary, you will have something organized and easy-to-read that you can refer to when you’re working on the next steps of the project.

A summary covers the main points about a topic or experience. It “sums it up.” Unlike a report, it isn’t a lengthy discussion or analysis. Writing summaries is an important skill to develop. In high school and in college, writing a summary can help you make sense of what you learned. It could even be a good way to review before a test—many test questions ask you to summarize what you have learned about a specific topic. In the business world, you may need to write a summary of a meeting or conference you attended so that you can share it with your boss, your colleagues, or your clients.

What Should the Summary Include?An IntroductionA good summary begins with an introduction that explains what is being summarized and how you got the information. In this case, you would want to explain:

Whether you conducted the interview or the site visit

Whether the interview was in person or over the phone

Date and time of day of interview or site visit

For the site visit, whether you observed as a customer or just stayed in the background

Specific DetailsAfter the introduction, use your notes to identify specific details and important pieces of information and put them in a logical order. For this assignment, you can use the list of topics below to help you get organized:

Basic information about the company

Needs the business fulfills/tries to fulfill

How the company does/does not follow the rules of customer service

How well the company handles the phases of customer service

How the company uses/trains its employees to use good communication skills (written, verbal, nonverbal)

How the company handles internal customer service and/or customer service management

You may not have information on all these topics, and that’s okay. But you should try to organize your summary so that you have all the information on “phases of customer service” in one section and all the information on “internal customer service” in another section. If you jump around between topics, it can be confusing to the reader.



Your PerspectiveRight now, while the interview/site visit is still fresh in your mind, you should write down how you felt about the experience. Was it hard to do the interview/site visit? Did you feel like the people you talked to were friendly? Did they answer questions easily, or did they seem like they didn’t want you around? Were you surprised by anything you learned/observed? Did the interview/site visit help you make connections between what we’ve learned in class and what you saw/heard about the business?

A ConclusionA good summary ends with a conclusion that ties everything together. For this summary, you should describe one or two of the most important things you learned from your interview/site visit and conclude with your main impression of the overall experience.


Documents

curriculum.naf.orgcurriculum.naf.org/packaged/assets/downloads/hospitalit… · Web viewDirections: You will be assigned to one section of Student Resource 12.2, Reading: Cruise