CHAPTER 4 DATA ANALYSIS

Transcription

1 CHAPTER 4 DATA ANALYSIS As mentioned in the chapter 3, the target number of respondent as a requirement of research validity was 94 respondents. It is based on the occurred population (Saung Hotel Resto 1 guest who stayed at least one night at the hotel) that was as many as 1344 guest during April 2007 and June Eventhough the total questionnaires distributed were 150 questionnaires, in the end of the research, there were only 105 valid questionnaires taken from 112 respondents contributed as the research sample during the 3 months period of questionnaire distribution. These valid questionnaires then recapitulated in Microsoft Excell 2003 and SPSS 13. In addition, an interview conducted to cross checking the data provided by the questionnaire or to provide further information. 4.1 Validity and Reliability Test Data validity To decide the validity of the questionnaire, a minimal Corrected Item- Total Correlation score of was used as the validity standard. As shown in Appendix E, all the corrected item-total correlation was scored above It means that all the data provided by the questionnaire were valid and can be use as an input for data analysis Data reliability Cronbach Alpha reliability test was run on the data collected to determine the reliability of it. Results showed that all the values were in range of until According to Sekaran (2000) this output can be considered as good result for a coefficient over and acceptable for those in ranges. Table 4.1 Data Reliability Dimension assessed Cronbach s alpha Dimension assessed Cronbach s alpha Tangible Assurance Reliability Empathy Responsiveness The term Saung Hotel Resto will always be referred as Saung Hotel as a solid business unit and have no direct relation with the condition or issue occurred at Saung Restaurant. 31

2 4.2 Respondent Demographic Profile Shown on Figure 4.1, mostly the respondents were in age 30 until 35 years old (34%). This condition occurred since most of the Saung Hotel Resto guests were a young family, in composition of 2 young people as parents and 2 children. This age was a common age stage for Indonesian young family (bps.go.id, 2007). In bigger scope, 77% of the respondents were in age of 25 until 40 years old. The sample of respondents also contained more females (56%) than male (44%). However, this output does not mean that overall Saung Hotel Resto s customer consisted more female than a male one. This output occurred because at the time of the investigation, female customer had more initiative to participate in this research and more accessible to be approached. The following demographic data (Figure 4.2) related with the respondent s occupation and monthly income information. To prevent question misinterpretation, it was emphasized in the questionnaire that the term income here refers to the respondent s own income. For example, if the respondent was a student with no monthly income, then he or she must check the option of < Rp ,-. About 40% of the respondents were employee (private), 19% of them were housewives and 16% of them acted as an entrepreneur. 25% of them have an income range of Rp ,- until Rp ,-. Generally, it gave an overview about the tendency of people who come to Saung Hotel Resto. Mostly, they are people with a growing or established carrier, come from middle up income segmentation. Figure 4.1 Age and Gender Figure 4.2 Occupations and Income Distribution 32

3 Figure 4.3 shown that the majority (60%) of respondents investigated came from Jakarta. About 30% of them came from Bandung and the rest of them were Bekasi residents. This output influenced by the management decision and marketing plan which targeted Jakarta citizen as their main guest instead of Bandung or other city. In management s opinion, Jakarta people would be eager to spend more times in Lembang since it took more effort for them to come there. In addition; mostly, Jakarta people would spend their time in Lembang to have a holiday together with their family. So, it tends to be a potential market for the hotel business in Lembang. In Figure 4.4, 44 people out of 105 had not been come to Saung Hotel Resto, before their current stay. That amount was about 42% of the total sample size; whereas, 31 people (29%) had once stayed at Saung Hotel Resto before and 22 of them (21%) stayed twice in the past. On other hand, 8 of them (about 8.3%) could be considered as a loyal customer for Saung Hotel Resto since they had been came to the hotel more than five times before their current stay. If we look more closely to the graph, there was no customer who chose 3x, 4x and 5x stay. After further analysis, it was found that some customers have forgotten about how many times they have stayed at the hotel. They then just simply chose more than 5x to emphasized that they have stayed there many times; but of course, it was more than twice. 60% 30% jakarta bandung bekasi 10% Figure 4.3 Daily Residences x 2 x 3 x 4 x 5 x more than 5 x Figure 4.4 Past Stay Frequency at Saung Hotel Resto (in person) 33

4 74% staying with 79% staying occasion 19% 11% 7% family friends working partner / colleagues 10% holiday corporate / organization events others Figure 4.5 Accompanying Parties and Reasons to Stay As targeted by the management, more than 75% of the Saung Hotel Resto customers were people spent their holiday at or near Lembang and stayed together with their family. Eventhough merely occurred in small portion, Saung Hotel Resto were also able to facilitate people or corporate who had working needs, such as regional meeting event or gathering event (11%). This segmentation could be a potential target market for the hotel in the future if treated carefully and consistently. Typically, Saung Hotel Resto customers firstly heard about the service from other people recommendation (Figure 4.6). The word of mouth marketing strategy that is implemented by the management since the beginning of the hotel establishment was proven to be effective because it could attract about 65% of the sample (68 people out of 105) to come to the hotel. Other than that, the billboard set on some potential spots at Lembang also acted as the second most effective media to attract Saung customer. On the other hand, Saung s website ( gave no contribution to the promotion strategy, at least to the 1344 people who came to Saung Hotel Resto during the research period (April 2007 June 2007). There were also 8 respondent heard about Saung Hotel Resto from other resources than ones listed on the question. Unfortunately, they did not identify the specific resource on the survey. Figure 4.6 Sources of Information about Saung 34

5 Hotel Pesona Bamboe Ciater Resort SanGria Resort Geulis Hotel Bilique Hotel Hyatt Jayakarta Sheraton Others Figure 4.7 Past Hotel Staying Experience (in person) From the total of 105 respondents, 34 of them had been stayed at Ciater Resort in the past. 24 of them had been stayed in other hotel or resort located in Lembang (Hotel Pesona Bamboe and SanGria Resort). At least, 59 of them had once experienced stay at well-known star hotel such as Hyatt, Sheraton and Jayakarta. This past experience would influence their expectation to the service provided by the hotel during their other stay. 4.3 SERVQUAL Gaps in Saung Hotel Resto After an overall view of the respondents as a whole, the data and analysis of the SERVQUAL model and gaps existed in Saung Hotel Resto is discussed in this section, which will answer the questions and fulfill the objectives of the conducted research. Table 4.2 below show questionnaires output recapitulation after a questionnaires distribution period of 3 months (April June 2007) with a total respondent of 105 people. The outputs resulted from the computation of the SERVQUAL gap scores determined from the questionnaires that had been distributed during the research to customers (for gap 5 assessment), top management and customer contact employee at the hotel (for gap 1 - gap 4 assessment). Detailed calculation steps can be seen in the Appendix D. Table 4.2 SERVQUAL Gaps at Saung Hotel Resto. G A P management customer contact employee range of gap score 1-0,575-0,684-6 until ,613 3,921 0 until 7 3 4,977 3,742 0 until 7 4 5,197 3,942 0 until 7 Customer Gap (Gap 5), score range between -6 until +6 Tangible Reliability Responsiveness Assurance Emphaty Overall -0,623-0,362-0,212-0,236-0,339-0,352 35

6 5,5 4,5 3,5 2,5 1,5 0,5-0,5-1, customer Management Customer contact employee Figure 4.8 Management and Customer Contact Employee Gap Comparison Similar with the score used by Parasuraman et.al (1990) the score of gap 1 and customer gap viewed in negative number. In these 2 gaps, the gap score logically will be at a range from -6 until +6. The score that is close to -6 means that service provider can not match their service delivery with customer expectation. (Perceived quality was below expectation). The score above 0, means that the provider performances exceed their customer expectation. However, it does not always clarify good performance. If the score was close to +6, it also means that the provider wasted their resource to give unnecessary service to their customer. It could trigger a bad company performance in the long term. The ideal score for gap 1 and 5 was 0 that indicates matching condition between service delivery and customer expectation. Meanwhile, gap 2 until 4 occurred in positive score (the higher the score, the worse the existed gap, the maximum score for these gaps was 7). In general, if both the output of management and employee survey compared one another, the gap score in employee survey result (which use customer contact employee as respondent) tend to be wider than the management survey. Management was more aware with the importance of understanding what their costumer wants so that they had narrower gap than the first-line employees. On the other hand, first line employees or customer contact employees were more responsive to issues related to the existence of Gaps 2, 3 and 4 (represented in smaller gap score than management). This output is in concurrence with the findings in the study conducted by Parasuraman et.al (1990) which stated that manager had a better understanding of customers expectation than contact personnel had but that contact personnel s perception of Gaps 2, 3 and 4 were generally more optimistic. 36

7 On Saung case (Table 4.2), from the five SERVQUAL gaps, the widest gap for overall Saung Hotel Resto service performance takes place in the forth gap (5.197 gap score for management and gap score for firstline employee), in which a service provider can not match their actual service delivery quality with the one they promises prior to their customers stay. As an example the promise in their advertisement or website company profile. In gap 5, that specifically assesses the customer s evaluation, the widest gap occurred in tangible dimension with a gap score This dimension relates with the condition of hotel s physical attributes, personnel and communication tools. In this research, wide gap score can be resulted from two different potential reasons. The first one is the lack of communication between the top management and the customer contact employee in Saung Hotel Resto on it daily operational activities. The second one comes up from the lack of proper recruitment procedure implementation in Saung Hotel Resto. These two reasons will be discussed further in relation to the antecedents of service gap later in this chapter. Subsequently, a detailed analysis about the result of each gap that occurs on the daily operation of Saung hotel will be discussed Gap 1: Not knowing what customers expect This gap addresses the issue that service-firm s executive may not always be completely aware of which characteristics indicate high quality to customers. This first gap was an assessment of differentiation between the service expectation from both customers and the hotel s employees (management and first-line employees). This assessment analyzed some points (the existence of adequate market research utilization, availability of appropriate upward communication, and organization structure) as a service support. As shown in Figure 4.9, overall gap score arise in the first gap was for survey used the management as respondent and for the survey conducted to customer contact employees. It means that both the management and customer contact employees of Saung Hotel Resto still had some lack of understanding and experience in determining what kind of service and quality that exactly expected by their guest. At 37

8 this hotel, the antecedent that contributed the most to this gap was a lack in utilization of adequate market research for business improvement. Otherwise, the output also inform that there was a tendency from Saung Hotel and Resort management team to underestimate the need to fully understand the customer expectation. Whereas, as emphasized by many service management researchers especially Parasuraman et.al (1990), knowing what customer expect from the service provider is the first and tend to be the most critical step in delivering the quality service. It would provide a basic and crucial information in determine the proper service delivery system and decisions so that each provider can attract as many customer as possible and keep its current customers. (Zeithaml et.al, 2006) The Gap 1 score occurred in first line employee evaluation also meant that the customer contact employee did not properly understand what the exact expectation from their guest was. It could be considered as a serious problem from the company since a customer contact employee usually became the ones who always directly interact with the hotel guest and nevertheless represent the company image in the guest eyes. Customer contact employees must be competent to critically analyze and make the right decision in accordance with the service needed by the guest. These staff was the nearest company employees who keep in touch with the guest, so that they were demanded to fully understand customer thoughts and made a fast analysis and decisions regarding to the occurred situation. 0,000-0,100-0,200-0,300-0,400-0,500-0,600-0,700-0,575-0,684 management customer contact employee 2,85 4,15 marketing research orientation antecedents score 1,90 1,80 5,10 5,20 upward communication levels of management opportunity for gap closure Figure 4.9 Gap 1 Score and Its Antecedents at Saung Hotel Resto 2 2 The solid (darker) section of the antecedent s bars indicates the current status on the factors and the pale (brighter) section shows the opportunity for improvement in the factor. The perfect condition for the factor should be represented by a score of 7 for the solid section (there are no patterned section). A scoring score of 7 determined from the maximum score chosen by the respondent if they felt that a very good condition occurred in Saung Hotel Resto regarding to the discussed factors. 38

9 Figure 4.9 also illustrated the key factors responsible (antecedents) for occurrence of provider Gap 1, a situation where management not knowing exactly what customer expects. The scores calculated from the assessment of employee s service expectation (Appendix D) gave an overview about the situation faced by them within the hotel. Insufficient marketing research orientation An insufficient marketing research orientation is one of the critical factors for the creation of provider gap 1. (Parasuraman et.al, 1990) Nowadays, marketing research has become a very important need for every company to understanding the market existed. By having adequate marketing research, the company decision makers could have an understanding of customers expectation and perceptions of the products. This applied in the same manner for each service provider on hospitality industry. In SERVQUAL model, this antecedent measured through an evaluation of customer information collection frequency, utilization of the information and the willingness of managers to interact directly with customer. From the management interview conducted, it was noticed that during their daily operational business process, Saung Hotel Resto seldom conduct a market research for importance of long term business improvement. Even, the survey conducted could not give a clear overview about the current market of the company and therefore, did not use as a business feedback. Parasuraman et.al (1990) also found a similar condition during their study. They stated that when managers do not read adequate research reports whatever the reason was company would fail to use the resources available to them and make Gap 1 widens. Saung Hotel Resto also did not collect a customer feedback routinely from the guest, which made the management found some difficulties in tracking and evaluating the service performance. They tended to apply an operational orientation which simply give positive output in short term basis (such as financial benefit), but divert the company focus from its customers and reduces effort to understand their needs and expectation that potentially give positive output on long term basis (such as customer satisfaction and loyalty). 39

10 Based on that condition, this issue got the lowest score (4.15 out of 7) as it had the poorest implementation on Saung Hotel Resto and left a big chance for future improvement. Lack of upward communication Generally, top management s understanding of their customers depends largely on the extent and types of communication received from customer contact employee who were in regular contact with customers. Often, frontline employee know a great deal about customers which make them become a valuable resource for the company, not to mention in what position the employee is. Managers who stay close to their contact people benefit not only by keeping their employee happy but also by learning more about their customers so that they can accurately understand the real field condition. Investigation of this antecedent is done through an evaluation of customer contact employees management interaction frequency and method and also willingness of managers to seek suggestion from its first line employees. Based on the employee interview, survey and observation conducted, it was perceived that eventhough the management of Saung Hotel Resto often maintain a direct contact with the first line employee, but that did not seem frequent enough to fulfill the needs of smooth and unadorned upward communication to provide important information for business improvement in the following period. As stated by the management, there are also tendencies from first line employee to cover the real condition happened in the field, especially the bad one. This was caused mainly by the culture existed in common Indonesian employee that were not willing to give bad report or performance to their supervisor to prevent a bad evaluation or even punishment. Another thing that influenced the condition was also the structure of management in Saung Hotel Resto itself as discussed on subchapter Here, the owner also played a role in management structure. Owner directly supervised the daily business process and often stepped over the manager responsibility to made crucial decision and planning. Frequently, first line employee would directly report to the owner instead of using the formal communication channel 40

11 through supervisor and managers. This condition disturbed the balance in communication availability within the company because normally, owner should get any reports from the general manager who acts as his or her direct subordinate. In Saung Hotel Resto, reports could be given to anyone in the management team without providing another confirmation to their direct supervisors. At Saung Hotel Resto, the status of this factor determined as big as 5.1 point which still left another opportunity for improvement (1.9 point) Complex management s level / structure The number of managerial levels separating customer contact employee from top managers can affect the size of Gap 1. The greater the number of levels, the less likely the information distributed smoothly to each employee, the longer the time needed to make important decision and evaluate employee performance. To assess this antecedent, the existence of flexible management structure was investigated in detail. At Saung Hotel Resto, this factor being the best compared with other factors since Saung Hotel Resto applied a flat organization system as shown in Figure 3.1 on the previous chapter. There were only 4 vertical level of employee with owner as the highest decision maker. The difficulties could be going on between the coordination of each division (headed by supervisors), but usually this problem is solved by doing informal horizontal communication. From the description above, it was revealed that the provider gap 1 occurred at Saung Hotel Resto caused by three key reasons, but the lack of adequate marketing research and output turned out to be the most urgent problem facing the company. In concurrence with Parasuraman, et.al (1990) finding, customer contact personnel at Saung Hotel Resto understands customers expectation better than managers. This condition, where the management did not accurately able to address the right service expectation from the customer may trigger poor quality service and in the end make the guest unsatisfied with the service they receive. 41

12 4.3.2 Gap 2: The wrong service quality standard After able to correctly addressing the customer expectation regarding to the service provided, a company would face a second critical challenge using the knowledge to set proper service-quality standards for the company. Gap 2 deals with the misinterpretation of the hotel in translating their understanding of customer. This gap was assessed by evaluate the employee s appraisal regarding to the intern company condition which encouraged the initiation of accurate service performance standards, such as management s long-term commitment, availability of clear goal setting and implementation of task standardization. At Saung Hotel Resto, the worst condition came about the management s commitment to provide a sustainable customer-focus service delivery performance. Figure 4.10 illustrated the gap 2 score determined from SERVQUAL model and once again gave different score for the management and customer contact employee investigation. The score was determined from the assessment of managers and customer contact employees regarding their thought of Saung Hotel Resto customer opinion; so that here, the score could present an insight of how Saung Hotel Resto employee (owner, management and first line) think about the occurred service standard provided for the hotel guest. The bigger the score, the worse the gap occurs. Generally, customer contact employee had a better evaluation and awareness of the importance of the right service standard across all five dimensions except the empathy. The overall provider gap 2 was for management and for customer contact employee. It could be considered a wide gap since the score was more than 3.5 which is a mid point for a seven scale. 5,000 4,000 3,000 2,000 4,613 3,921 3,16 3,84 1,50 5,50 2,90 4,10 2,00 5,00 1,000 0,000 management customer contact employee management's commitment to service quality goal setting antecedents score task standardization perception of feasibility opportunity for gap closure Figure 4.10 Gap 2 Score and Its Antecedents at Saung Hotel Resto 42

13 This score showed us that both management and first line employee at Saung Hotel Resto had not yet able to design the service standard that can provide the expected service level. However, the big gap score on this provider gap was understandable since it would be very hard to translate the information provided by the costumer into an exactly practical business process within the company, even if the company had able to understand it right. As stated on Service Marketing book, a recurring theme in service companies is the difficulty experienced in translating customer expectation into service quality specification that employees can understand and execute (Zeithaml, Bitner & Gremler, 2006: 38). The figure also shows the key factor responsible (antecedents) for occurrence of provider Gap 2 a wrong service standard design and implementation by the service provider. Inadequate management commitment to service quality To deliver the excellent level of service performance, the commitment from every member of the company is fully needed. In addition, the commitment from the company management to service quality absolutely means providing service that the customer perceives as high quality. Moreover, contact employees and middle management do not and can not improve quality without strong leadership from upper management. Parasuraman, Zeithaml and Berry (1990) write: When managers are not committed to service quality from the customer s point of view, they target resources only to other organizational goals such as sales, profits, or market share. They do not establish internal service-quality initiatives and they do not see that attempts to improve service quality lead to better company performance Management commitment could be assessed by investigate the availability of internal program to improve service quality and appropriate rewarding system for employee who contribute for the improvement and also the utilization of necessary resource for adequate service quality. At Saung Hotel Resto, based on the research output, this commitment issue turned out to be the most potential reasons of gap 2 existences. It only got 3.84 points out of 7 and left the biggest improvement opportunity for the company. This could be happened since the management also faced a problem in financial and human resource condition within the company. 43

14 There was no fixed budget allocation focused on the improvement of service and human resource quality to support the service delivery performance. The human resource strategy itself also did not apply appropriate reward and punishment implementation to encourage their employee to develop their skill, knowledge and performance for supporting the company. There were some internal program (such as employee training) conducted regarding to the improvement needs, but it did not carry out routinely. So, it would be very difficult to assess the employee performance level and development to evaluate the company target to achieve excellent service quality. The correlation of each gap in the SERVQUAL model as shown in Figure 2.3 also can be seen here. The condition of flat organization structure in the hotel (antecedent for SERVQUAL gap 1), where the owner also had direct interaction with all employees, when combined with this antecedent will influenced the creation of SERVQUAL gap 2. The inappropriate organization structure merely made the whole organization to easily watch the owner objectives for the hotel s growth. The owner s low attention to service quality has lowered employees motivation to give attention to the service quality standard creation within the hotel. Based on the discussion before, it simply indicated the condition of SERVQUAL gap 2: the wrong service quality standard. Absence of proper goal setting Many successful companies which consistently deliver high service quality in the beginning had set their company goal based on customers requirements and expectations rather than internal company standards. Mostly, they did not aiming only on short term benefits but thoroughly targeting a long term benefit for the company by create a win-win solution for the customer and the company. Customer satisfaction become an important issue here while determined the proper company goal for maintain the sustainability of the business in the future. Once again, a smooth communication between each employee within the company also supports the company goal setting and achievement. 44

15 Appropriate goal setting establishment could be evaluated from the ability of the company to set specific and clear company s objectives that is supported by formal process on daily business practice. Saung Hotel Resto management in the past often clearly stated the company goal to achieve customer satisfaction. Unfortunately, there were no specifics strategies or plans communicated to support that goal. Many employees felt the goal was too broad and thought that they need more specific action plan handed out by the owner or top management to make it easier for achieving the goal. On the other hand, nearly all employees interviewed during the research said that Saung Hotel Resto business tended to be a company-oriented standard rather than customer-oriented standard. It means that Saung Hotel Resto management still focus on how to satisfy its stakeholder rather than to satisfy its customer. Inadequate task standardization Eventhough many people have an opinion that services cannot be standardized, but service industry still needs a fixed business process strategy to be implemented to their customer. When service standard are absent or do not reflect customers expectation, the service quality as perceived by customer is likely to suffer. When standard do reflect what customer expect, the quality is likely to be enhanced. It could take place in form of the availability of specific Standard Operation Procedures (SOP) in each department or other technical issue such us the use of electronic key which help front office staff to check the room status. The well defined service design and implementation would obviously provide another advantage for the company. They could save time, money and energy since everyone had known about the procedures that need to be done. Yet, of course, same vision of the service provided and associated issues should be firstly dogged to every employee. 45

16 Employee in Saung Hotel Resto had applied some uniform procedures or SOP during their daily operational business process. Nonetheless, they still have to evaluate it more accurately and then adding or improve some procedure to provide a better service performance and resource efficiency. There is still big opportunity for the management to deal and improve this problem. (The score was 4.9 out of 7) Perception of infeasibility On their study, Parasuraman et.al (1990) also found that the incidence of Gap 2 was strongly affected by the extent to which managers perceive that meeting customers expectation is feasible (easy). It could be analyzed from the willingness of the company to always use the necessary capabilities and SOP to fulfill customer s requirements. Nevertheless, this thought was only a mind-set from the managers, but if it was not watched out immediately and carefully it could affect the whole business process. In Saung Hotel Resto case, both managers and employees were fully aware with the issue. They thought that it would need many efforts to achieve the goal of excellent service quality. They were also understand well about the company weakness regarding the issue and recognized that they really need improvement on that matter. However, there is also a quite big opportunity for further improvement in this factor (2 chance point for improvement) Gap 3: The service performance gap Provider Gap 3 deals with the differences that occur between service specifications and the actual service delivery. Usually it happens when employees are unable and/or unwilling to perform the service at the desired level. Nearly the same as before, this gap was assessed by evaluate the first-line (customer contact) employee appraisal regarding to the intern company condition which support the execution of the right actual service performance standards initiated by the management. This supporting condition includes teamwork efficiency, employee-technology-job fit, adequate performance management system and chance for the existence of role conflict and ambiguity. 46

17 5,000 4,000 3,000 2,000 4,977 3,742 2,05 4,95 2,75 3,25 4,25 3,75 2,19 2,50 2,94 3,35 4,81 4,50 4,06 3,65 1,000 0,000 Management Customer contact employee teamwork employeejob fit technologyjob fit antecedents score perceived control supervisory role conflict control opprtunity systems of gap closure role ambiguity Figure 4.11 Gap 3 Score and Its Antecedents at Saung Hotel Resto During the investigation at Saung Hotel Resto, it is found that the best condition (related with Gap 3 antecedents) occurred in good teamwork performance meanwhile the worst one was about the existence of role ambiguity among the employees. Figure 4.11 exemplified the gap 3 score produced from the research at Saung Hotel Resto. It presented wider gap score for the management and customer contact employee gets a narrower one. This output is in concurrence with the findings of Parasuraman et.al (1990) in which management would tend to have a bigger difficulty level to address gap 2, 3 and 4. The score presented an indication of how Saung Hotel Resto employee (owner, management and first line employees) assessed their company ability to deliver the desired service level. The bigger the result, the worse the gap occurs. Shown in Figure 4.11, the overall gap 3 score was (management) and (first line employee). It indicates that both management and first line employee of Saung Hotel Resto still faced some mistake and misunderstanding while interacted with their customer in order to deliver the actual service execution. Eventhough for some cases, the management and employee could identify the customer needs accurately and then planned to deliver it on the right way, but when it came to the execution stage usually they faced many obstacles and inappropriate condition which prevent them to perform well or as planned. The occurrence of this gap also could be influenced by the unavailability of employee willingness to perform the expected performance. Mostly this factor occurs while there was no smooth communication and coordination among the company 47

18 employee. Parasuraman et.al, (1990) affirmed that maintaining service quality; then, not only depends on recognizing customers desires and establishing appropriate standards but also maintaining a work force of people willing and able to perform at specified level Employee teamwork condition One crucial aspect in evaluating company performance is the working condition within the intern company, which mostly would related with the employee of the company itself. Usually, good company performance would be supported by the existence of good working condition, great commitment from each employee, solid teamwork and pleasant relationship each other. Often, the most important thing which could give the biggest contribution for company in long term basis is the firm teamwork between every department and employee. On the other hand, efficient teamwork also was the most difficult problem to be handled. To assess the condition of teamwork, some issues related with the employee awareness that they become a member of the company, should be analyzed. In Saung Hotel Resto, every employee was aware that they acted as a team member at the hotel. They understand that each of them had a specific responsibility regarding to their job description and also had a duty to help their working partner in finishing their job. However, most of the first line employee thought that they were not being treated as an important team member by others. They were likely to think that if one employee could not finish their job, then there would be other employee who could finish it. In addition, the employees also conscious that not all people in Saung Hotel Resto gave their best contribution to the company regarding to their personal involvement and commitment to the company. Base on this condition, there were still some prospective opportunities to improve the quality of teamwork so that Saung Hotel Resto can deliver their service in a better quality level. 48

19 Poor employee-job fit condition One critical decision made by the management or company s owner that determine the company s sustainability in the future is how they put the right person on the right position. In SERVQUAL model, when management were not able to match their staff to jobs through selection process or appropriate recruitment method that identify those with ability or skill to perform the job well, they faced a big gap 3 in the company. Saung Hotel Resto management faced a unique condition related to this issue. Since Saung Hotel Resto was located at Lembang, a small region that had their own autonomy about the living environment there, management had to follow the applied local rule or norm. They faced a regional regulation which prevents them to recruit the right people for the position within the company especially for the lower level employee. They only able to recruit local resident as their worker eventhough they had no appropriate skill or education background. This created some difficulties in maintaining the human resource condition inside the hotel. Training, that might become an answer for this problem, was not realized as an effective solution by top management, so that they did not conducted it routinely. However, management always tries to recruit people who got the closest criteria to the job and also chose the people who believe that they are able to perform the job well. So, after all, Saung Hotel Resto still deals with the need to improve its worker quality for the business, represented in 2.05 opportunity point on the antecedent assessment. Poor technology-job fit application The existence of high service quality delivery also depends on the appropriateness of the tools or technologies employees use to perform the job. These tools can enhance the service employee s performance. In contrary, as stated by Parasuraman et.al (1990), inadequate equipment existence or tools failure can seriously obstruct the employee and overall service performance. Saung Hotel Resto employees, as discovered in the investigation, felt that they were not facilitated by appropriate technologies and tools which supporting them to deliver excellent service level to their customer. Eventhough they still able to perform the service 49

20 with the current condition but employees especially first line ones understand that a better tools and equipments will support them to deliver better service performance. Therefore, this issue has the second biggest need for further improvement in the future with 3.25 opportunity point. Lack of perceived control On their book, Parasuraman et.al addressed definition of perceived control. Averill (1973) as quoted in Parasuraman et al. (1990, p. 104) mentioned: Perceived control involves the ability to make responses that influence threatening situations and the ability to choose outcomes or goals. Perceived control can be low when organizational rules, procedures, and culture limit the contract employees flexibility in serving customers. Therefore, those issues were investigated in the discussion of gap 3 antecedent in SERVQUAL this model. Employees in Saung Hotel Resto often experienced a condition where they had to deal with so many jobs because of the overload customer request on the same time whereas the employee only had limited ability and time. So, in some occasions, they were forced to depend on other employee to serve the customer. Besides, many employees also thought that they were restricted to fully satisfy the customer during their job. They were limited by the procedure or communication system applied which prevent them to take some actions or decisions in order to improve the current service level. Inappropriate supervisory control system Employee control system also plays an important role in the scope of Gap 3 existence. Without appropriate and strict quality (performance) control from management, then it is impossible for one company to perform on its best performance since they can not accurately evaluate their employee performance. In hospitality industry, performance control require a direct and periodical supervisory from the management on daily basis because service can not measured only by the revenue growth or occupancy level. Service control in a hotel should include a direct observation of whether the customer feel satisfied or dissatisfied with what they get during their 50

21 stay and also appropriate reward-punishment system concerning employee individual performance. Regarding to this issue, Saung Hotel Resto also still need further improvement to achieve the aim for providing high quality of service to their customer. Recently, Saung management had not applied appropriate reward and recognition system for their employees, which in practice did not encourage employees especially customer contact ones to give their best to the customers. There was no direct appraisal based on performance for them so that each employee treated in the same way as others. Whereas, a compliment receive by the employee can encourage him or her to give a better performance which of course will give the benefit for the company also. If one employee felt that he was supported by his supervisor or felt appreciated because of his contribution, he then would be eager to give the desired performance work level, even possibly exceed it. Role ambiguity and conflict A specific role applied to one person distinguishes the sets of behavior, attitude and activities needed to be performed by the person occupying one position. A role ambiguity, defined by Parasuraman et.al (1990) happened while one employee does not possess the information or training necessary to perform their job adequately. Uncertainty often occurs regarding to understanding what the management or company owner expect from the employee and how to fulfill it. Meanwhile, role conflict was described as a condition where one employee feels that he or she cannot satisfy all the demands of all customers they must serve. To solve this problem, every company ought to provide appropriate training routinely and always communicate the management s expectation toward their subordinates. Saung Hotel Resto experienced a suffering condition about this. Most of their customer contact employees did not fully understand which part of their job was stressed by the management or owner, in order to deliver the desired service level. They felt that they were not facilitated by adequate training and tools to maintain a good interaction with the customers. They considered the management for not providing enough information 51

22 concerning the job instruction, company policy and procedures, organizational structure and performance assessment. They also experienced too many overloaded work which usually prevent them to serve the customer effectively. However, each Saung Hotel Resto employee was able to quickly adapt with the change applied by the management or owner (in term of business process change or objectives changes) so that they still could deliver (just) adequate service to their customer. Nevertheless, it is obviously explicable that Saung Hotel Resto management had some homework to be done related with the issue Gap 4: When promises do not match delivery The forth provider gap which caused low service quality perceptions illustrates the differences between service delivery and the service providers external communication. It is about the inability of the company to deliver its actual service as same as what is promised to the customer before. Discrepancies between the actual service delivery and the promises made before can directly and powerfully affect customers perceptions of service quality. This research then found that Saung Hotel Resto, during their daily business had a big tendency to overpromise their service to its customers, through some advertising or promotion package. Figure 4.12 showed the gap 4 score determined from SERVQUAL model and once again gave different score for the management and customer contact employee investigation. The score was determined from the forth part of employee questionnaire which evaluate the level of employee s confidence to its organization in delivering the service they promised before. List of assessment questions could be seen in Appendix B part 4. 6,000 5,000 4,000 3,000 2,000 5,197 3,942 2,13 2,50 4,88 4,50 1,000 0,000 Management Customer contact employee horizontal communication propensity to overpromise antecedents score opportunity for gap closure Figure 4.12 Gap 4 Score and Its Antecedents at Saung Hotel Resto 52

23 The bigger the score, the worse the gap occurs. Generally, customer contact employees had a better perception of the hotel ability to carry out the promised serviced. Shown in Figure 4.12, overall provider gap 4 was for Saung Hotel Resto management and for its customer contact employee. It was the widest gap compared with the previous score in Gap 2 until 3. This condition told us that Saung Hotel Resto really needs to work out very hard with this matter. Saung Hotel Resto endured a condition where the management deals with the lack of employee control in terms of service delivery performance. Therefore, they experienced a situation where many of their customer felt that the service received by them during the stay do not match with what was being promised or told to them earlier. The figure also indicates two main factors that contribute to the existence of Gap 4. These are inadequate horizontal communication and propensity to overpromise by the company. Inadequate horizontal communication It is obvious that a smooth communication between different functional or division in one company is a critical need to support the company performance thus achieve the stated goals of the company. Communications provide adequate coordination between each division that maintains overall company performance, seen by the customer of the company. When communications across division (horizontal communication) channels are not flexibly open, perceive service quality is in a great risk and it prevent the company to deliver consistent service performance. Inconsistency in delivering the service can lead one company to produce poor customer perception and in the end contribute to customer dissatisfaction. In this SERVQUAL model, this issue is analyzed using an investigation of employee awareness of the current advertising or promotion sent by the company, interaction of each employee including customer contact one concerning the promise or advertising issue and also consistency of company policy on servicing its customers. The horizontal communication occurred in Saung Hotel Resto applied in relatively inconsistent condition when concerning about the creation of gap 4. 53

24 Many employees particularly the first liner often did not fully understand with the promised applied on the company promotion tools. Though sometimes, management will inform them about the new promotion prior to its launching, often some employees just knew about the promotion programs when there was a customer who asking for it. After that, they have to initially improve their service to match the occurred promotion. Reflect on this, it is obvious that Saung Hotel Resto management should improve their interaction within the intern company concerning the company s promise. Propensity to overpromised Tough competition in the industry usually pushed each service provider to do everything to attract as many customers as possible eventhough it makes them to deliver false promise to the market. In addition, the market condition, either local or globally, which give high toleration to overpromise also encourage a company to give overpromise. It can be related with a wide range of service matter, start from the availability of appropriate facilities and equipments, the exact delivery time, the friendliness of the employee, etc. However, Saung Hotel Resto did not experience bad condition with this problem although they did overpromise in some aspect (for example the availability of hot water for the guest) which in the end created some complaints from customers. The employees were aware with it but they could do nothing since they also faced a limited financial resource allocation inside the company. However, an advance improvement with this issue will create another benefit for Saung Hotel Resto on long term basis Gap 5: The customer gap In the end, each service provider finally had to match their service delivery with its customer expectation. If in one condition the company failed to meet this expectation then, it will experience a wide customer gap Gap 5. Mentioned by Parasuraman et.al (1990) customer gap will still be applied in one company if gap 1 until 4 still occurred in the company since all the gaps were correlated each other. 54

25 Saung Hotel Resto customer s expectation Customer expectation of service is influenced by various factors concerning the company business process. This expectation embodied the customer beliefs about service delivery serve as standard for further evaluation (Zeithaml et.al, 2006). Parasuraman et.al (1990) recognized these factors in the SERVQUAL model using the 22 questions consist in the survey which represents each service items. The questionnaire was used to assess customer opinion about their desired service. In this research, the questionnaire used was the one with modification (using 24 questions) as discuss in subchapter 3.2 and attached in Appendix A. The average score for Saung Hotel Resto customer s expectation was This was quite a high score considering the maximum score was 7. The highest expectation concerned with the reliability dimension (6.354) whereas the lowest one related with empathy dimension with score. Shown in Figures 4.13, reliability dimension became the dimension that is expected to be delivered in a very good service performance. From this dimension, customers requested the ninth item to be delivered in high quality with a score of This items deal with the accuracy of time needed for a service to be delivered as promised to the customers prior to their stay. This need arose since 60% Saung s customer came from Jakarta who do need appropriate time schedule in preparing their stay at Lembang or Bandung. Subsequently, the ability of company employee to 6,65 6,6 6,55 6,5 6,45 6,4 6,35 6,3 6,25 6,2 6,15 6,1 6,05 6 5,95 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q5 Q6 Q7 Q8 Q9 Q10 Q11 Q12 Q13 Q14 Q15 Q16 Q17 Q18 Q19 Q20 Q21 Q22 Q23 Q24 item based average score dimension based Figure 4.13 Saung Hotel Resto Customer Expectations 55