Havard Business case study analysis

1. Name Lucia Veronica Denis Senwayo Student
Number
2B4047
Case Name The Ritz-Carlton: Using
Information Systems to Better
Serve the Costumer
Date 2014.11.30
Memo
1. What were the Ritz-Carlton competitive strengths?
 Personalized and friendly Service - the company provided customer-driven
service systems that would anticipate a guest's needs and preferences, and instant
service recovery. Employees were caring, relaxed, and yet refined and they know
what customers expect to be waited on, and do not want to have to wait for
service.
 High quality standards – the company focused on quality and systems, with
main goals of becoming virtually defect-free, with 100% customer retention.
 Training- employees were trained to break away to solve a problem and then
snap back to his or her routine. So. Training was crucial to ensure commitment
 Leadership
 Highly standardized systems
 Quality achievement - The Ritz-Carlton way of thinking about process and
systems was different from competitors. While competitors emphasize on brute

2. force and great expenses, Ritz-Carlton focused on prevention and correction
rather than inspection.
To sum up, its essential competitive strength was its people and their ability to deliver
exceptional service, and that keeping guest histories and guest preference files gave
its people information that would allow them to provide even better service.
2. How can we apply ‘’the service cycle success’’to the Ritz-Carlton?
The employee cycle began with selection. The company had specific process called
the quality selection process that includes 3 interviews. Following selection was
training - an orientation team composed by training managers and senior executives
trained employees. Extensive training was crucial. Employees had to participate in
over 100 hours of quality education designed to reinforce the service commitment,
solve problems, contribute to strategic quality plans, and generate new ideas. In order
to reinforce company’s values and ensure training effectiveness, employees were
empowered. Empowerment was important for employee commitment, because they
know they could have the freedom to do what it takes to make things right.

3. Additionally, the reward structure at Ritz-Carlton was designed to encourage and
complement the training, team problem solving, and empowerment initiatives. A
combination of underlined factors lead to employee satisfaction and positive service
attitude. Employee satisfaction in turn leaded to employee loyalty, lowering
turnover by 50% and had affected the service employees’ efforts to achieve
productivity and quality goals - high profits margins.
Costumer cycle – the service quality had affected the value created for, and
perceived by, the costumer. Value creation leaded to satisfied costumers and
eventually loyal costumers. Costumer loyalty leaded to high costumer satisfaction.
Then, employees at Ritz-Carlton could develop continuous relationship with its
costumers. Thus, strengthened costumer loyalty and lowered costumer turnover, and
in turn contributed to profitability.