ICTE

The Institute for Spanish Tourist Quality (ICTE) is an entity of Certification of Quality Systems especially created for tourist companies. It is a Spanish, private, independent, non-profit organization and recognized throughout the country thanks to their vast campaigns promoting the Q mark.

The Q mark is common to any activity related to tourist services or products; among the establishments that can apply for it one can find beaches, MICE spaces, hotels and restaurants. As a seal, it contributes to leverage the public image of the places awarded.

Q Mark Logotype

The seal brings to the establishments prestige, differentiation, reliability, grueling and brand promotion by the State and the Autonomic Communities. In order to be certified with the seal they need to pass strict audits that secure the service delivery and the warrant of quality, security and professionalism to ensure the best possible touristic experience. About the process to obtain the seal the establishment must follow these phases:

1.    Application fulfilling a questionnaire with the establishment´s features.

2.    Reception of the sector´s norm and a self-evaluation questionnaire.

3.    Basic Training about the quality norm of the sector.

4.    Self-evaluation to know how close to the norm the establishment is operating.

5.    Quality Training for the people involved.

6.    Implementation of improvement plans.

7.    Application to obtain the seal from ICTE.

8.    Certificated Audit from ICTE.

9.    Inform Evaluation.

10. Q mark acknowledgment.

11. Audits of tracing and renovation.

As a quality service system, Q permits that establishments adjust the characteristics of their offer to the necessities of the demand but it also strives to develop touristic subsectors implementing common performances for all the participants (i.e. rules and tools). According to the official website the amount of time required to implement the system could vary depending on the size, level of complexity and type of services offered by the company – apart from dedication and implication of the internal resources – but normally a time frame of 9-12 months is acceptable.

Q mark benefits consumers as it guarantees the quality of the products, the service and the personnel; enables the right management of complaints and suggestions; levels the service to its expectations; and backs up the choice of the establishment.

For the company, it improves competitiveness; boosts excellence; improves the personnel skills and abilities; rises up effectiveness and client’s satisfaction; brings recognition in the sector; and offers the technical and training support of ICTE.

References:

ICTE (2016). Instituto para la calidad turística española. Available from: http://www.icte.es/ESP/m/40/Inicio/Preguntas-frecuentes

ISO 22000

According to Aenor, "UNE-EN ISO 22000 specifies the requirements to be met by a management system to ensure the safety of food throughout the food chain to the point of sale as final consumption." This standard focuses on ensuring the supply chain, but also has principles of integrated management systems and is aligned with the principles of the Codex Alimentarius. Some of its basic objectives and benefits are:

- Strengthen food security.

- Encourage cooperation between all parties involved in the food chain, national governments and transnational bodies.

- Ensure consumer protection and build confidence.

- Facilitate enforcement of legislation. 

- Integrate HACCP principles into an organization management system compatible with ISO 9001 model. 

It is based on the PDCA continuous improvement cycle (Plan, Do, Check, Act).

Due to its structure based on risk management, ISO 22000 is easily integrated into any process management system such as UNE-EN ISO 9001. It can also be done in conjunction with food safety audits of other protocols. The certificate publicly demonstrates the business commitment to food security; it is based on cutting-edge good practices and is designed to:

- Build trust with stakeholders.

- Identify, manage and mitigate food safety risks.

- Reduce and eliminate product recall and claims. 

- Protect the company’s brand. 

In addition, when a company exceeds the Audit process, if the system implement conforms to the requirements of the UNE-EN ISO 22000 standard, the organization obtains:

- The AENOR Certificate in Food Safety Management Systems. 

- The license to use the AENOR Food Safety brand.

- The IQNet Certificate, a passport for an international recognition.

- The IQNet brand license. 

AENOR Quality System Certification

References:

AENOR (2016). 'Sistemas de gestión de la inocuidad de los alimentos'. Available from: https://goo.gl/MRQtGu

LRQA España (2016). 'ISO 22000 Sistemas de gestión de seguridad alimentaria'. Available from: http://www.lrqa.es/certificaciones/iso-22000-norma-seguridad-alimentaria/

EFQM

The European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) is a not-for-profit foundation founded to increase the competitiveness of the European Economy as a response to the work of William Edwards Deming - American engineer and management consultant. EFQM provides networking, education and awards across Europe.

The model can be applied to any organization, regardless of its size, sector or maturity. It provides a common language, both inside and outside the organization and it ensures that all the management practices used form a coherent system open to improvement.

EFQM recognizes the most outstanding organizations and the best practices existing in the European business area. It is based on nine criteria: five enablers (cover what the organization does and how it does it) and four results (what an organization achieves).

Enablers:

- Leadership: leaders must shape the future and make it happen, acting as role models, inspiring and ensuring the on-going success.

- Strategy: Mission and Vision focused on a stakeholder strategy.

- People: people must be valued and the organization’s culture must allow mutually beneficial achievements.

- Partnership & Resources: plan and manage external partnerships, suppliers and internal resources to guarantee effective operation of processes.

- Processes, Products & Services: design, manage and improve processes to increase value for customer and stakeholders.

Results:

- Customer Results: achieve and sustain outstanding results that meet or exceed customers’ needs and expectations.

- People Results: achieve and sustain outstanding results that meet or exceed its people’s needs and expectations.

- Society Results: achieve and sustain outstanding results that meet or exceed the needs and expectations of society.

- Business Results: achieve and sustain results that meet or exceed the needs and expectations of their business stakeholders.

EFQM Model Structure

If the enablers are effectively implemented the organization will achieve the results they, and their stakeholders, expect. As the basic tool of the model is self-evaluation – in order to identify and establish areas for improvement in the company – restaurants can apply it and improve day by day in achieving business excellence.

For a successful implementation of the EFQM model businesses will develop their organizational capabilities and commit to integrate it in the way they work. Mainly, the phases to follow are:

- Training for excellence.

- Assessment through the Self-Assessment Business Excellence Matrix.

- Share and get inspiration from the EFQM Knowledge Base.

- Apply for recognition.

References:

EFQM (2016). Available from: http://www.efqm.org/the-efqm-excellence-model

Quality Control in Restaurants

In restaurants maintaining quality becomes a challenge to control if the business wants to succeed. The control plan is a useful tool composed by a series of inspection points and checklists to obtain systematic feedback concerning predetermined quality and consistency standards. The plan can design several forms to control and monitor different activities and these can be related to guest service, food quality, front of house cleanliness or back of house cleanliness.

One example to apply this knowledge could be the hygiene plan. According to the sanitary standard for the operation of restaurants and related services (Real Decreto 3484/2000), restaurants are not considered a food industry; hence it is not necessary to have a sanitary registry but each municipality is in charge of controlling with an inspector all services so every restaurant must carry out a cleanliness plan including: temperature controls, disinfection processes, training of manipulators, pest control, maintenance of facilities, water consumption control and waste disposal. 

Example of Food Waste Tracking Sheet

All these points can be monitored within the control plan following an organized template with comprehensive rating systems, scoreboards, room for notes and comments, and actions for improving deficient areas. However, another area of control can be employees’ performance for example setting standards of performance and controlling their productivity writing highly detailed statements for each member, or through opinion surveys.

Another useful tool can be the Traffic Light System, the most effective inspection tool to reduce defect generation at source. This is a random visual inspection system for highlighting quality issues in sewing line. It includes 3 quality signal cards: green (good quality), yellow (warning condition), and red (stopping the production due to quality fault). It works like this making easier to establish corrective and preventive actions:

1. Green card: When a worker produces quality product or delivers a service with zero defect.

2. Yellow card: When a worker does a single fault so he/she should be more careful about quality for the next time.

3. Red card: When the worker does multiple faults, it indicates that this worker is producing several faults that should be corrected and an extra care should be taken to this worker.

Example of Traffic Light System

References:

Hostage, G. (1975). ‘Quality Control in a Service Business’. Harvard Business Review. Available from: https://hbr.org/1975/07/quality-control-in-a-service-business

Plan Higiene (2015). ‘Seguridad alimentaria en bares y restaurantes’. Available from: https://goo.gl/RJg9aV

Junta de Andalucía (2010). ‘Requisitos simplificados de higiene’. Consejería de Salud. Available from: https://goo.gl/29ERQc

Sarkar, P. (2011). ´Traffic Light System for Quality Inspection´. OCS. Available from: http://www.onlineclothingstudy.com/2012/01/traffic-light-system-for-quality.html

Customer Service

As a restaurant an intense focus on customer service can help you stand out from the crowd and so you will capture much more of the potential sales. Good service is a common sense but sometimes it can be difficult to address mistakes or determine the origin of them, as well as to measure performance to improve the service. There are several reasons to care about customer service, the most important ones for restaurants are:

- A restaurant with excellent customer service is more likely to get repeat business from customers. 

- People that have a positive experience with a restaurant's service will likely tell two or three others about their experience.

- Customer service can help differentiate a company from its competitors.

- Customer service can be a source of promotion for restaurants.

- Customer service is the key factor for getting satisfied customers.

- Every customer has expectations about the restaurant’s service.

- Customers really value the service.

References:

Suttle, R. (2016). ‘Why Is Customer Service Important? Chron. Available from: http://smallbusiness.chron.com/customer-service-important-organization-2050.html

Jetendra, M. (2010). ‘The Importance of Customer Service in Restaurants’. Saching. Available from: http://www.saching.com/Articles/Importance-of-Customer-Service-in-Restaurants-3649.html

IPA

The IPA model is a new tool to categorize the different service attributes and provide specific strategies for attributes in each category. It allows managers to easily grasp the exact perceptions of users of a quality attribute and coping strategies to improve service quality and achieve a competitive advantage.

Despite it judges the quality of a service in terms of customer satisfaction focusing on listening to the voice of thecustomer (VOC) it does not take into account the degree of importance given by the customers to certain quality elements.

IPA stands for Importance-Performance Analysis; it was first proposed and introduced by Martilla and James (1977) to measure client satisfaction according to the importance of the service and the performance of the business in providing that service. The tool is a graph of a pair of coordinate axis: the importance axis (y-axis) and the performance axis (x-axis) of the different elements involved. Thus, we obtain four quadrants and different suggested marketing strategies for each one:

- Quadrant A: high importance, low performance. It suggests concentrating efforts and immediate attention for improvement here as it sets major weaknesses.

- Quadrant B: high importance, high performance. It suggests keeping up with the good work as it indicates strengths; opportunities for achieving and maintaining competitive advantages.

- Quadrant C: low importance, low performance. These are minor weaknesses and do not require additional effort.

- Quadrant D: low importance, high performance. It indicates that business resources committed to this axis would be overkill and should be deployed elsewhere.

IPA Model

Due to its characteristics, IPA model can be useful when investigating the critical service quality attributes in the chain restaurant industry.

References:

Pai, F. et al. (2016) ‘Classifying Restaurant Service Quality Attributes´. Taylor & Francis Online. Available from: https://goo.gl/7Yv3LE

Silva, F. et al. (2010) ‘Importance-Performance Analysis’. Polytechnic Institute of Bragança. Available from: https://goo.gl/Wi3qe3

SERVQUAL

SERVQUAL is a quality management tool useful to analyze customer service. It was developed by three American authors, Zeithaml, Parasuraman and Berry whose aim was to improve service quality. The model measures customer expectations and perceptions according to five dimensions and defines possible problems presented as Gaps:

- Gap 1 (Management Gap): Not knowing what customers expect.

- Gap 2 (Design Gap): Set wrong service quality standards.

- Gap 3 (Delivery Gap): Discrepancy between standards and actual service performance.

- Gap 4 (Communication Gap): Promises and external communication do not match the actual service.

- Gap 5 (Customer Gap): Difference between customer´s expectation and final perception.

SERVQUAL Model 

The determinants or factor to measure consumers’ perceptions of service quality are:

- Tangibles: physical facilities, personnel, etc.

- Reliability: ability to perform the promised service.

- Responsiveness: willingness to help and provide prompt service.

- Assurance: knowledge and courtesy, credibility, competence, etc.

- Empathy: caring attention, access, communication, etc.

SERVQUAL tries to understand expectations; it is valuable when comparing our business to a competitor and helps to identify corrective actions to improve quality and eliminate the Gaps.

Other useful tools to measure and improve customer service in restaurants are:

- SERVPERF.

- KANO model.

- The tree diagram.

- The objectives tree.

- Satisfaction surveys.

References:

Shahin, A. (2007). ‘SERVQUAL and Model of Service Quality Gaps’. University of Isfahan. Available from: http://www.proserv.nu/b/Docs/Servqual.pdf

Nieto, E. (2012) ‘Ecoinnovación en procesos industriales, Cap. 8: Herramientas básicas para la mejora de la calidad y la productividad’. Available from: https://goo.gl/h6iOsz

Aiteco (2016). ‘El modelo SERVQUAL de calidad de servicio’. Available from: https://www.aiteco.com/modelo-servqual-de-calidad-de-servicio/