THE EFFECT OF CUSTOMER SERVICE MANAGEMENT OF THE PERFORMANCE OF ORGANISATIONS, CASE OF ETA PALACE HOTEL BUEA

CHAPTER ONE

THE EFFECT OF CUSTOMER SERVICE MANAGEMENT ON THE PERFORMANCE OF ORGANISATIONS/ CASE

1.1BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY                        

In the current organizational environments, customer’s service is a crucial element or strategy to help companies or organizations to remain competitive in every sector. In recent years, customers’ needs and expectations have changed due to the rapid advancement and changes in technologies as they become more exposed or oriented to diverse products and service of organizations, these changes also affect the performance of organizations.

Kurtenbach(2000) Customer service is the provision of service to customers before, during and after a purchase. Everyone in the organization is providing one or all of these perhaps they recognize which one perhaps not explains that does who are successful in customer service,rank their customers experience as the top priority.

Ettore(2001) is of the view that concentrating on current customers’ information can and should be obtained to better understand their view of the service provided. The quality of service provided determines the level of satisfaction of the customer even though what is seen as quality by one customer may not necessarily be quality to another.

 Organizational performance could be defined as comparison between an organizations actual results or output against its intended objectives /goals. Some of the goals or objectives of organizations include the following improving on customer services, customer satisfaction, customer loyalty, customer retention

Based on the organizational goals or objectives of Eta palace hotel, the hotel prides itself in providing absolute satisfaction to all classes of guests(customers) from all over the world through their dedicated team of professional staff. This staff are trained to be sensitive to all cultures and are fluent in most languages including French and English and every staff on board is very willing to help their guests and are committed to maintaining and ensuring customers are highly satisfied.

Kandampully (1992) Customer satisfaction is a measurement of how products and services supplied by organizations or companies meet or surpass customer expectation. In a competitive market place whereby business competes for customers, customer satisfaction is seen as a key differentiator and increasingly has become a key element of business strategy. Customer satisfaction is an asset that should be monitored and managed just like any physical asset. The relationship between customer service and customer satisfaction is a vital one.

High level of customer satisfaction brings about several positive aspects to an organization, it is believed that customer satisfaction has a positive relationship with economic profit (Anderson, Fornell and Lehman 1994) moreover it will lower customers price sensitivity (Fornell 1992) and contribute to the creation of loyal customers which in turn implies a stable future cash flow (Matzleret al1996)

Customer service management is thus an approach to managing a company’s or organizations interactions with current and potential customers while customer service is a marketing strategy that is used to manage relationships between organizations and customers more effectively(Kesodel ( 2008) According to Kotler(2006), organizations are increasingly being customer centric and are embracing customer driven initiatives that seek to understand,attract, retain and build intimate and long term  relationship with profitable customers.

1.2 PROBLEM STATEMENT

Customer satisfaction is the single most important issue affecting organizational survival. it has the most important effect on customer retention and in order to narrow it down, focus on customer service quality as one of the customer satisfaction factors.

Despite this fact, most organizations have no clue what their customers really think, they operate in a state of ignorant bliss believing that if customers were anything less than 100- percent satisfied, they would hear about it.

They key to competitive advantage is proactively gauging customers and aggressively acting on the findings.

The researcher has once been an intend in Eta palace hotel has meet with a lot of customers who express their dissatisfaction about some of the services of the hotel such as the absent of staff to attend to customers on due to time due to the lack of staff thereby putting a lot of pressure on the available staff, the absence of effective communication channels and skills of staff in the hotel, inefficiency of the service providers or staff. It was noticed by the researcher that the hotel focuses more on the physical (products) aspects of its organization than the non-physical or intangible aspects (services) which is considered very vital to the sustainment, survival and performance of the organization

Knowing that customer service is a pillar of Eta palace hotel the researcher therefore decided to find out whether the kind of customer service being provided in the hotel has any effect on customer satisfaction and whether there are barriers that prevent quality customer delivery

1.3 OBJETIVE OF THE STUDY

• To evaluate how customer satisfaction,affect organizational performance in the case of Eta palace hotel Buea
• To examine how communication skills, influence organizational performance in the case of Eta palace hotel Buea
• To identify if there are performance barriers to customer service provision in organizations in the case of Eta palace hotel Buea

1.4 RESEARCH QUESTIONS

• How does customer satisfaction affect organizational performance in Eta palace hotel?
• How does communication skill of staff affect organizational performance in Eta palace?
• What are the barriers to customer service provision in Eta palace hotel?

1.5 HYPOTHESIS

H0: customer satisfaction has no significant effect on the organizational performance

H1: Customer satisfaction has a significant effect in the organizational performance.

Ho1 communication skills has a significant influence on organizational performance

Ho2 communication skills has no influence on organizational performance