Travelers have an ongoing battle with the airline industry. In light of the continuation of deteriorating services, customers fall deeper into dissatisfaction. Pre-flight, in-flight and post-flight services have a significant effect on passenger approval. Considering the complexity of the airline industry, it is important to identify which factors boost passenger satisfaction and which ones tend to cause anguish.
There are four main aspects of service operations that can make or break customer satisfaction. What makes things complex is knowing that the business doesn’t have control over some of these aspects. The most valuable service an airline can give is the interaction with its consumers. This interaction is not strictly categorized as human contact; the communication begins the moment a member visits the airline’s website. Creating a hassle-free form to which a member can book their reservation is what sets the expectations for their experience followed by interactions the day of their flight such as courtesy and helpfulness of gate and flight crew, boarding experience, and baggage handling.
Secondly, what needs to be understood is what sets services apart from physical products is their intangibility. Services aren’t palpable and therefore it is the “intangible value they receive in the form of pleasure, gratification, or a feeling of safety (Ebert & Griffin, 2016)” that contribute to the satisfaction of a customer. This is an area that the airlines can’t control. An airline can set up the environment to elicit positive experience based on data gathered, but they cannot control how a passenger feels about the interaction. Furthermore, it is due to that high customer interaction that allows the consumers to affect the airline’s processes. As a customer, you would expect the airline’s gate to be accessible, to have attendants there at appropriate times, to provide high quality facilities, and all at a reasonable price.
But what if at the gate a passenger had an oversized piece of luggage that didn’t fit in the overhead bin or another person demanded a seat change? The service provider cannot predict or control this but must swiftly alter the service activities to deliver the request. Lastly, understanding quality considerations is key. Quality is a subjective term. Each customer has an individualized way of measuring quality. This is in part, due to the fact that services include intangibles and not just physical objects. Businesses know that “quality of work and quality of service aren’t necessarily the same thing.” (Ebert & Griffin, 2016)
Quality control is acting to guarantee that operations and services meet specific standards. Productivity is a measure of environmental performance whereas performance refers to how well the service is being rendered. For example, airline operations depend largely on the employees who provide the service. By establishing specific standards and means of measurements to evaluate the employees, an employer can detect flaws and make corrections by providing training to develop intrapersonal skills. Many businesses know that without employees trained in customer-relationship skills, quality suffers, and in this case airlines, can lose customers to more equipped opponents.
Airline concentrating on the amount of services provided is a misstep because productivity alludes to both quantity and quality. When resources are used efficiently the quantity of services increase. Yet, history has shown that unless the service is of consistent and acceptable quality, passengers won’t be loyal causing productivity to faulter and company revenue to suffer. Focusing on the quality of services over the quantity of services offered will always be in the best interest of the airline.
