The Service-Quality Audit

Abstract

Hotel companies have tried to implement service-quality-improvement programs with varying degrees of success. Far from being a fad, quality improvement by any name is an essential and continuous management responsibility. Although it is not possible to measure every aspect of the service encounter, most steps can be quantified and measured. More important, the cost of the failure to execute any of those steps can be calculated with reasonable accuracy. Using a service-quality audit, managers and quality-improvement teams can identify errors and determine their frequency, assign costs of fixing (or notfixing) the errors, and identify the steps to prevent them. As an example, the audit of a full-service hotel examined the costs of errors in transactions at the front desk. The most common error was failure to post late charges to the guest's folio, which cost the hotel an estimated $250,000 per year, considering the frequency of the error, the time spent correcting the folio, and the likelihood that an unhappy guest will not return due to that error. By addressing this and other errors, the hotel's management can improve the guest experience and control costs.