VUSSC/Content/Tourism/Customer Care/Introduction to Unit 1

INTRODUCTION You must have often heard complaints about poor services in everyday conversations with friends, colleagues and tourists. How often do we talk about having received excellent service? Very rarely! Is it because we take this for granted so only comment when our expectations are not met? Or is it because the service was only OK and not really memorable?

What is the difference between acceptable and memorable service? The difference lies between the services nobody talks about and the services that people recommend to their friends and contacts. The difference is about the excellence of the service on every level – not just quality service but exceptional service.

In this first Unit we explain the meaning of customer service excellence in tour guide services. What is quality? This is not an easy concept to explain. We also briefly look at some of the quality models including total quality management. We will outline the relevance of customer service excellence in tour guiding from four key perspectives.

• The information perspective
• The service delivery perspective
• The accountability perspective
• The efficiency perspective