Evaluating the service delivered to tourists at Exeter Cathedral

Evaluating the service delivered to tourists at Exeter Cathedral

Introduction

In the hospitality and tourism sector, the success of the business depends on the service delivered.  business success is associated with the consistent delivery of a high level of customer service. The level of service delivery, therefore, depends on different methodologies. This report will, therefore, explore the fundamental of customer service in the contest of a competitive global tourist environment.

In today’s aggressive economy service delivery competition is becoming more significant to the remarkable customer experience in the tourism industry. The empirical literature has put more focus on explaining the role of remarkable customer experience component service to be more authentic. Service delivery plays a key role in the perception of the consumers.

The objective of this report is to evaluate the complex issues relating to service delivery and customer satisfaction in the tourism industry. To achieve this, the research establishes a diagnostic study to evaluate the existing factors that promote the growth of the tourist industry. Performance evaluation of tourist service delivery, through a questionnaire in the research, conducted to get the perception of customer perception in relation to services over by the Exeter Cathedral.

In developed economies tourism has been an important factor since the mid-19th century. Today tourism is a globalized industry. Tourist is one of the critical elements of the social-economic life in most developed and developing economies in the world.  Contemporary civilization has evolved the impact of the tourism industry. The industry continues to integrate change in its processes. The report will, therefore, focus on the evaluation of services Exeter Cathedral. The structure to be followed in this report includes the introduction, literature review, empirical data analysis, conclusion and recommendation for the research.

Background Exeter Cathedral

Exeter Cathedral is one of the most beautiful as well as the oldest cathedrals in England. The cathedral is located in the city center. For nearly one century a Cathedral has been existence in the site. Exeter Cathedral is one of the most attractive sites and has more than 900 years of history. Conservation work, as well as restoration, is continuing. While the ancient archives and library are still responsible to take care of the cathedral’s greatest treasure.  Exeter Cathedral has a remarkable feat of craftsmanship, design, and engineering.

Characterized by the selection of crafts, bustling atmosphere and fresh food assisted by Bavarian-styles bar and food stall, Exeter Cathedral market is motivated by the German Christmas market. The Exeter Cathedral attracts more than 400,000 each year.

Exeter Cathedral is built on Micah 6:8 “What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, love mercy and to walk humbly with your God?” the organization accomplish this through daily prayer and worship, nurturing disciples, welcome & pastoral support, serving the community and learning together. Exeter cathedral is a diverse organization that operates to meet the needs of its diverse shareholders. The cathedral is the destination for tourists in Southern West of England. Cathedral welcomes visitors from all over the globe. The cathedral aims at developing its facilities to attract more visitors.

Literature  review

Service Quality

Brady and Cronin (2001), define service quality as the ability to meet the expected perception of the customer. Organizations with high quality have the ability to meet the customers’ needs hence remaining competitive in the economy. Measuring service quality sometimes involves objective and subjective processes.  SERVQUAL is applied to assess the subjective processes of service delivery. Objective processes may be categorized into secondary and primary processes.  secondary processes involve the use of quantifiable variables such number of returned products or customer number analysis to measure the service quality. On the other hand, primary processes in test episodes of service are created by customers or through observation of the normal customer’s test episodes.

Several models have been suggested to measure the relationship between service delivery and customer satisfaction which include the SERVQUAL Model; the Nordic Model; the Hierarchical Model and the Multilevel Model.

According to Parasuramanet al, (1991) SERVQUAL model suggests that the gap between the service delivered level and customer expectation is measured through five customer perceptions on the service which include: Tangibility, Empathy, Assurances, Responsiveness, and Reliability. SERVQUAL helps the managers in the identification of the factors that affect the quality of the services offered. Though this is mostly applied model applied by scientists and marketing researchers it does provide a clear metric method for measuring the gap between different levels of service delivery. The model has been associated with many inconsistencies and hence it is not effective in evaluating service quality.

According to the Nordic model by Gronroos (1983), quality service is defined by the outcomes and process or functional related dimensions.  The picture builds up by functional and technical quality and the impact of other factors such as pricing, customer needs, ideology, and marketing communication are used to measure service quality.  Nordic model compares the expected service with perceived performance. Rust & Oliver (1994) improved the model by adding three more components which include service environment service delivery (functional quality) and service product (technical quality) however the models were not tested.

The multilevel model suggests the change of the service quality models structures into three-stages models: sub-dimensions, primary dimension, and overall service quality perceptions.  The model was mostly used in retail stores to evaluate the service quality. The model needs to consider the impact of other factors such as pricing and environment in service delivery.  Further, the model does not identify factors or attributes that explain sub-dimensions.

Brady and Cronin (2001) developed the hierarchical model by combining the three models. The model improved the SERVQUAL by explaining what is required to be tangible, assured, empathic, responsive and reliable. The service quality was evaluated through Outcome Quality, Physical Environment Quality and Interaction Quality(Gronroos, 1983; Rust & Oliver, 1994). The level of service quality has three main dimension level that includes outcome, environment, and interaction where each dimension has three sub-dimension: Interaction ( expertise, behavior, and attitude), Environment (Social Factors, Design, and Ambient Conditions) and Outcome ( valence, tangible and waiting time). Customers are therefore able to experience various dimensions of service at different levels.

Customer satisfaction

According to Oliver (1993), customer satisfaction is defined as a measure of how goods and services provided by the business can meet the expectations of the customer. He suggested that customer satisfaction can be explained as the percentage of total consumers or the number of clients who reported their experience with the company products or services based on the level of their need satisfaction. Customer satisfaction is one of the main business indicators of performance. every business should aim at meeting consumer need and hence customer satisfaction is a key element in business strategy. As the company bargaining power increase the importance of customer satisfaction in the organization diminish.

Measuring customer satisfaction help organization know how successful business is at the provision of products and services in the market. It is assumed to be an abstract and ambiguous concept which is manifested through the satisfaction state from product or service or person offering the service. The satisfaction state depends on both physical and psychological factors that relate to the satisfaction behavior such recommend rate and return. The satisfaction levels vary depending on the customer option.

Customer satisfaction describes the customer’s perception of the value gained in a relationship or transaction, where service quality perceived in comparison to the expected value from the relationship or transactions with competing vendors.

To achieve customer satisfaction it is necessary to identify and anticipate the need of customers and be able to achieve them. Almsalam, (2014) business which can identify and satisfy the needs of customer rapidly achieve high profit compared to those fail to understand and satisfy the needs. Improvement of quality services enhance the level of satisfaction and increase profit as well as the benefit gained by visitors and other customers.

Kamin (2006) suggests that a high level of customer service plays a critical role in business survival. state service companies will be able to survive through focusing on customer satisfaction. The level of satisfaction depends on the level of the service offered.

Customer experience

The concept of customer experience in the market came up in Hemid 1980s, the literature behind this concept focused on the customer as a rational decision-maker which resulted from the idea of an experiential approach to be new and original. The consumers were not only thinkers and doers but also feelers. Pine and Gilmore, 1998 put in place the progression of economic value that made customers experience to be more relevant. The main idea is that during the period of purchase, the experience can be seen as an economic offering that serves as the next point after commodities, goods, and services.

Early 2000s, several contributions, and awareness were focused based on the attention of customer experience as a way of creating value for both the customer and business firms. Besides acknowledging the merits of customer experience, it was majorly on managerial publications and practitioner-based journals. The major point, therefore, was on managerial action and outcome instead of the actual methods used to determine the sources and consequences of the customer experience. When evaluating the experience of services, the nexus between the customer and the company form a series of impacts. An empirical study by Lemon & Verhoef, 2016 associates such an impact in influencing the customer experience journey. This is because the journey does not only focus on the customer experience alone but also focuses on the experience of the customers.  An empirical study by Voorhees et al. (2017) argues that service delivery contributes critically to the customer experience hence enhancing their satisfaction. They realized that the early work based on the topic is indisputably foundational thus failing to present a clear vision of services outside the core service encounter. It is a challenge for companies to monitor the journey and experiences of customers since they go through a very challenging journey. Customers have gone wild to use of technology thus making their communication easier since they can easily communicate with the companies through social media. As compared to the early consumer behavior models, customer experience is more interactive thus the business firms are advised to take action in bringing together different business functions as a way of coming up with consistent and positive customer experiences. Tseng et al. (1999) came up with the idea of improving service operations by the experiences of customers. This improvement can be enhanced through discovering and understanding the customer experiences and also by following the mapping experience. The use of customer behavior, customer interaction and customer contacts are the methods used to gather the information that can be put in place as an insight to enhance service quality, therefore, this can also be used as a way of uncovering where the service experience is likely to be improved and by so doing this, the customer value will be enhanced.

Pine and Gilmore (1998) became the first authors to state the concept of customer experience; also they realized that when the services become more common, the business firms started to use the experiences in the competition of customers. A theoretical method such as SIT (sequential incident technique) was used in the customer experience journey and journey mapping.

4. Empirical data analysis

In this section element of service delivery customer satisfaction, experience mapping and service quality are analyzed and discussed on the coast of the organization. The data analysis used both the traditional and digital models for data analysis.  The survey involves 36 respondents who were interviewed to measure the customer perception of the organization service delivery. From the survey 16 of the respondents were male while 19 we male. The majority of the visitors are between the age of 16 years to 25 years which represent 25 respondent the followed by 8 respondents who are between 25 years to 35 years. This means the largest customers segment are youths. Those from 35-44 years are just represented by 2 respondents.

The market segment for Exeter Cathedral includes Americans, British, Chinese, French, German, Saud, and Thai. From the survey majority of visitors are Chinese with 26 respondents, followed Thai with 3 segments and British. The organization is too attracted visitors from all over the globe.

Customer satisfaction

The objective of the objective is to evaluate service delivery on customer satisfaction. The service delivered should be able to maximize the level of the satisfaction that the customer requires from the Exeter Cathedral site.  The table below shows the level of satisfaction of the customers who visit Exeter Cathedral.

From the survey, the survey on 1 respondent was extremely dissatisfied with the services offered by the Exeter Cathedral. Three of the respondents were indifferent in that they were neither nor satisfied by the quality of services offered by the company. Majority of the respondent was satisfied by the level of the services offered in that 18 respondents were somehow satisfied while 13 respondents are extremely satisfied.

Customer’s experience

Service delivery plays a critical role in the customers’ experience. High quality of service enhances the customer experience. This survey analyzes the customer experience in the Exeter Cathedral. The empirical data for the customer experience in Exeter cathedral is shown in the table below. Based on the survey findings it was observed that customers received positive communication from the Exeter cathedral satisfy as shown by a mean of 5.91. The visitors agree that there probably going to visit the site again in the near future.  The survey also indicates that the visitors experience a unique experience in the Exeter Cathedral. The activities offered in the cathedral including religious ceremonies/services/ reading, guided tour, and music performance are somewhat fun to was as indicated by mean of 5.21. The majority of visitors agreed that cathedral activities are amusing to watch. The cathedral is also attractive to watch and also visitors learn a lot from the visit hence impacting on their knowledge.

Quality Service

The quality of service is a key ingredient to customer satisfaction. Based on the analysis cathedral staffs are rated to be friendly. The visitor was provided with variable information when working through the building. This attracts more visitors to picnicking. The supporting services at the Cathedral are excellent. The type of food served is good. The cathedral is well equipped with basic facilities such as a watch room which enhances the customer experience in the site. From the survey, the digital/ non-digital interpretation offering was rated high. The entry prices are also well rated and hence the visitors are comfortable with the price offered.

5. Discussion

The analysis was done through the use of both digital and technology tools. Based on the analysis the level of customer satisfaction is pegged on the customer experience and service delivery. From the analysis majority of the respondent are satisfied with the level of the service offered. This results in high customer loyalty. Therefore the customers are willing to return for the services. Good communication during the visit plays a critical role in building a good customer experience hence attracting more customers. The level of support offered by the staff increases the level of service delivery and hence increasing the level of customer experience in the cathedral. The level of customer experience in Exeter Cathedral is also influenced by the food and drinks offered in the Cathedral Refectory. The foods are very delicious and at the same, they are not overpriced. Customers are interested in getting quality products and services at affordable prices.  Most of the supporting services are rated 4 stars indicating that customers are satisfied with the level of the services offered.

6. Conclusion & recommendations

The objective of the research paper was to evaluate the service delivery in the tourist industry basing our analysis on the level of service delivery at Exeter Cathedral. The cathedral offers a beautiful and satisfying experience for visitors.  Based on the survey analysis the level of service derived by the organization has a great impact on customer satisfaction as well as organizational performance. High-quality service establishes a positive customer experience. There is a direct connection between customer experience and the level of customer satisfaction. customer behavior, customer interaction and customer contacts are the methods used to gather the information that can be put in place as an insight to enhance service quality, therefore, this can also be used as a way of uncovering where the service experience is likely to be improved and by so doing this, the customer value will be enhanced.

To main high-quality service in the cathedral, the management should focus on the training and development of its staff. This will help the company to continue offering unique to the customers. A good relationship between the company and the customer allows the management to get feedback from the customer on their experience. Therefore, Exeter Cathedral should create a better channel that would  strengthen communication with the customer. The cathedral should take advantage of information technology to enhance its communication with the customers.