Abstract
The Purpose of this report is to analyze and evaluate various services of The Edge Restaurant and prepare exiting and potential blueprint of the services. The services of The Edge Restaurant are evaluated and determined on five dimensions of quality.
Introduction
Restaurant business is continuously growing at a fast pace. Change in consumer habits and preference towards eating out is fueling the growth of industry. Development in restaurant business also attracts new entrants in the industry. Continuously increasing competition increases customer’s expectations in terms of excellent services at affordable prices. Restaurant business is completely service based; hence it is essential for organizations to deliver excellent customer services to provide customer satisfaction. The Edge Restaurant offers wide variety of European cuisine. The restaurant offers breakfast, lunch and dinner throughout the day. This paper intends to analyze present service package of the Edge Restaurant by conducting a walk through audit. The paper will further propose a blue print of Edge Restaurant services emphasizing on failure points. The will also provide alternative blue print of services to improve the services of Edge Restaurant.
Service Package of The Edge Restaurant:
Service refers to group of activities that are intangible by nature and provide solution to consumer’s requirements. Service package consist range of products and services offered to the customers in same atmosphere. Service package of The Edge Restaurant will include food items and services provided at restaurant. Service package of the Edge Restaurant consist: supporting facilities, food products, explicit and implicit services.
Supporting Facilities: These facilities refer to physical resources that are required for smooth operation of services. Supporting facilities include: locality, building, different features, ambience, equipments, technology and furniture. The Edge Restaurant is situated by University of East London Docklands campus. The restaurant has huge space and good infrastructure. The Edge Restaurant has mix of wooden and marvel flooring. The restaurant has mix of round, square, and rectangular tables with different sizes good to serve two to six people at a time. The restaurant has printer, food preparation related equipments, and card swapping machine for payment (Gale, 1994). The Edge Restaurant use stainless steel, glass, ceramic and terracotta cutleries.
Food Products: The Edge restaurant provides wide range of food and beverages items. Food products are one of the major factors that drive customer’s satisfaction in case of restaurant. In case of The Edge Restaurant, customer’s expectations are high and they want excellent food with effective table services. The Edge Restaurant should have consistent production of food items so that the waiting time is not higher than standard waiting time. The Edge Restaurant offers good amount of food at reasonable prices (Weber, 2008). The quantity that served during different courses is limited and same. The Edge Restaurant offers great variety of menu for different occasions. Customers can select and customize the menu items according to the event and number of people. Restaurant offers items like Roasted sirloin of beef, Breast of corn fed chicken, Smoked Haddock, homemade burger, Fish & Chips, nocchi with spinach & black olives, Provencal sauce, purple rocket and number of starters, desserts and beverages.
Explicit Service: such services refer to associated benefits provided to the consumers along with delivery of food items. Explicit service includes: food presentation, quality and taste of food, aroma, quick delivery, range of food items, and accuracy of services (Kotler, 2009). All these services play a major in delivering customer satisfaction. The Edge Restaurant offer wide selection of food and beverage items. Other services are not that good so that they match up to customer expectations. The prices of the food items are also not very reasonable. For two course lunch customer suppose to pay £20 and for three course lunch the price is £25 (edgerestaurant.co.uk, n.d.). During busy hours it is difficult for Edge to deliver orders in time.
Implicit Service: this refers to psychological benefits provided to the customers while delivering service. If customer is not happy with the delivered service then customer will have negative feeling. The Edge Restaurant is not able to provide effective psychological benefits to the customers, waiting time, staff behavior, comfort and convenience of customers.
Service Blueprint for The Edge Restaurant:
Service process are designed to deliver great customer experience that consists human resources and production processes. Service process refers to group of activities that help in delivering final product to the consumer in effective manner. Service blue print help in analyzing service processes to make them more efficient and consumer oriented (Bitner et al., 2007). Service blue print creates, analyze, structure, organize and develop processes to improve present services. Service blueprint identify existing problems occurring at different levels and suggest new ways to improve the customer experience. Service blueprint mainly consist five elements: Customer actions, onstage/ visible contact employee actions, backstage/ invisible contact employee actions, support processes, and physical evidence.
Service Blueprint of The Edge Restaurant:
In above service blueprint, the areas where The Edge Restaurant does not meet customers’ expectations are highlighted in red.
Walk Through Audit of The Edge Restaurant:
A walk through audit of Edge Restaurant was conducted to analyze different process and efficiency of services. During the audit all five elements of service blueprint were analyzed. A systematic questionnaire tools was designed to conduct walk through audit. Questions covered in the tools are:
- How customer was greeted by the staff of restaurant?
- Is reservation of the seat was made as per order?
- Cleanliness of the common area and seat?
- Overall ambience of the Restaurant (enough lighting, music, smell, cooling surroundings etc.).
- Range and pricing of the food and beverages items.
- Behavior of the employees.
- Timely delivery of order.
- Presentation of the food items.
- Quality and taste of the food.
- Bill receipt and payment
After conducting audit, it was realized that the Edge Restaurant is not delivering excellent customer services. Company is lacking on the areas like staff behavior, overall ambience of the place, on time delivery of order and lack of product knowledge of the staff. The taste and quality of food was good. It was worth paying some extra money for quality and tasty food.
GAP Analysis:
Gap analysis refers to comparison between existing performance and expected future performance. If organization is fail to utilize all resources effectively to deliver best outcome, it does not yield excellent results. Gap analysis helps in identifying the optimum level of performance by changing or modifying resource allocation (Mehta et al., 2012). Gap analysis comprises determining, and documenting of variance existing between expected and present capabilities.
The gap analysis of Edge Restaurant revels that company is not matching the optimum level of performance. The gaps identified in Edge Services are:
- Customer Gap: Restaurant is not matching the service level desired by the customers. Delivery of order is very slow. Staff does not have complete knowledge about all items listed in the menu (Franklin, 2006). Overall ambience of restaurant was not very good due to inappropriate music and loud smell of food.
- Service Provider Gap: Edge Restaurant does not know the customer expectations. Service standards establish by The Edge restaurant are not as per customer’s expectations. Restaurant also not adhering with the present standards. The Edge Restaurant claims for excellent customer service but it is not able deliver promises.
Service Quality Determinants:
There are various factors that determine service quality and customer satisfaction. Each customer has different set of needs and requirements; each customer perceived quality differently. For example, some customers give preference to taste of the food whereas other gives to timely delivery. Individual attitude, time, occasion and preference influence their perception for service quality. Service oriented organizations very efficiently understand the different needs of customers and satisfy varying needs of their customers (Parsa and Kwansa, 2001). Five dimensions of service quality and their application on The Edge Restaurant are:
Reliability: reliability is very essential dimension for customers. Reliability refers to delivering promises consistently and accurately. If company is not delivering the services as per promise, it will lose credibility and customers. In case of The Edge Restaurant, Company is delivering the excellent services as per promises. Restaurant does not match timely delivery and good ambience according to its promises. Edge should specify the time limit for service delivery. For example Edge should deliver every order within ten minutes of time. Every hour staff will do cleaning of common area and cutlery will be removed from within a minute customer asked for bill receipt (Zeithaml, 2010).
Assurance: this refers to behavior and knowledge of staff. Employees play a major role in developing faith and confidence in customers. Employees directly interact with the customers while delivering services. Thereby, their attitude, knowledge, behavior and ability to gain trust of customers are very important. Staff of Edge Restaurant is not able to gain customer confidence because of their poor knowledge on menu items. Restaurant should organize training programs to inform employees about desired behavior and product knowledge.
Tangibles: this refers to physical amenities, ambience and equipments. In case of restaurant, physical amenities and ambience helped in making customer comfortable. Good ambience helped in increasing customer satisfaction. The Edge Restaurant should improve ambience by keeping proper cleaning and running appropriate music.
Empathy: special attention and care always helps in delighting customer. In case of service, personal attention always make customer feel special and important. The Edge Restaurant emphasize on giving personal attention to customers. Company should create a data base of customers and send them message or e-card on special occasion.
Responsiveness: this refers to readiness to help customers and deliver effective service. Customers recognize extra efforts made by service provider to satisfy them. Responsiveness help in building long term loyalty of customers. Edge Restaurant should emphasize on making prompt services and in making extra efforts to satisfy them.
Technology Use in The Edge Restaurant:
Technology can be used to improve service quality of The Edge Restaurants in following manner:
- Utilization of customer relationship management software to maintain customer data base. It will help in wishing customers on special occasions and knowing customer preference in terms of food and desired table (Mohr, 2011).
- Online customer feedback and common space on the website where customer can share their experience. It will help in gaining positive word-of-mouth.
- Edge Restaurant should utilize mobile services to inform customers about different offers and celebrations.
- Use of advance technology to make payment easier.
- Online seat booking and order placing.
New Service Blueprint for The Edge Restaurant:
Conclusion:
Services plays important role in success of business. The Edge restaurant is in service driven business hence it is essential for organization to offer efficient services by following five dimensions of quality and establishing effective service standards. Restaurant should follow all established service standards and make extra effort to delight customers. Deployment of advance technology will also help in providing delightful experience to customers.
References
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Bitner, M. J., Ostrom, A. L., and Morgan, F. N., 2007. Service Blueprint: A Practical Technique for Service Innovation. USA: Center for Service Leadership, Arizona State University.
edgerestaurant.co.uk, n.d. Edge. [Online] Available at: http://www.edgerestaurant.co.uk/sunday-lunch-menu [Accessed 5 August 2013].
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Gale, B.y., 1994. Managing Customer Value: Creating Quality and Service That Customers Can See. New York: Simon and Schuster.
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