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After you have completed customer research you will understand what is important to your customers and will therefore be able to define your service standards.
Areas to consider include:
Service Standards
Service standards define the level of service you are providing to your customers. The standards provide you with a benchmark to measure your performance against. They can be used as a training aid for staff and as a commitment to your customers.
Typical Service Standards include:
- Telephone answered within 6 rings
- Guests acknowledged within 30 seconds of arrival
- Breakfast served within 5 minutes of guest order being taken.
- Waiting time in ticket queues less than 2 minutes
- Exhibits are well presented
Service Assessment
Once service standards are in place you will need to continually monitor these standards to ensure that these are met. There are various methods for doing this as outlined below:
Mystery Visits
Mystery visits are the easiest way of measuring your service standards. They involve an independent person acting as an observant customer with a knowledge of your service standards.
Benefits
Mystery visits provide you with an impartial assessment of your service and allow you to see your business throughout the eyes of your customers. They can be used to identify areas where staff training is required.
Your commitment
You will require to develop service standards and repeat the mystery visit on a regular basis. This is due to the fact that they only provide a snapshot of your business at any given time and trends will only become evident after several visits. You also require to find suitable mystery visitors.
Mystery Calls
Mystery Calls can be used in conduction with mystery visits or independently. They allow you to assess your efficiency in terms of reservations and dealing with enquiries.
Mystery calls can be used to test the following process:
- Reservation Handling
- General Enquiry Handling
- Specific Enquiry Handling (such as conference facilities or party nights)
Benefits
Mystery Calls are a quick and easy way to assess your processes from the point of view of your customers. They allow for impartial assessment and can identify staff training needs.
Your commitment
As with mystery visits you require to set out your service standards in advance and to find suitable people to conduct the calls.
Externally Managed Mystery Visits / Calls
These visits will augment the visits that are currently conducted by Visit Scotland Quality Assurance Advisors.
They are most effective if conducted by an external organisation to give you independent, unbiased information.
If you would like more information on how to conduct either of the above you will find details in the useful contacts section of this site.
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