Abstract
This case study presents a stormy incident at Green Kitchen Family Restaurant (GKFR) about a service delay. A group of customers came to the restaurant after a tiresome journey and the hunger was visible on their faces. After taking the order, the steward usually briefs the customer about the delivery time. As the steward who handled that table was a newcomer and he missed informing them the delivery time. The peak hour rush on that day was just that they had to wait for a little extra than usual. This aggravated the anger of the customer which resulted in a poor feedback and a complaint posted on Google+ about the service delay at GKFR. Now the task before the founder is, how to deal with such complaints from a tech-savvy customer and the need to understand the nature and implications of the social media network posts to devise optimal service recovery mechanisms for better customer relationship management.
Keywords
Introduction
The incident that happened during May 2017 at Green Kitchen Family Restaurant (GKFR 1 ) was about a service delay, which aroused the anger of a customer. The time coincided with the peak time of pilgrimages to Sabarimala (a famous temple) when the restaurant was full for an afternoon lunch, and the customer had to wait for a little extra than usual. Delayed service aggravated the customer’s anger that resulted in a poor feedback and a complaint posted on Google+ about the service delay at GKFR. These kinds of negative review messages can spread very fast and create a damaging impact because customers always rely on views of other customers shared via social media. Now the task before the founder was, how to deal with such complaints from a tech-savvy customer and the need to understand the nature and implications of the social media network posts to devise optimal service recovery strategy for better customer relationship management.
Theni is a small town surrounded by the Western Ghats located in Tamil Nadu, India, which holds the nature’s beauty through its spicy green plants and tea gardens. It is en route for tourists and pilgrims travelling to Kerala. Mr S. D. Saravana Gughan, popularly known as SDS, who was a native of Theni, identified this locational advantage to start a casual dining restaurant here during the month of May 2015. The restaurant was named as GKFR as it shared the mission of being green with its location and the environment. The use of technology in branding had taken GKFR to a wide range of customers and tourists. GKFR used Google+, TripAdvisor, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, online review sites and blogging websites, and proved that growth of a restaurant was possible even in a not-so-popular location like Theni. The last decade saw a drastic and rapid change in the behaviour and mindset of the customers due to the internet and digital revolution that empowered customers. Tech-savvy customers used social media websites to rate different restaurants, check out the menu and rates of dishes and to get a feel of the ambiance. They selected a restaurant based on the reviews of other customers put on social media. With all these developments in using technology and social media, there were some ill effects too, especially when, the founder had to deal with a poor rating given by a wired customer in a complex 24◊7 connected world.
Restaurant Industry in India
The restaurant industry in India is divided into five segments, quick service restaurants (QSR), casual dining restaurants, cafés, fine dining restaurants and pubs. QSR and casual dining restaurants accounted for 74 per cent of the market. The fine and casual dining segments were expected to register market growth of more than 18 to 20 per cent and 15 to 17 per cent, respectively (KPMG, 2016).
GKFR in Casual Dining Space
The founder of GKFR Mr SDS was a first-generation entrepreneur with 25 years of experience globally in food and retail. Once, while travelling from Chennai to Theni, he visited some restaurants where the food was not up to the mark and the restrooms were very shabbily maintained. He understood the need for a restaurant with clean & fresh food, well-maintained toilets, play area and ample parking space. This was the motivation for SDS behind starting GKFR as a casual dining restaurant with the main objectives being safe, clean and tasty food (Figure 1). He named it as GKFR to associate the name green to be fresh, unique and in synch with the surrounding. GKFR was a family owned partnership firm where his wife and father-in-law were the partners.
The Service Delay Drama
In spite of all the developments happening in the tech-space, being in the food service sector the restaurant had to face the challenges of labour shortage, a sudden increase in prices of inputs, managing peak hour rush, complaints from disgruntled customers, etc. The knowledge and awareness levels of the customers had increased manifold and they were extremely confident that an alternative supplier or a service provider is just a click away.
The recent issue was about a service delay, which aroused the anger of a customer. The time coincided with the peak time of pilgrimage and the restaurant was full for an afternoon lunch. It was a challenging task for the serving staff during the peak hour rush as the restaurant practiced filling up the meal platter only on the spot so that the food remained fresh and hot. The person who took the order usually briefed the customer about the delivery time and how the food was served fresh and hot to them. There was a group of customers, who came to the restaurant after a tiresome journey. They were hungry and the hunger was visible on their faces. Unfortunately, a new service staff who did not have sufficient experience handled their table. He missed informing the customers about the waiting time. The peak hour rush on that day was very high and the waiting time was more than usual. This situation aggravated the anger of the customer and resulted in a poor feedback and a complaint posted on Google+. On social media news especially the sensational one travels much faster than other media and can reach even the remotest corner of the connected world. These kinds of negative reviews can create a damaging impact because customers always looked for information and rating from other customers shared via social media.
The Challenge Before the Protagonist
For SDS, restricting the damaging effects of the negative review was a prime challenge in the growth stage because image destruction will worsen the customer perception and might not attract new customers to the restaurant. Seemingly, he felt these small mistakes in service quality could lead to higher customer dissatisfaction which needs to be addressed in the initial stages itself. Now the task before the founder was twofold—to adopt a strategy to deal with complaints posted on the social media network and to devise an optimal service recovery mechanism for maintaining customer relationship. If not done quickly, the number of deserting customers will grow and repeat customers, as well as new customers, will decline. It is also inevitable for the restaurant to build good customer relationship and loyalty because acquiring a new customer can cost five times more than satisfying and retaining the current ones. The best way to build loyalty is through excellent service quality that exceeds the expectation of consumers. However, in some unavoidable situations, such incidents might happen in GKFR. So, what is the curative measure SDS should adopt? The answer is to apply an efficient service recovery mechanism.
This case provides a framework for restaurant owners to understand the need for service recovery in the operations perspective. SDS was trying to relate this situation of GKFR to apply a comprehensive service recovery framework.
Growth Path and Current Status
The founder’s exposure to global food and the retail market was an advantage for this restaurant and it could make its mark in a short period. They had 50 employees including chefs, service and cleaning staff. GKFR had 200 seating capacity (Figure 2) with separate coffee and juice stalls. The restaurant with the help of Reliance Jio provided free Wi-Fi to customers. The direct tie-up of the restaurant with the farmers gave them access to fresh farm products at a reasonable rate. They followed the kitchen order token (KOT 2 ) system synchronized with Android order taking applications via mobile and tablets. SDS felt serving fresh food and focus on quality had resulted in huge footfalls. His experience with an MNC food chain helped him in standardizing the shelf life for each ingredient and the cooked food. He also ensured that the food was cooked fresh only after receiving the order. This was possible through the knowledge transfer made to the chefs who learned the tricks of the trade.
Following features were unique to GKFR:
Cooking was done fresh only after taking the order. Thali was assembled on the spot so that it was served hot to the customer. Using fresh ingredients. Vegetables were purchased daily. Milk was purchased twice a day. The cooking formula was maintained the same even if the price of inputs rose. Staying away from the use of chemicals or thickeners in any type of food. Menu card had QR code, a two-dimensional barcode used to provide easy access to information through smartphone (Figure 3). Wheat parathas (a type of South Asian flatbread that is fried in a pan or baked in a tandoor) were promoted. The walls were painted with the pictures of the surrounding tourist destinations along with the site description and distance. GKFR was the first to introduce microbial toilets in Tamil Nadu which can save 0.3 million litres of water in a year. The microbial pads were changed once in four weeks and the toilets were cleaned every 30 minutes. The customer area was cleaned every 30 minutes with sanitizers. Play area for children was a very rare phenomenon in a restaurant.
They had a very effective data monitoring system using past footfalls and serving sizes. Efficient data management was done to arrive at the volumes on a daily basis. Every hour, four kinds of reports were generated and shared with promoters through e-mails. They were individual product report, group product report, section-wise report and total report. At the end of the day, a waste report was also generated. At 4
Use of Technology in the Restaurant Business
Big data analytics and cloud computing assisted restaurant owners to derive value out of data. The use of big data and cloud technologies facilitated inventory management, customer management and order management. To enhance customer experience and increase operational efficiency, various restaurants and cafés used digital devices, such as digital kiosks and tablets for displaying menu items, to place orders and provide feedback (Mehrotra, 2016). Customers have also started to rely on technology to compare restaurant ratings, menu items and user reviews for making decisions about their eating preferences (Food Safety Helpline, 2015).
To be the pioneer, SDS integrated technology in every possible process at GKFR starting from taking customer orders. Cooking was done fresh based on the KOT. The founder relied on extensive data monitoring using past footfalls and serving sizes to optimize between stock out and unsold food. Moreover, the menu card had a QR code, which could be scanned by a customer to give a rating or a feedback immediately about their dining experience at GKFR. They also had a pre-empted thank you message on the bulletin board to post customers’ reviews on social media (Figure 4).
Brand Creation Through Social Media
Social media has become an integral part of the lifestyle of the younger generation to express their views and opinions, compare and evaluate choices and share feedback. Since the youth constituted a large part of the customer base for the foodservice brands, social media has become one of the most important media to connect with them (Shukla, Yadav, & Sharma, 2014). Social media was a cost-effective approach and various Indian foodservice operators were making use of social media to communicate offers, incentives, product information and promotions. Several food service brands introduced innovative campaigns on social media to lure customers to their outlets and increase footfalls. Foodservice players were intensely trying to leverage these platforms to increase their interaction with customers, as these platforms also act as effective ways to receive customer feedback helping the brand to change strategies or take corrective actions when required (KPMG, 2016).
GKFR was a very good example of the transition from traditional marketing methods to technology-enabled methods. The use of social media in branding took the restaurant to a wide range of customers and tourists and helped them to quickly make a mark. The website
Assessment of Service Quality
The assessment of service quality is done by the gap analysis between the expectation of a consumer before availing the service and the perception of the same consumer after using the service. The service quality of a restaurant has five dimensions (Parasuraman, Zheitmal, & Berry, 1985):
Reliability: Reliable service performance is a very important expectation which means that the service is accomplished on time in a consistent manner and without errors every time. In case of GKFR, from the viewpoint of a customer, reliable service could be accomplished by enabling timely service as promised, living up to the expectations of the customers in terms of serving tasty, hygienic and safe food. Responsiveness: Responsiveness is the willingness to help customers and to provide a prompt service. In case of a service failure, the ability to quickly recover the situation creates a positive image. In this case, as a precautionary measure, the steward should have been proactive in understanding the situation and informing the customer well in advance that there will be a delay due to heavy rush. Since the steward was new and not proactive, at least as a curative measure he should have apologized explaining them the reason for the delay and could have offered fillers until the main course was served. Assurance: Assurance signifies the knowledge and courtesy along with the ability to convey trust and confidence. The incident could have been avoided if the steward had assured that, although there may be some delay due to rush they would serve them fresh, hot food and make them feel that the time waited is worth it. Empathy: Empathy is to provide individualized attention and care to consumers. In the case of GKFR, the manager or SDS himself should have taken control over the situation by personally going to the table and explaining how GKFR maintains quality and freshness also suggesting them an alternate menu with quick delivery time. Tangibles: Tangibles contain the conditions of the physical surroundings including facilities, equipment and personnel. Here, the children play area, clean toilets and substantial car parking space act as evidence. Tangibles play a very important role in assisting the service provider in delivering the service as per the standards.
Service Recovery Framework
J. A. Fitzsimmons and Fitzsimmons (2006) in their book on service management beautifully articulated the choices exercised by dissatisfied customers thereby urging the managers to proactively engage customers so as to avoid the causes of dissatisfaction:
The average business only hears from 4 per cent of its dissatisfied customers, out of the remaining 96 per cent who do not bother to complain, 25 per cent of them have serious problems. The 4 per cent who complain are more likely to be loyal than are the 96 per cent who do not complain. About 60 per cent of the complainers would stay as a customer if their problem were resolved and 95 per cent would stay if their problem were resolved quickly. A dissatisfied customer will tell from 10 to 20 other people about his or her problem whereas a customer whose problem has been resolved by a company will tell approximately 5 people.
The service recovery framework of Miller, Craighead, and Karwan (2000) could be used by GKFR to recover from service failures more effectively and efficiently. The model can be understood under three phases, namely pre-recovery phase, immediate recovery phase and follow-up recovery phase. The outcome of this model can be measured by customer loyalty, satisfaction and retention.
Pre-recovery phase: This phase enumerates the factors that are in place prior to the moment of truth. 3 These factors form the basis of service recovery expectations. This phase begins with the service failure and lasts until the service provider becomes aware of the failure. Understanding the factors will help the service provider in strengthening the service delivery and in designing an effective service recovery process.
Perceived service quality: GKFR has created service quality expectations (refer to Figure 1) for its consumers but has clearly not covered all the areas of service encounters. The higher is the perceived service quality, the higher is the service recovery expectations. GKFR should explicitly mention its quality policy of preparing the food only after the order is taken in order to serve it hot and fresh in the figures or on the menu so that the perceived service quality can be created in the minds of the consumers that will arrest the dissatisfaction due to delay in serving.
Measuring the severity of the failure: The severity of the failure increases the service recovery expectations of the consumer. The cost of compensation to consumers may vary case by case. GKFR should record such critical incidents as a learning experience to prevent reoccurrence.
How to invoke service guarantee?: Service guarantee 4 charts a course of action which will be taken in case a service failure occurs. Consumers expect companies to live up to the committed course of actions as a gesture of invoking the service guarantee. As a part of the policy, GKFR can formulate the courses of action to be followed to ensure service guarantee. Upon detection of a service failure, any employee can take the course of action as per policy without needing any permission of superiors.
Customer loyalty: Loyalty has a direct effect on service recovery expectations. The higher the loyalty the time to recover from a service failure is more. Higher expectations make it more difficult to recover from a service failure; on the contrary customers with no expectations of recovery may just leave and never return. GKFR can administer a questionnaire to the customers to understand their experiences and identify the expectations. Simpler but effective methods of either ringing a bell or switching on green (indicating satisfaction) or red (indicating dissatisfaction) lights may be used to entice customers to register their satisfaction (or dissatisfaction) post consumption of food.
Immediate recovery: This phase begins when the service provider becomes aware of the failure and concludes when a fair resolution is accepted by the customer. This is a very important phase affecting the satisfaction and loyalty, which declines if there is a tardy response. The efforts during this phase should be on providing a prompt and fair resolution to the customer.
The types of recovery activities undertaken during the immediate and follow-up phases can be understood in two forms:
Psychological—Apology and empathy: This is the basic and the direct attempt to defuse the situation by showing concern to the customer’s problem. Apology and empathy are two powerful yet simple tools when utilized together for service recovery. Both have to be utilized carefully as if utilized improperly the situation may aggravate. Here, SDS could intervene and make sure the customer is eased out and made cool. Tangible—Fair fix and value added: This recovery effort focuses on offering compensation for real and perceived damages to the customer. The basic intent is to provide a fair resolution for the costs and inconvenience caused by the service failure. Sometimes the customers are provided resolutions more than the perceived costs and inconvenience, to overcome the bad experience and to increase loyalty. The restaurant can provide some filler to compensate for the time delay for immediate recovery.
The proper delivery of service recovery can be ensured by the following:
Front line empowerment: The service employee is the face of the company to the customer. If the service employee is trained and empowered to compensate a dissatisfied customer for a service failure, the chances of converting the customer to be satisfied and a loyal customer are higher. After adequate training, SDS should empower the stewards to take ownership and handle the situation amicably. Speed of recovery: The speed at which the service failure is solved directly impacts the image of the company to the customer. If the failure is solved promptly, then the customer remains happy and satisfied. The ideal situation is to identify and solve the failure before the customer becomes aware of it. This can be enabled at GKFR by giving the liberty to the steward to serve starters of customer’s choice as a compliment. Follow-up recovery: This phase begins after the customer has been provided a fair resolution. The follow-up recovery might or might not be required depending on the success of the immediate recovery efforts as well as the severity of the failure.
Alternate Approaches to Service Recovery
Some alternative approaches to service recovery as proposed by J. A. Fitzsimmons and Fitzsimmons (2006) are:
Case-by-case approach: This approach addresses customer complaints individually. This is the least expensive way to resolve a service failure, but this is influenced by subjectivity. An aggressive customer might get a better response compared to a reasonable customer which might generate unfairness. In GKFR, SDS can intervene once the dissatisfied customer voices his concern and take charge to solve the situation professionally. Systematic response approach: This method uses a protocol to resolve service failures. This method is more reliable than the case-by-case approach as it is a planned response based on the identification of critical failure points and prior determination of appropriate recovery criteria. This method will work effectively if the recovery guidelines are updated constantly for a consistent and timely response. A service recovery guide has to be prepared by GKFR and has to be updated constantly for reference. All employees should be trained periodically. Early intervention approach: This method adds a new dimension to the systematic response by attempting to intervene and fix service problems before they actually affect the customers. GKFR can make a service promise but mention the contingencies as disclaimers and explain the same to customers for better understanding.
Suggested Techniques for Containing Negative Word of Mouth Effects
According to Thomas, Peters, Howell, and Robbins (2012) there are different techniques to contain the word of mouth effects, namely delay, respond, partner, legal action and censorship.
Delay
The delay strategy is based on the idea that if the company delays the response to a particular social media campaign, the issue will die down automatically. This strategy gives the company time to review and develop a proper response. Although in today’s socially connected world this strategy might be unrealistic, in some situation ignoring negative attacks may prevent a faceoff with the customer in an open forum. This strategy best works if customers of the company are not heavy users of social media. A disadvantage of this strategy could be that the company might be perceived to be unresponsive and apathetic towards customer complaints. As GKFR is a new restaurant and the customers are highly networked through social media, adopting this strategy might cause negative image and feeling that the restaurant is not bothered to respond to complaints.
Respond
This strategy involves acknowledging and addressing the negative feedbacks generated via social media. The response may vary from addressing individual feedbacks to taking actions due to pressure from a large group of customers. The advantage of this strategy is the opportunity provided to actively participate and converse in social media. This increases the chance of increasing the loyalty of the customers. By responding online, the company can soothe any hype, control the conversations online and project that a transparent and authentic opportunity is provided to address the complaints. The company must be careful in resolving and correcting the customers in a subtle manner. This is the best technique GKFR can adopt. GKFR should actively involve in responding by regretting the inconvenience and inviting the customer to be part of the service recovery process.
Partner
In this strategy, the company opts a customer to partner in the marketplace treating them as pseudo-employees. The customer assists in promoting, managing and defending the brand of the company. This approach allows fans of the brand to be associated with the company which increases transparency and authenticity which are really useful for social media campaigns. The disadvantage is that the company is giving control to the customer which might result in uncontrolled comments being made about the company. As the restaurant expands its business with more outlets this can be an ideal strategy.
Legal Action
To contain the negative effect the aggrieved party can initiate a judicial proceeding against the perpetrator. In the case of social media, either the affected individual or the firm can start the process. For a relatively new phenomenon like social media, there is a limited precedent. To date, most social media lawsuits involve defamation. Being a long drawn and expensive process, it is not appropriate for a firm of the size of GKFR.
Censorship
This involves removing or suppressing unwanted information vis the social media forum. From the viewpoint of consumers, censorship is associated with a lack of authenticity and transparency. To companies, censorship is associated with protection of the brand image from negative social media campaign. This move of containing negative effect requires comprehensive and continuous monitoring and suitable actions. It also lacks the immediacy which is very essential in a networked society. GKFR cannot adopt this tactic.
Epilogue
The restaurant should analyse the circumstances that led to the anger of the customer resulting in a poor feedback. GKFR should formulate measures to prevent such circumstances in the future. There is an utmost need to monitor service quality at frequent intervals. This will help SDS to identify the gaps for improvement. SDS is required to devise an optimal service recovery mechanism for improving CRM. The poor feedback gets converted into a negative word of mouth (WOM), which will be disastrous for the service industry. The requirement is to suggest strategies to manage negative WOM.
Declaration of conflicting interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this case.
Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this case.