WHAT IS SERVICE?

Service is generally defined as "work done for others." But this definition falls far short of the real meaning of the word. If a customer sits down in a restaurant, orders a sirloin steak, medium rare, and then after waiting 30 minutes receives a baked chicken breast, we can hardly characterize this as "service". Yet it fits the definition of "work done for others"!

Restaurant and hotel guests have certain expectations. Consider the element that constitute what we would call "good service" at a fine restaurant. The first impression of what kind of service the restaurant offers occurs when guest call for a reservation. How gracious is the person on the other end of the line? Do they sound genuinely interested i taking the reservation, or do they act as if the call were an unwanted interruption? The next impression may be the valet parking. Are cars taken quickly? Are guests welcomed or simply handed valet parking tickets? When they walk through the door, who greet them and how? Is the dining room host well-groomed, polite, and concerned with the guest's needs (for immediate seating or a no-smoking table, for example)? When seated, how soon before their presence is acknowledged by a server (often simple eye contact is enough) and water and bread are placed on the table? How soon is the order taken? Is the food served on time? Do guest receive what they ordered, correct prepared? Does the server remember who ordered what? These are just some of the standard that are used when guests form opinions about the restaurant and service. If all of the parts of this process are performed better then expected--that is, if reality exceeds expectations--then guest rate the service received as better then average, or high.f reality matches expectations--the guests get what they expected, no more and mo less--then service is satisfactory. But if reality is less then what is expected, the service is considered poor.

One further note: Price may play an important part in how service is evaluated, because it influences customers' expectations. When customers buy a hamburger at a fast-food restaurant, what they expect is very different from when they buy a hamburger in th dining room of a fine hotel. In the latter case, they expect more because they are paying more. One approach is to look st service as a performance directed at satisfying the needs of customers.

In conclusion, we choose to define good service as meeting customers' needs in the way that they want and expect them to be met. Superior service, obviously, means exceeding customer expectation.