Service Quality Report

The Three Stage Model of Service Consumption Pre-Purchase Stage I am a lover of spicy foods and from time to time, I have serious cravings to have food that will burn my tastebuds. Last weekend was one of those days where my need for spicy food aroused and in no time I took the internet to find the place which served the spiciest food here in Melbourne. The criteria’s I was looking at was food which is not only spicy but also tasty and a full dinner course which will cost me not more than $50.

To find information on restaurants, I always go to a website called Urbanspoon.

The website contains detailed reviews of restaurants and it also has customer reviews of the restaurants. In addition, the website has a rating system so the customers can rate the restaurants on the basis of food quality, price and service. Customers can rate the restaurants in each of the 3 criteria’s from a score of 1 to 5, with 5 representing the highest score and 1 the lowest. Also, there is a section on the website which shows you how much a meal is likely to cost you in the restaurant you are looking to go.

As I had a evoked set in front of me, the website was just ideal for me as it gave me a lot of possible options to evaluate the three criteria’s I was look at.

Moreover, the available information helped me to evaluate my options quickly and accurately. After evaluating all the available options, I decided to go to a restaurant in the Melbourne CBD called ‘Crazy Wings’. The main reason I picked that restaurant was because the food was cheap and after reading the customer reviews I was convinced that the food they served was actually spicy.

The only perceived risks which I was worried about was physical risks as in few of the customer reviews, I saw that few of the customers fell sick after having the food. To eliminate the risk, I put up a status on my Facebook to get some feedback on the restaurant from people who visited it.

Luckily, a few of my friends did go there and they all gave me a thumbs up on my choice but advised me to do be prepared for either a very good experience or a very bad one in terms of the service attributes of the restaurant.

Therefore, my service expectation weren’t that high and the only think I was thinking about at that point was spicy food so I was willing to make some trade off’s in terms of the other service characteristics given the food is spicy. As most restaurants offers high contact services where services are processed by people, I had to go to the restaurant and so I did. Service Encounter Stage In order to explain and give a vivid description of my encounter stage experience, I’ll be using the theory of theatre metaphor as it is the best approach to use high contact services like restaurants.

Firstly, the restaurant was the only stage where all the drama unfolded and as it’s only a small sized restaurant that’s what I exactly perceived it to be.

The stage was a pretty small one and I went there around 8pm which was dinner time so expectedly it was crowded as most restaurants are in the weekends during that time. players involved in the set up were customers,2 waiters, 2 chefs and 2 kitchen hands. I was a bit surprised to see that so few stuffs were working in the restaurant and they weren’t even wearing any uniforms which was bit of a shock to me.

I had my criteria’s sorted out in the initial stage of my service consumption but apart my evaluation criteria’s I had some service expectations in terms of the management does things (people-one of the 7P’s) and the benefits that I expected to taking into account all the monetary and non-monetary costs involved with my service consumption. To begin with, I expected the food to be spicy, tasty and cheap and it was indeed better than I expected as the food was the spiciest food I ever had and it was tasty as well.

In addition, my budget was $50 and I ordered a lot of food to satisfy my hunger but the total bill only came to $40. I have to mention that I had other expectations as well which I naturally expected even though those attributes related to my expectations wasn’t in my evaluation criteria. For instance, I expected hospitality, quick service, clean environment, acceptance of debit and credit cards while paying the bill but in reality none of my expectations were met and it was far worse than what I expected them to be.

Apart from the 40$ bill and $12 travelling expense, I didn’t incur any other monetary expenses but the non-monetary expenses were so huge that they cannot be overlooked. I have spent 30 mins on the internet, evaluating my criteria’s, I took a 40 min train ride to the city from my place, I had to walk to the restaurant which requires energy, I have had to wait 20 mins to find a table, 20 mins for a waiter to attend me, 30 mins for the food once I ordered it and 10 mins for someone to receive the bill payment and so the whole service consumption took two and a half hours.

In addition, the bowls and jugs caused me discomfort while I was eating.

Therefore, the non-monetary costs made the whole experience very expensive indeed. Considering all the costs with the ultimate benefit, I would say my service quality was a lot worse than I expected it to be(negative disconfirmation), Process- One of The ; 7 P’s The reason why my service experience was so bad is down to the employees and the number of employees employed.

I think the managerial process of the restaurant is to blame for that. I thought the waiters were absolutely inefficient as it took years for them to attend the customers and both the waiters were very grumpy. I expected friendly waiters, who will at least smile at me or talk nicely but that wasn’t the case. Moreover, I thought the restaurant was two waiters short but I was amused to find out that out of the two waiters working, one of them was also attending the cashier.

This made the whole process a lot slower.

The ordering process is also very time consuming as customers are handed in a menu which is a piece of paper and which has empty boxes beside each item to write down the quantity. Most importantly, the waiters are responsible for providing clean dishes and etc for the customers but sadly all the dishes and jugs in display looked dirty. Potential contributing factors Place Management Payment System Congested Ineffective Doesn’t accept cards Challenge Improving Customer Service