Customer-Orientated Bureaucracy – Literature Review
Introduction
Customer-driven service management was perceived to be a key towards achieving the competitive edge. Service management refers to the interplay between the actual sales and the customer; to wit, customers were looking for personal yet accessible service. In the hospitality industry, service is the heart of the business; therefore, the management of such will be an important element on the success of the business. In an era of perceive sameness of products and services between companies, the strategic delivery of customer-perceived value is essential to which the paper will discuss in-depth.
Customer-orientated bureaucracy in hospitality context: Standardisation vs. customisation of services
Hospitality service management conforms to four attributes: intangibility, inseparability, variability and perishability. According to Lockyer (2007), these characteristics will greatly determine on how hospitality players consider customer satisfaction as individualistic and as transient; customer needs as immediate, personal and uncontrollable, and on how customers influence other customers and how customer expectations can trigger ambiguity (pp. 1-4). Lowenstein (1991) maintains that “customer loyalty is perhaps the most desirable strategic objective for any business. Industries are beginning to understand the concept that their customers are the primary drivers of their position on the profitability ladder” (p. xiii). It is also becoming widely known that the support of the customer requires a complex infrastructure which should also contain a mechanism whereby the customer is effectively supported.
Customer needs are the driving standards of service and work requirement upwards, a reason why companies are continuously investing and striving to proactively respond to such through quality service. In lieu with this, the management does not always have to act in customer-oriented ways but rather on rationalised, efficient ways. As Ackers and Wilkinson (2003) put it, the management would want the image of the authoritative customer to be partly embodied, to garner moralised customer-oriented behaviour and to provoke workforce concerns for efficient customer handling (p. 274). This is customer-orientated bureaucracy at work, which:
“captures the requirements for the organisation to be both formally rational, to respond to competitive pressures to appeal to customers’ wishes for efficiency, and to be formally irrational, to enchant, responding to the customers’ desire for pleasure” (Korczynski, 2002, p. 64).
Customer-driven system purports the continuous search for optimisation of service features at the highest level of scale and cost position available to them. The trend is between standardisation and customisation. Segal-Horn and Faulkner (1999, p. 192) contend that standardisation and customisation vary among industries and resource emphasis, and this could be also combined. Standardisation (one size fits all) and customisation (one of a kind) are both value creation techniques. For instance, in the hospitality environment, processes, practices and systems could be standardised for back-office while customised on front-office (p. 190).
Standardisation or customisation, these two empowers consumer through providing them the best value. Nonetheless, customers are after the security of a reliable brand but will not compromise the anonymity of treatment associated (Lashley, 2001, p. 240). The necessity for standardisation is central on striking a balance between controlling the services and the flexibility within them with respect to the customer expectations. This can be done through controlling the actions and behaviours of the employees to ensure that both the needs of the organisation and the customers are met (Herath, 2007). Put simply, the international hotel industry is becoming more standardised with concerns on control, predictability and risk minimisation as equally becoming more profound, especially in the part of the employees (Sandoff, 2005).
Customisation seems to be getting momentum recently though customisation utilises standardisation principles. Standardisation has been superseded by customised goods and services since customisation explicitly manifest the ability to be able to solve problem and empathise with customer wants and needs. Korczynski (2001) suggest that bureaucratic customer-orientation is possible when both standardisation and customisation could co-exist in the model of customer-oriented bureaucracy whereby customisation of services is represented by customer-orientation and standardisation of services is captured by the concept of bureaucracy without sacrificing any one of the technique. Important is that the ability to provide to provide for customer-orientation within the standardised bureaucratic process allows the individual needs of the customers to be met. The levels of standardisation and customisation could be determined depending on the strategic direction and the levels of control required.
Simons (2005) suggested that the strategies the management employs shall feature the accountability system that defines roles, rights and responsibilities which impacts directly on the performance of every employee. Therefore, the varying requirements for control mechanisms to which the employee behaviour could be adapted. The necessity of modifying the employee behaviours is central on providing services to customers that within the realm of bureaucratic context. Realising this, the level of standardisation and customisation in service interactions is an important strategic decision that impacts on the hospitality organisation, employees and customers, an important endeavor in achieving the organisational objectives while also investing on the human side of it (as cited Goodsir, 2008).
In the hospital setting, the customer service orientation of the employees is vital in the delivery of superior service quality. Organisational behaviours affect the service quality at individual levels with respect to customer’s perception of service quality. This may even have an impact on their contribution to internal organisation with respect to the managerial relevance of the service quality (Ibid). As such, in the hospitality industry, high levels of customisation and high levels of standardisation is possible. As Goodsir also made mention that the completion of a hospitality encounter involves how people behave and interact with their surrounding; true enough, what the author is attempting to conclude is that service encounters does not only conform to the actual providing of service but even before the moment customers enter to the physical premise where services are expected to be provided and after they left the said premise.
Interaction between customers and customers is the central aspect that the industry is seeking to provide. Employees are entrusted to provide services to customers in the manner that reflects the character the organisation wants to portray. Within the hospitality organisation, every action that the customer service employee undertakes influences the customer’s perception of the organisation. Hence, it is critical to align employee behaviour with the image and personality of the organisation (Harris and Fleming, 2005). To do this, there are required customer service skills and competencies. Spencer and Spencer (1993) assert that competencies of individuals which consists mainly of skills, knowledge, self-concept, traits and motives will determine the different levels of success achieved; individual competency definitions and scales relates to various behaviours which are then connected to performance of the employees.
References
Ackers, P. and Wilkinson, A. (2003). Understanding Work and Employment. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Goodsir, W. (2008). Managing employee customer service interpersonal exchanges in the hospitality industry: A New Zealand hotel case study. School of Hospitality and Tourism, Auckland University of Technology.
Harris, E., & Fleming, D. (2005). Assessing the human element in service personality formation: personality congruency and the Five Factor Model. Journal of Service Marketing, 19(4), 187-198.
Herath, S. (2007). A framework for management control research. Journal of management development, 26(9), 895-915.
Korczynski, M. (2002), Human Resource Management in Service Work, Basingstoke: Palgrave.
Lashley, C. (2001). Empowerment. Butterworth-Heinemann.
Lockyer, T. L. G. (2007). The International Hotel Industry. Philadelphia, PA: Haworth Press.
Lowenstein, M. W. (1991). The Customer Loyalty Pyramid. Westport, CT: Quorum Books.
Sandoff, M. (2005). Customization and standardization in hotels - a paradox or not? International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 17(6), 529-535.
Segal-Horn, S. and Faulkner, D. (1999). The Dynamics of International Strategy. Cengage Learning EMEA.
Simons, R. (2005). Levers of Organization Design: How managers use accountability systems for greater performance and commitment. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.
Spencer, L., & Spencer, S. (1993). Competence at Work: Models for Superior Performance. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
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