Wah Taj: Iconic hotel restores full glory.

The concept that we can clearly notice in this article is recovering service delivery.
We are all aware about the 26/11 attack on the Taj Mahal Palace hotel, Mumbai. It
was the time when their customers went trough a tough time but did this bring any
bad name to Taj? If not why? What was it that Taj did differently? Well the
answers to these questions lies in the efforts to recover the failure in service
delivery.

On getting a bad service a customer generally expects a recovery which could be

monetary in terms of compensation or non – monetary like an apology for the
failure. When a company takes such initiative to recover the shortfall in the
services, which in this case was the lack of proper security, they are always
appreciated and the level of dissatisfaction reduces by 33%. Also fulfilling
customer’s expectations, because he has done his part of informing the service
provider of the shortfall, is important. A customer when gets a recovery in failure
often does not carry any dissatisfaction along. It is therefore important to provide
recovery in the expected way so as to avoid dissatisfaction of the customers and
avoid bringing a bad name to the company. Let us now see Taj’s initiative to
recover the failure in service provision shortfall being the lack of safety.

We are all aware of Ratan Tata’s initiative to provide compensation to every

person affected by the attacks whether or not he is a customer at Taj. He gave
compensation to those affected at the station, outside the hotel, on roads etc. And
the kind of compensation provided is life – long free education to children of the
family wherever they wish to study, life – long free rice at a person’s house etc.

This was about Tata’s initiative to compensate those affected by the attack. Now
lets move on to see the perception of Taj team to the first time shut down in 100+
years of its existence. First time shutdown of hotel Taj Mahal Palace, Mumbai – a
nightmare or an opportunity. According to Raymond Bickson, MD Indian hotels,
they were able to change an adversity into a favor. He believes the first time shut
down gave them an opportunity to contemporize and modernize it to tastes of a
modern traveler, Put the technology in place and change a lot of things that were
carried out since 100 years including the old pipes.

The restoration of the hotel would therefore significantly raise service facilities and
overall ambience of the historic wing and positively impact in a major way. The
Taj group spent about Rs 200 cr. on it. It is a classic example of an excellent
service recovery after a failure.
 Instant dipsticks, instant bucks....all in the game.

Customer responses are sometimes very important to find out is it that the
customer wants from a service or products. But what is the guarantee a happy, or
an unhappy customer would really give space for improvements in the services
provided by the company. In today’s dog - eat - dog situation where a customer has
many other options, why exactly would it communicate well to the company that
has not given them adequate services? This problem is a major cause for the
service Gap3 between customer expectations and company's provision of services.
Inadequate data provided by unhappy customers.

Moreover many a times even the customer is not aware of what he actually wants
so to provide a service that the customer actually wants rather than what he/she
perceives that he/she wants in another task at hand. Sometimes giving customers
exactly what they had asked for and in a way that one had asked for it can also
leave the customer unhappy which is because even the customers are sometimes
unclear about what they exactly what and sometimes even though the company
offers exactly the performance they had asked for they still remain unhappy.
Therefore to bring out what the customer exactly expects rather than to extract
what he perceives he expects is another task that can reduce a gap in service
expected and that delivered.

Conductive these surveys at a reasonable expense rate can result in better

performances by the companies, however these options are only used by the
manufacturing sector but considering this option for proving effective service
offerings is a good choice to make. This is because it an inexpensive way of
gathering information regarding the shortfalls in a particular service and also
finding out in clear terms what is it that the customer exactly wants, also the
information will not be faked or tampered by customers because they are giving
answers to these questions unaware of the fact that it’s a part of a survey.
In my opinion the company's offering this service has come up with an excellent
offering. I personally not in my wildest dreams could imagine that one of the
gaming companies could be generating my views about a product a service. This
not just gives them some additional income but also formulates an inexpensive
way to gain access to some genuine information, much needed in every industry
today. These gaming industries have come with a service that is creating a win -
win situation for both the providers and the users.

The need of any service market can be the reason of providing the service which
will generate demand for the service, thus meeting the demand of a service by
supplying it to the market. Managing the demand by generating supplies for the
requirements is another important principle to satisfied service users. These was a
tremendous need for an inexpensive access to quality information by the
companies in order to provide better products and services and thus Games2win
and 7Seas technologies hit at exactly that. These companies provided exactly the
service required in the market.

This service is provided through the following channel:

Need recognition: The Company first recognized the need of quality information in
the market by the companies.

Information search: further it conducted a research to find out the details as to what
kind of service would be expected in such an area. Also at the price that the
companies are willing to pay for it. This gave them the insight of the fact that
companies are looking at genuine information that is not faked at reasonable rates.

Evaluating service alternatives: The quotation given by Mr. Alok Kejriwal, CEO of
Games2win makes it quite clear that in a customer purchase cycle, why their
service would prove to be a better option as compared to actual research, which
only leaves an open space for a purchase decision for the service. However in India
with the age - old traditional systems and the problem of resistance to change their
beliefs in getting the information personally from the consumers is one reason why
the service could go UN - accepted as mentioned in the article.