This report is basically about the design and provision of a SERVICE which is traveling. Traveling is an industry to provide tourists with tourism service on the basis of sightseeing resources. It is the industry developing around the world. Therefore, it is significant to improve and evaluate the quality of this service. With the competition between each traveling companies, it is sort of difficult to stand on the top of the industry, which makes the analysis and the improvement so essential for the sake of future development.
This report will specifically focus on one of the service company whose name is Australian Star Traveling Company (hereinafter referred to as SAT Company). It s a well-known Australian company with good reputation. They have their own transportation and tour guides to operate themselves. Basically ACT Company is focus on the tourism inside Australia because they are much more familiar about the situation here. In respect of traveling, it is absolutely a kind of service which includes the service during activities and the follow-up service.
SAT Company has operated for a long time, with the experience they have, they could prepare the work accordingly and make it comprehensive for the sake of the satisfaction of customers. Generally, SAT Company provides their customers with comprehensive service ND help when the customers are traveling in Australia. In the first place, they will help customers reserve the airplane tickets and the rooms of hotels, because they have some cooperation with several well-known airplane companies and hotels. Secondly, they prepare the journey in terms of the scenic places, activities and expenditure the customers need to pay for.
During the trip, they provide experienced tour guide and bus driver for each group, so that the trip will be interesting and full of knowledge. And most importantly, it could be safe which most of the customers care most, because experienced tour guides are capable o deal with most of the problems during the journey. Finally, even after the trip, they would still like to help them solve some of the trouble in Australia. As far as am concerned, these are exactly the functions that a traveling company should contain for operation and development.
SAT Company has its unique characteristics in regards of traveling style, humorous service staff and thoughtful service. As a result of the characteristic operational modes, they make their own traveling patterns and most of the customers will cooperate with their work. Some of the methodologies have been applied by them to capture customer deeds including interviews, survey questionnaires, market analysis and so forth. In my opinion, these are the most efficient ways to get the purposes because all the information is exactly from each customer.
This is the first and most important characteristic they have. As for quality evaluation and assurance, they use a series of evaluative systems and controlling process technique to fulfill their final results, which are proved to be quite effective. With the advanced technologies, the processes of providing the service of traveling are stable and sequential. Most of the customers will just enjoy their trip without considering any of the potential problems. Last but not least, SAT Company does prepare for the possible problems and the ways to solve them in case of emergency.
From statistical information, most of the traveling companies are not that much careful which make it as one of the other characteristic and reasons for their successful. In this report, I will explain the quality planning and analysis specifically in terms of methodologies and processes to develop their service of traveling. Part 2: Customer Satisfaction 2. 1 Stakeholder Analysis Traveling refers to a number of interrelated industries such as hotel, assistants, transportation, entertainment and so forth.
As a result, it is of great importance to consider the stakeholders before the process of implementation. The following Table 2. 1 lists some of the stakeholders and expectations from each of them in SAT. Stakeholders Expectations Internal Shareholders High return of investment Innovation on new traveling types Cooperation Managers and Planers Better design of traveling route and place Increase in reputation and customers High earnings High level of business efficiency Tour Guides Increase in tourists High salary and selling of products
More experience and opportunities of traveling Employees High salary and reasonable holiday Better working circumstance External Tourists Better traveling experience Good service and help of traveling companies High quality of traveling resources Governments Promotion of local development No damage of regional facilities and resources Abidance by law Suppliers High quality of products Increase in innovation of new product development High profits Local Community High value of the development of scenic regions Sustainability of traveling resources Travel Agencies Good cooperation with travel companies and other retailers
Good reputation Airline companies High competition with other cooperation High income from tourism Hotels and Restaurants More choices for different tourists Table 2. 1 Stakeholders in Traveling 2. 2 Capturing the Customer Needs Traveling industry has a close relationship with customers which are tourists. Consequently, it is significant to capture and analyze what customer really needs. Some of the methods are efficient and convenient to execute which are listed below: Customer interview and survey questionnaires Customer feedback form Market trend analysis Customer complaints Focus groups Staff surveys
Customer interview and survey questionnaires Customer interviews are a common mechanism for gathering the voice of the customer, because it is a face-to-face communication which can be easily understood by the interviewers. They provide an opportunity to get the most direct information from a single customer. Basically the interviews are focus on how often is the information obtained, what kinds of customer included, how the needs are identified and how to meet the need of the customers.
In order to get a comprehensive result SAT needs to interview most types of customers in terms of all of the critical issues. After analysis of the attitudes on traveling industry they can get some conclusions about their strengths and weaknesses. Then they will figure out how to improve and determine the methods to meet different customers especially for the largest group of them. As for survey questionnaires, the method is nearly of the same purpose as customer interviews.
It is a cost effective method in written form and has a larger number of participants. With the design of effective questions focusing on the right area, the statistical information can be quite significant in terms of deciding future development. In traveling industry, it is necessary to collect information about how the customers feel about the trip at the end of the traveling. Basically the feedback form will be filled in right before the end of the trip; therefore, it can reflect the real opinions and suggestions from the customers.
Most of the questions are in multiple choice forms which is easier to be read and for statistics as well. They are most about the quality of the trip in terms of traveling route, food, hotel, service of tour guide and driver, which are the basic conditions. Absolutely, they need to be improved at the first place. This method can capture customer needs directly and get the improvement continuously because the feedback form will be done in every single travel. Also, it is an efficient way to get a higher reputation with the increase of customer’s trust.
Market trend analysis is a methodology which can generate a connection in the aspect of customers, society and travel industry. Through gathering and analyzing information, SAT can find out what is popular so that they can change the strategies of products and pricing. Because of the influence of the real market and the variable behavior of customers, it is important to do the Market trend analysis to capture customer needs. This scientific method has several advantages to improve economic benefit of traveling and find out potential opportunities which are more suitable to modern customers.
And after evaluating the future attractiveness of the industry the managers can make the decisions on the developing priorities according to the need of market. Sometimes, the negative feedback is much more useful for development because generally it is easier to change drawbacks than improve the strengths which already exist. However, being able to handle negative feedback in a positive way takes plenty of practice. The companies will get advice on interacting with customers in these less-than-ideal situations. ] If the employees can record and handle the most valuable complaints, then some strategies can be decided afterwards. As the differences between customers, not all the complaints are significant to be analyzed which makes it essential to screen. The remaining ones are exactly what customer needs which are not provided. Focus group is a small number of people (typically 8) getting together to discuss bout the opinions, suggestions, perspectives and attitudes towards a service (traveling).
The open and free discussions typically generate ideas and provide a wide range of information. The group aims to provide statistical data to enhance the quality of service on customers. Members in a focus group have some common characteristic and the questions should be conversational and encourage the members to participate, which will make the conclusions much more accurate and targeted. 2. 3 Customer Needs Analysis (Kane Analysis) The most general method to capture customer needs is survey questionnaires. A happily survey questionnaire is executed by the following 5 steps.
Step 1: Define purposes of the survey For the service of traveling, the objectives of survey questionnaire are: To get information about what customer needs and they are focus more on To find out the key points that should be improved as a matter of priority To increase the competitiveness in the industry for the sake of satisfying customer needs Step 2: Preliminary of the survey In the survey there are 300 participants with different ages, work area, genders and wealthy conditions, so that the survey could be impartial and comprehensive.
The survey and analysis should be finished within one month. The employees will be divided into several groups in charge of every procedure to assure high cooperation and efficiency. After the preparation of the survey and classification of customers, the questionnaire could be designed. Step 3: Design of the questionnaire and the importance of customer needs There are 25 customer needs in the questionnaire and the importance is decided from 1 to 9(1 is the least important and 9 is the highest important). The questionnaire is designed as the table 23. 1 below.
