Customer Service

Analysis of Customer Service
The paper involves analyzing the principles of good customer service from reading and interviewing at least one professional about customer service at a hotel, restaurant or hospitality organization. We will discuss the issues surrounding customer service in class, and there will be some reading on this topic from recent scholarship, but you will need to engage in independent research to augment and expand what you learn in the class sessions. One of the challenges of this assignment will be identifying a person, or persons, in the industry that you want to interview, making arrangements for an interview(s), developing a list of questions that you want that individual(s) to answer, conducting some research about conducting the interview while taking good notes, sending a thank you note, and then preparing a paper reporting your insights from the interview(s) and you’re outside reading. As you prepare for the interview, do not forget to find out as much as you can about the person(s) you will interview and the organization(s) where the individual(s) works. Then prepare the interview schedule and actually conduct the interview taking good notes. After the interview, you should send the individual(s) a personal and handwritten thank you note, a copy of which should be included with your paper. The five- to seven-page paper should describe and analyze customer services as well as the insights you acquired from this interview. Your paper should address the following questions (among others that you may want to include):

* • What are the differences between superior and good customer service? How are moments of truth involved?
* • How is exceptional customer service created and maintained in the organizations culture?
* • In what ways does it differ for various types and levels (economy, full service, luxury) customers and types of businesses?
* • What is the cycle of service and how does it differ in various situations and settings?
* • What are the standards of good service? When do they change and why would they change?
* • Why is service recovery important and how does a business provide it?
* • What are the challenges in providing superior service?
* • What did you learn from the person(s) you interviewed?
* • What did you learn about collecting information from observing and interviewing?

This five- to seven-page paper will be accompanied by the interview schedules, a copy of the thank you note(s) and annotated bibliography, using correct MLA style, in which you summarize the core ideas and indicate the relative merits of each of the sources – including interviews – consulted in preparing your research.