Organizational Conflict and Its Effect on Customer Satisfaction: The Case of Ethiopian Airlines Interline and Ticket Office, Addis Ababa

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Date

2020-06

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Addis Ababa University

Abstract

Customer satisfaction has been one of the main concerns of the airline industry all over the world. This has been necessitated by the stiff competition in the aviation industry. Airlines are striving hard to offer quality services to keep existing customers and to convince new ones as well. The main objective of the research is to explore the causes of conflict and resolution mechanisms between customers and Ethiopian Airlines Interline and Ticket Office staffsusing five dimensions, namely poor communication, knowledge gap, punctuality, personal problem and resource with customer satisfaction based on literature review. A sample of 294 customers was taken. The questionnaire was developed based on five dimensions, in addition someopen ended questions also prepared and distributed for Agents.Both quantitative and qualitative methods were used to organize and analyze the data.The quantitative method involves a series of tabulationbyusing Microsoft Excel 2013, and STATA version 13.Similarly, for the qualitative method, the data was organized in to different themes and analyzed thematically.Findings revealed that poor communication and resource had least mean score value and they were potential causes of conflict and customer dissatisfaction. From the mean result of five dimensions poor communication and resource are negatively affecting customer satisfaction, whereas knowledge gap, personal problem and punctuality have positive effects with their own degree on customer satisfaction. Recommendations that was made include; Ethiopian airlines need to give due attention and do strongly on the dimensions of poor communication and resource which were the potential causes of conflict and had significant effect on customer satisfaction. Ethiopian airlines recommended to work in an integrated manner with other offices like security, immigration, airport, and custom, especially in co-activities. Agents’ need more skill-based training on how to handle anirritate, and angry customer while they are on duty. In addition they need also update themselves with the dynamic environment, so that they can understand customer’s expectations.

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Keywords

Organizational Conflict, Service, Customer Satisfaction

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