Achieving Service Excellence by Design

1) Discuss the applied theory & key concepts

2) Review specific questions

3) Closing comments followed by Q & A

- How many of you are familiar with the... 20/20/20 rule?

Article: Achieving Service Excellence by Design: The Organizational Alignment Audit

Authors: John C. Crotts & Robert C. Ford

- John C. Crotts - PhD, Professor in the Department of

Hospitality and Tourism- College of Charleston

- Robert C. Ford- PhD, Professor of Management - University of Central Florida

- Theory- Transformational Leadership

- Key Concepts- Customer Service- Customer Loyalty- Organizational Alignment

- To review the concept of organizational alignment

- To look at specific areas that aide the performance of firms that are seen as benchmark organizations

1) To identify how well frontline employees provide excellent customer service. - Is their customer service directly aligned with

corporate objectives?

2) To guide other researchers to expand their interests into this subject matter.

1) A firm whose internal and external policies are in alignment will perform better than a company that is not aligned

2) Firms that have explicit goals of service excellence will be more effective and profitable than corporations with low alignment

3) When a firm is focused on the same goals that they represent, they will gain customer loyalty

Participants- Employees of hotels and hospitals

Procedure- The authors constructed an

Organizational Alignment Audit to assess a firm’s consistency with its mission statement behavior

Survey- 42 questions

Question Examples- We follow a set plan to fix customer

service issues- Management routinely reminds staff

members of their commitment to service excellence

All studies have found a strong relationship between organizational alignment and business performance from the research predictions.

Organizational Alignment Audit:

- Can be compared with benchmark organizations

- Can be used for comparisons between senior, middle, and supervisory managers and frontline employees

Organizational Alignment Audit

- The authors have only utilized the Audit in three applications

- Hopefully invite the interest of researchers to extend the organizational alignment in new ways

- 20/20/20 rule

- Customer Service, Customer Loyalty, Organizational Alignment

- “You can’t make happy customers with unhappy employees.” - J.W. Marriott

- Questions & Answers