Ritz Carlton Hotel

¶ … Quality at the Ritz Carlton Hotel In what ways could the Ritz-Carlton monitor its success in achieving quality? The Ritz-Carlton has taken on a broad set of strategies and initiatives and programs to monitor its success in achieving service quality. These include the pervasive use of comment cards, follow-up surveys and observations of how guest perceive the quality of service while they are guests in the hotel (Cochran, 2008).

Ritz-Carlton also contracts with the Gallup Organization for third-party validation of service levels and periodically use mystery shoppers to evaluate quality levels throughout their locations as well (Cochran, 2008). All of these approaches to gathering intelligence on the levels of service quality they are delivering routinely are captured in the knowledge management system the company has (Cochran, 2008) which is used for improving its organizational effectiveness over the long-term by capturing best practices (Timmerman, 2009).

The Ritz-Carlton could also periodically complete a more extensive quality audit, which would take into account all factors related to a guest's expectations and experiences in the hotel (Salazar, Costa, Rita, 2010). These audits are often anchored in the Service Quality Methodology (SERVQUAL) framework, which is comprised of 32 different factors that are compare guest expectations vs. experiences (Shahin, Janatyan, 2011).

The Ritz-Carlton has been known to use their knowledge management systems for insights into how they can devise entirely new processes for delivering services and delighting guests, using satisfaction data from services as a source of innovation over time (Sucic, 2010). This broad base of methods gives the hotel insight into how to continually improve quality. Many companies say that their goal is to provide quality products or services.

What actions might you expect from a company in order to PROVE they have quality instead of just having it as a slogan or buzzword? Frist, the expectation is that there would a strong reliance on Voice of the Customer feedback gained through the Six Sigma DMAIC methodology (Kumar, Phillips, Rupp, 2009) and a willingness to use the insights gained to fuel innovation and the customer experience (Akbar, Som, Wadood, Alzaidiyeen, 2010).

There is evidence of the Ritz-Carlton doing this, using the knowledge gained from service interactions to serve as the catalyst of future innovation in their strategies globally (Sucic, 2010). Strategies companies would also take to prove they have quality instead of just saying they do also include capturing customer perceptions during the most critical times when services are delivered. These include measuring customer satisfaction with the level of responsiveness, effectiveness of the service in meeting an expectation or unmet need, and the availability of ongoing support or service over time (Cochran, 2008).

In short, the entire culture of a company needs to reflect a philosophy of service or product quality for these values to permeate its every process, strategy and decisive moment with a guest or customer (Chesbrough, 2011). For companies who claim to highly value quality the expectation is that the approach they take to measure their performance is more focused on customer satisfaction and less on just efficiency or customer churn (Cochran, 2008).

Instead of measuring just the number of guest served, the measurement would also focus on the level of satisfaction the experience generated (Ali, Ndubisi, 2011).

What is a good example of how it costs the Ritz-Carlton less to "do things right" the first time? It costs the Ritz-Carlton less to do things right the first time by alleviating the quantifiable costs of wasting productivity having to do a task a second time, and also not losing credibility with guests who may become dissatisfied depending on what was being done to serve them.

Doing things right the first time includes concentrating on delivering thoughtful, excellent service within the context of the customers' frame of reference and expectations, an example of which is cited by Cochran (2008) of the staff asking him how his dinner as the previous evening. Dr. Cochran wrote an article for Quality Digest in 2008 detailing his experience at a local Ritz-Carlton in Atlanta, which he and his wife visited during their 44th anniversary.

He is a noted authority on customer satisfaction and analyzed the interactions for consistency, showing how "doing things right the first time" creates a continual reinforcing of the service quality brand with the customer (Cochran, 2008). His personal story shows the value of doing things right the first time both from a customer service and cost standpoint, and given the fact he is a columnist with Quality Digest, it earned the hotel a positive review in the professional press.

This is an example of how it cost the Ritz-Carlton less to do things right the first time, as they didn't have to do damage control if they had somehow given Mr. Cochran a bad experience, forgotten it was his anniversary weekend with his wife, or somehow created a bad experience. Doing things right the first time alleviates the costs of having to fix mistakes from a productivity standpoint and doing damage control for the brands' reputation as well.

How could control charts, pareto diagrams, and cause-and-effect diagrams be used to identify quality problems at a hotel? All of these techniques and methodologies including control charts, parent diagrams and cause-and-effect diagrams are highly effective in analyzing what areas a hotel needs most to improve. The pareto diagram provides a framework for evaluating which areas are contributing most and least to customer satisfaction in the hotel. A pareto analysis will quickly define what the priorities for customer service improvement need to be within any hotel as well.

The use of pareto diagrams and cause-and-effect diagrams for quantifying behavior data over time has proven to be highly effective in measuring and improving customer satisfaction in service industries (Pfadt, Wheeler, 1995). These techniques are also excellent for finding the initial symptoms of often more pervasive or strategic weaknesses throughout a hotel. Using Statistical Process Control (SPC) techniques, services businesses will often look to create continual process improvement initiatives and programs based on the insights gained (Pfadt, Wheeler, 1995).

The data collected using control charts, pareto diagrams, and cause-and-effect diagrams are also used as the basis of more in-depth analysis of customer concerns using Six Sigma and DMAIC-based methodologies as well (Kumar, Phillips, Rupp, 2009). Six Sigma is a technique used for evaluating the level of variability in a given process so that it can be standardized.