Introduction
Information systems can bridge what was once an unbridgeable gap between service and a customer by making information available to previously unreachable populations. Current information technology can greatly assist service industries like hotel chains or airlines in making information readily available to previously unreachable populations. In most countries the service companies are one of the last parts of the infrastructure to be put into place (Belobaba et al 2009). As a consequence, many countries have a significant gap between the information wants and needs of their populations and the information that could potentially be available to them without the latest IT. The purpose of this paper will be to evaluate how information technology and telecommunications can aid alliances between organizations and external companies and help significantly increase the service quality of any given country’s population through analyzing one technology installation as it relates to increased service provision.
Industries Background
Airline Industry
Today, airline industry is one of the most profitable service industries in the world in spite of terrorist attacks and fear of new ones. Airline industry depends upon customer satisfaction and service quality, so alliances with other external companies including hotels and recreation facilities influence its image and customer loyalty. While some members of the flying industry give indiscriminate attention to their customer service, Virgin Atlantic Airways is taking the road less traveled. Widely known for its exceptional customer service, Virgin Atlantic never fails to surprise its clients: there is always something new, and what is new is given in the best service possible. Focus on people, technology, and methodology gave Virgin Atlantic the edge in customer relations management. This lead to many achievements, and for them to be among the pillars of service in their respective ground. Diversity of opinion is a team strength, but it can degenerate into splintering unless the team members put the task first. Employees value the importance of the service they provide and a unique image of airline service (Belobaba et al 2008).
Hotel Industry
The key feature of hotel industry today is the exceptional service quality based on the Personal Valets System and core of loyal supporters. Management of such hotel chains as Ritz-Carlton helps to develop a vision for the future, creating an environment for change and convincing others to join in making the vision a reality. The unique feature of the service system is that it is based on personal interests of employees and unique perception of guest satisfaction. This system shows that culture and personal values of employees are the core of the hotel prosperity. Alliances with other external service companies are crucial of hotel chains as they help its managers to meet needs and wants of thousands of guests daily. For hotel chains, complex decision making is a key aspect of team management. Complex decision deliberations may be made jointly, but decisions should be made singly. Although there may be disagreement and conflict during deliberations, once there is consensus on a course of action, team members must support the decision as if it are their own (Powers and Barrows 2002).
Rational For Alliances with External Companies
Developing countries’ hotel chains and airlines are always behind developed countries in receiving and using newly available IT technologies. Even in developed countries, the vast majority of hotel chains and airlines have been constructed with very minimal budgets and low priority is given to their technological infrastructures and technological potentials that would benefit the potential customers (Stutts 2001). Since hotel chains and airlines are usually the last part of the infrastructure that countries put into place, there is minimal resources and finances provided in most cases to include the appropriate technologies that most hotel chains and airlines regularly use and implement today. Most hotel chains and airlines have major problems with staffing and training of their employees because of their budget shortfalls and absence of effective leadership in this important area (Powers and Barrows 2002). The human resources available for most countries are usually undereducated, unqualified individuals who accept the very low pay for the positions offered. Most companies’ facilities are also inadequate and in bad shape to give incentives to any qualified candidate for library positions to look elsewhere in the job market. Alliances with external organizations and companies help both hotel chains and airlines to join their internal resources and create a complex interaction systems and networks around the globe (Stair and Reynolds 2008).
Customer Relationships Management and IT Facilities
Customer relationship management (CRM) is an important aspect of any business. Without it there will be no chance for a business to thrive and survive the highly-saturated markets, for what sets a business apart is how it offers its service to consumers and what they do to surpass their expectations. A focal point of having customers choose to do business with an organization, CRM involves the whole package of giving the information the client requires, assisting the choosing stage, assisting the sale, and providing after-sales and technical support. Thus, oftentimes, more attention is given on the customer service—the product or service purchased becomes a mere part of the purchasing process. Customer relations management has been one of the important tools of the flying trade. Primarily, it is the need to gain competitive advantage. There are many airlines now compared to the past, and each airline hopes to get a portion of the traveling packs (Stair and Reynolds 2008). As it has long been known, flying from one point of the world to another is not everybody’s comfort zone. There is always a big chance in air commuting for some things to go wrong—lost luggage, missed flights, excess baggage, flight delays, being bumped off, and so on. While these are often evitable, it still helps to know that the airlines carrying you to wherever you are headed is behind you to assist when things do not go as planned. This is the art of customer service in the airlines industry, the thing that sets the difference of one airway from another (O’Brien and Marakas 2006).
IT Capabilities and Collaborative Alliances
A theory of collaborative alliances suggests that this type of business relations is crucial for modern organizations as it helps them to improve internal resources and deliver better services to larger target populations. One of the prospective solutions for hotel chains and airlines is improving the role of information technology and alliances with external companies. This prospective solution can only be implemented through some kind of comprehensive strategy on behalf of the countries’ government and economic development plan to include this IT improvement as an official policy goal and objective (Kalakota and Robinson 2001). By improving the role of IT, a host of problem issues currently plaguing these important institutions could be addressed and resolved. By focusing on equipping hotel chains and airlines with computers, necessary software, and provide Internet access to patrons, many of these hotel chains and airlines would become vastly improved from their current decrepit states (Oz, 2006). IT improvements of this sort would result in these hotel chains and airlines having information connectivity outside their geographic isolated conditions and having opportunities to share the information flow on the Internet with the rest of the world (Stair and Reynolds 2008). For example, many hotel chains and airlines would substantially improve their information resources and organizational structures if they were able to improve the role of IT. Also, a new role for IT in different countries would result in obvious incentives for staff to learn and master these technologies and their uses to enable them to show and demonstrate their uses to managers. The staff would need to be qualified and trained to handle the improved role of IT in the operations and this availability of training and education in this area would need to an integral part of the process of upgrading internal resources of organizations and improving their information technologies (Kroenke, 2007).
The education and training of staff to adapt and handle any improved IT role could also be considered an excellent way to improve the job positions and enrich these job positions for the workers to view them with greater satisfaction and have incentives to be motivated to pursue these jobs as fundamentally important for the improvement of the information availability for their larger community and nation (Oz, 2006). These education and training programs to help developing countries improve the role of IT would provide a spring board for the students and young people to become the first generation of qualified, competent workers who take pride in their jobs and careers. Through making these IT improvements, in other words, the library workers would be elevated in status and value to the larger society (Stair and Reynolds 2008).
Competitive Advantage
Following Michael Porter, firms are not the source of competition. Instead, firms derive their competitive advantage from their national environment “shaped by four ‘determinants of national advantage’: factor conditions; home demand conditions; related and supporting industries; and firm strategy, structure, and rivalry. The four elements form a mutually reinforcing system, the Porter ‘diamond’” (Porter 1985, p. 54). The improved role of IT in hotel chains and airlines would have a profound impact on increasing the service quality and clients’ satisfaction rates of these countries’ populations because of the obvious attractiveness and importance that companies would assume as valuable sources of new and current information for the public. The host of problem issues plaguing hotel chains and airlines could be readily and comprehensively addressed through this improved IT role because of the new value and perspective of these institutions as important sources of learning and information for the public at large (Laudon and Traver 2008). The improved role of IT and alliances between hotel chains and airlines would also change the fundamental nature of service industry being decrepit, useless places that have very little important information for people to use and derive benefits. Over a period of time, service sphere would definitely increase substantially because of this improved role of IT and the increase in use of them by both customers and the general population (Oz, 2006).
For instance, if Virgin Atlantic outsources its customer service, which is a growing trend among many big companies nowadays. If they do, it shall be essential to know which aspects of operations are outsource and, consequently, to attempt how this has helped Virgin Atlantic develop and maintain good customer relations management contributing further to a better company.. Lastly, and most importantly, Virgin Atlantic customers will be asked about their flying experience with Virgin Atlantic, giving focus on satisfaction or the opposite, creating a clear picture of the minds of the most important judges for the operations of Virgin Atlantic: the customers. These are just some among the many issues aroused by the limited studies on the subject. This paper shall try to explore the possibilities on these issues and, ultimately, try to provide answers. Customer relations management is all about making customers happy and still keeping pace with the policies of the company. The balance may oftentimes be elusive, but successful customer relations management does the trick. When a customer chooses a specific company or store to transact business with, it follows that the customer is expecting more than what she is paying for. It will be safe to say that customers set into themselves standards on how they may be served—or should be served—and the company gets free hand on satisfying that expectation. This means that customers are also looking at how the service is or will be given to her, and what difference it makes for her purchasing experience. Failing this expectation often leads the customer to look for services elsewhere (Stair and Reynolds 2008).
Porter’s studies have proven that the customer experience is almost always the deciding factor when clients need to make up their minds on a purchase or if they will have to move on and check with what the competition offers. In effect, bad customer experience leads to loss of customers, which is directly equal to loss of income, customer satisfaction, and loyalty. The worst part about bad customer relations management in organizations is the stigma that may result to word-of-mouth. With the advent of technology, it has never been easier to tell people how a company maltreated a customer. This reminds companies to be extra careful and to be diligent and vigilant in implementing customer relations standards (Stutts 2001).
Customer relations management may also be said to be a business strategy wherein the goal is to get and keep the customers where, in the process, long-term customers are identified. This is an essential part of the system as it allows the company to cultivate relationships with these long-term prospects, while also nurturing relationships with occasional and regular clients by exceeding their expectations. When the hotel chains or airlines know who to value and pay attention to customers, and knows who deserves less of the time and effort they invest, companies will find it easier and more fruitful to serve their customers. It will also avoid the customer representatives from being neglected and declined. A company may adapt a ranking process for classifying their customers. In the ranking, the loyal customers and the prospective loyalists, including the new clients, come on top, followed by the regular customers, and the occasional customers. New clients go on top of the ladder because treating them positively creates good first impressions, which can most likely lead to customer loyalty (Stair and Reynolds 2008).
Conclusion
Alliances with external companies are the main factor of competitive advantage for both hotel and airline industry. Service, backed up by IT capabilities, is actually dependent on the need of the client. If he needs help with purchasing a good, he may have to coordinate with the sales people who can help him with anything about purchasing. Assistance on technicalities must be directed to the technical department, and so on and so forth. The bottom line is to always give contentment and satisfaction. Relationship refers to the connection that invisibly forms between the client and the company and its representatives. It may be a good connection or a bad one. If it is the good connection, a company can rest assured that the customer will be an asset to them in the long run and in the course of many other future transactions.
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