Customer Satisfaction Measurement in Airline Services: An empirical Study of Need –Gap Analysis

• Author: Makarand Upadhyaya

Introduction

Customer complaint is very important factor for any airline. In service industry human behavior plays a very important role to minimize customer complaint. There are two types of complaints viz controlled and uncontrolled. There are many factors that affect passengers such as, flight delays, misbehaviour by staff, etc. and they result in a complaining behaviour. Whereas, there are so many situations wherein situations can’t be controlled such as, weather problems, technical fault, etc. Although these situations are not in control but can reduce the complaining behavior which depends on “how situation is handled by airline staff”. If a staff is not trained to handle situation then it is not acceptable because it is airline fault. If staff misbehaves with the passenger or due to lack of staff knowledge, wrong information has passed to the passenger. Such are the complaints which can be minimized and controlled. However, genuine customers’ complaint can enhance service quality of airlines. Some airlines have customer feedback form for rating of the services rendered by them and feedback helps the airline industry in identifying its strengths and weaknesses.

Customer complaint behavior

It is the tendency of every human that whatever is promised, it must be given to them if there is any deviation in the services, will attract complaint. Whenever a passenger book ticket for any airline and at the time of booking he/she is informed about the services which will be rendered to him/her, thereon. Whatsoever is the reason for not providing the services, passengers are not concerned but they want services which were promised to them at the time of booking. This will lead to the customer complaint. Some customers are followers to others, however, they don’t want to make complain but they follow the others. There can be two categories of customer complaint.

1) Controlled customer complaints

2) Uncontrolled customer complaints

Controlled customer complaints: These complaints are attracted by staff error or staff behavior which is very important in service industry. These things are in the hands of airline people. We are explaining some common customer complaints.

• Flight related problems: Such problems lead to customer complaint when there is planned delay or cancellation of flights and passengers are not informed in advance. It is dissatisfying if change is planned or unplanned and the passengers are not informed. Even if passengers are informed about schedule change but it is complaining for customers who were having onward flights for different destinations but alternative arrangements were not made.

• Fare related problems: When there is any discrepancy in fare related issues, such as incorrect fare information, extra charges, wrong availability status etc.

• Boarding discrepancies: At the time of boarding if there is any discrepancy such as, duplicate seat numbers, wrong boarding pass to passengers, other flight passenger etc.

• DNB/DNG* due to over sale: Over sale in the flights is a common practice of airlines. Due to this, passengers who are having confirmed ticket for the flight are denied to board the flight. Likewise, if passenger is having higher class ticket but due to over sale in higher class, passenger is permitted in lower class.

• Reservation/Ticketing: Any mistake at the time of ticketing by travel agents or airline staff in terms of date of travel, name mismatch etc. leads to waiting in queue for a long time for obtaining tickets.

• Baggage mishandling: If any baggage is missing or damaged on arrival due to wrong offloading of baggage. Claim settlement is not done properly for missing or damage baggage. Also if arrival baggage comes late on...