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Article 1 : A Lesson on Tourists' Dissatisfaction
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> What Is The Case?
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Perhaps it is about time we switch the focus from making tourists satisfied to preventing them from being dissatisfied. The fact is tourists’ dissatisfaction is relatively high in the travel and tourism industry and we have to be vigilant in suppressing their dissatisfaction level. While customer satisfaction leads to increased profits, customer
dissatisfaction can destroy reputation and can also “eat” up huge marketing funds for expensive repair job.
You probably have been a dissatisfied tourist before (not discounting me too) where we were put through an “obstacle course” trying to register our complaints on a rude staff or a poorly delivered service. So what happened then? We became even more dissatisfied, more frustrated and angry thus turning a minor grievance into a major one. Did
the organisation realise this? I am not very sure about that.
Isn’t it time we change our focus? Human nature is such that when we set ourselves to avoid pitfalls, we learn to be extra careful and proactive to ensure it does not happen again. Let us learn by asking some important questions.
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>> What Does Your Customers Really Expect?
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What do you think your customers expect more if you are in the fast food business - the taste of the food or the fast delivery? If the issue is on the speed of delivery, then finding ways to cut down the queue or waiting time is the thing to do most. What about if you are in the travel business - is it about
more holiday choices or fun and enjoyment? If the latter is more important, then, investing in delivering an enjoyable itinerary is better than telling the customers that they have 100 product choices to choose from
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>>> What Is The Importance Of “Human Touch”?
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We need to know first that most tourists are nice people. They have a great deal of patience when things go wrong. So allow them to deflect through various means – a caring smile, a verbal apology, a sense of warmth or a creative compensation. Give them this human touch and not treat them like another “statistic”,
or worst still, another commodity, with minimal importance to your company. Remember, the tourism business is lesser about “people”, but is more about caring for the “human beings”. Thus, the individual human touch will go a long way.
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>>>> What Will Prepare You Well For The “Not So Nice Tourists”?
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While most tourists are nice, there will always be some who will never be happy no matter how good, patient and polite you are to them. You need not be disheartened when you meet one or two along the way. Take them as the exception, rather than the rule. This outlook will prevent you from losing your enthusiasm
or becoming cynical to the majority of nicer ones.
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>>>>> What You Gain From Making It Easy For Tourists To Give Feedback?
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One place to check is the support structure that you have in place when tourists want to give a feedback. The phone menu is one. The layers of people they have to go through is another. There is nothing more frustrating to a complainant than not being able to speak to a person. Most people simply do not want to
go through a maze of phone menus or people just to lodge a legitimate complaint. Invest a little more or re-design your organisation structure to make your organisation feedback-friendly!
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>>>>>> What Will Stop The “Passing Of The Buck” Culture?
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Perhaps nothing frustrates a tourist more than being told that this issue is “not my responsibility” or “I need to refer to someone else”. Complaining tourists are not a swarm of collective enemies waiting to bounce on you! So tear down the huge bureaucracies and "stated policies" that are inadvertently
put up as excuses not to work, listen or deal with their issues. Instead, empower your employees with the powers to make logical and discretionary decisions on the spot.
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>>>>>>> What Is The Connection Between Caring For Your Employees And Caring For Your Tourists?
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Never forget that happy and satisfied employees are the best defense against dissatisfied customers. When your employees believe that the management cares about them, there is a higher probability that they will care about their customers. They are in a better mood to provide them with the type of service that turns
dissatisfaction into memorable caring experiences.
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Article 2 : Customer Disservice and Employee Disloyalty
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> What Is The Root Cause?
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Many organisations focus on the wrong places to improve their service quality. The most common thing they do is to send their people for customer service programs. Although this is good but when employer-employee relationship is not at healthy levels, no matter how good the training is, nothing much will get into the head (and heart) of dissatisfied
employees. They will still not provide the required service to tourists.
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>> Is This Employee Disloyalty?
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As a coach who has worked with many organisations, I have often heard of such remark ‘employees are not as loyal as they used to be these day’ from employers when poor performance is displayed by their employees.
Particularly so in the tourism industry where it is known for their high employee turnover, low pay and often-capricious management, this thing about ‘employee disloyalty’ is a popular piece of conversation at boardrooms and cocktail parties!
The question is: are employees all at fault? And are employers totally absolved from blame? If employers want to get to the bottom of it, then take time off to reflect on what they are doing, and what they can do to turn ‘disloyal employees’ to loyal ones.
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>>> What’s The Reality About The New Generation of Employees?
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The first place to start is to accept the reality of the new generation of employees; they are different from those of the past. There is nothing sad about this, for we too have changed. The working environment has changed and we no longer use typewriters. Lifestyle has changed too; we no longer drive around in non air-con cars. And the
list goes on and on…. So instead of groaning and complaining, learn to tune in to our leadership ways to suit the changed workplace and changed employees.
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>>> Where Is The First Place To Start?
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Create a positive work environment and treat your employees like the way you treat your tourists; give them a good experience working for you. Let them know clearly what you expect from them and stick to it. Nothing is more worse than when their job expectations and descriptions change every other day.
In the same way, share with them the kind of service you want for your tourists and you live up to it. If it is reliability, responsiveness and value for time (money) that you want, then find out how you can translate these values into the workplace practices like how you can be reliable to fulfill your promises, how you can be responsive to their
needs, and how they can enjoy (receive value from) their jobs.
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>>>> What Is The Next Place To Start?
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Make them feel that everyone is part of a single team. Treat them like how you treat yourself. Reward them for a job well done. Give them positive strokes for any accomplishments, no matter how small they are. Give them in small doses, instead of a big one at the end of the year.
Like tourists, treat every employee as an individual so that they get your individual attention. Show them empathy, use their names and let them know how important they are. When you make a mistake, apologise to them so that you stay focused on fixing a problem.
Be ‘sensitive’ and learn about your people’s body language. Some examples: when they turn their heads when you are speaking to them, they may be telling you that they disagree with you or your policy. When they turn their shoulders away, you could be losing their attention. When they fold their arms, they may be on guard against you
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>>>>> What Is The Last Word?
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Making changes in your organisation is almost inevitable, especially so under this current economic time. Some smaller but vital details must be taken into consideration when implementing them. One of them is to understand the psychology of change itself. Do not push too hard on changes as they have their limits. You also need to have
good reasons for people to change if you want to prevent the old ways from creeping back. While you work on the ‘big picture’, pay similar attention to the ‘smaller picture’ of change too if you want change in your organization to be successful.
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Article 3 : The Hard Truth About Price Slashing
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How low can you go? That’s the lyrics of the familiar ‘Limbo Rock’ song that challenges partygoers to the dance floor to test their flexibility. Not only at parties, but the ‘how low can you go’ phrase has even become the market place strategies of many tourism organisations competing for the tourist dollars.
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> The Fact About Today’s Customers
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While this may create fresh impetus for tourists to travel in the shorter term, one must never forget that the same happy people who are tempted with ‘special holiday offers’ can be disappointed people in the longer term after returning from their vacations. Why? Because the same people who are tempted by price offers will still insist on having good memory
of their holiday experience.
In other words, they do not want to be housed in poor conditioned hotels, swallowing miserable meals and an empty boring itinerary with a list of ‘hidden costs’ of essentials that are not included.
So are the tourists unreasonable? You can defend yourself by hiding behind the statement of ‘what you pay is what you get’? Tourism enterprises have to face up to one fact about the tourism business. Fundamentally, tourism is all about selling of memories and the creation of experience. Remember this is the age of ‘discerning’ customers. Gone
are the days where people are fine with ‘primitive’ conditions when they are holidaying. Today front-liners need not educate their customers so much regarding their holiday plans and what they can do.
Thanks (or no thanks) to modern technology, many tourists are well educated even before they walk into their travel agent. They already know many things about their vacations, including the layout and amenities of the hotel they want to stay! Today's tourists want to know answers to such questions as: How does the tourism product touch my emotions, how
will the experience change my life and how much time will this experience cost me?
So what it means is tourism enterprises who sell destinations, accommodations and transportation to their customers are not selling anything new to tourists. In other words, almost everyone is simply ‘commodities’. If there is one thing that can differentiate them from others, it is experiential service.
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>> The Truth About Short Term Competitive Strategies
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The sad thing is many entrepreneurs still stubbornly want to believe they are selling tourism products (instead of tourism experience), although they had been using the ‘experiential strategy in their early years of business to win over customers and built loyal ones. They conveniently forget that their ‘once upon a time’ strong base of loyal customers
grew because of the great experience they have had with their tourism products. Success inevitably get into the heads of many and perhaps even greed. Short of other innovative ideas to deal with these constraints, many start to look for shorter cut or easy way to profitability. One of the most common strategies is the ‘lower price and poor service’ strategy. Subsequently, this begin to offend their invaluable loyal customers who are now getting poorer service and lousy experience. Thus this leaves a big
hole in their balanced sheet for the easy revenue coming from these loyal customers are often targeted by other competitors, and why not? Loyal customers can contribute up to 80% of their business, without the need for any hard and costly advertising tactics.
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>>> The Truth About Winning Competitive Strategies
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The way forward for tourism enterprises is to revamp their current marketing strategies to provide ‘good experiential-service’ to their tourists. Experiential service is more than good service. It is a combination of a number of components that come together to create the tourists’ experience. Among these are the qualities of product, the
quality of the tourism environment, the relationship between the promises made by marketing campaigns and the actual experience itself, and the interaction not only between employees and guests but also between employers with other employees.
In short, develop ways to give customers people best value for their tourism dollar. Make this your business positioning to differentiate yourself from your competitors. If competitive pricing is still needed, then overhaul your business model and cost structures like what Air Asia or Wall Mart are doing for their customers. At the end of
the day, give your tourists what they want without sacrificing the good experience they still insist in wanting.
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