VUSSC/Content/Tourism/Customer Care/Introduction to Unit 3

INTRODUCTION

We explained the concept of customer service excellence in Unit 1. You will recall in Unit 2, we discussed the importance of implementing customer service excellence in the tour guiding activity. We can now investigate how customer service is provided and the challenges that we face in the tour guiding environment.

It is important that we have a clear understanding of the various facets of the tourist sector before we move on to the planning and delivery of service excellence.

We start by giving a brief explanation of what we mean by customer service. Then we move on to seek answers to keys questions like

• Who are your customers?
• What are their needs and expectations?
• How do you identify their needs?
• What do we mean by poor, satisfactory and excellent services?
• How do government/organisational policies, internal procedures, organisation mission, legal obligations impact on service quality?
• How do you identify and respond to special needs of customers?