Customer feedback is an important element in measuring customer satisfaction as regards the quality of service offered to customers. It is especially valuable to Qantas Airlines as it thrives to top the industry as a premium airliner. Through feedback, Qantas Airline is able to gauge its service quality standards towards competitive heights. This aspect of the company’s operations is therefore critical to success in service quality.
The objectives of this presentation are:
The audience will likely be made up of the following Qantas’ top-level personnel (Traveldaily.com, 2012):
Alan Joyce, Chief executive Officer
Simon Hickey, CEO, Qantas International
Jayne Hardlicka, CEO, Jetstar group
Lesley Grant, CEO, Qantas Frequent Flyer
Additionally, top manager in Qantas three departments of Engineering and Maintenance, Procurement and Flight Training are also likely to be part of the audience. Qantas Customer Chatter outlines that the company values each customer’s opinion, and is therefore dedicated to getting customer feedback (Qantas.com, 2013). In this policy, Qantas is dedicated to identifying and addressing issues raised by customers concerning the service offered. This is affected through the Company’s Customer care team and the Airline Customer Advocate. The airline’s Customer Care team uses various avenues to obtain customer feedback, including complaints, comments or suggestions. The company has a live customer care service that operates during business hours and can be conducted via phone or email as well. Customers can also contact the team through the social media including Twitter and Facebook or an online Qantas Feedback Panel at Qantas.com, to which customers can subscribe for an interactive approach similar to the social sites. Qantas also maintains personal information on customers which the customers have access and can modify it upon request. In cases where the customers seek direct resolution with the airline, customers may opt to use the Airline customer Advocate in place of the Customer Care team. Qantas uses the information collected in a number of ways as it seeks to improve its services. It regularly analyses customer feedback to obtain a profound picture of how customers view the company. An important strategy used by the company is to rapidly respond to issues raised in customer complaints or other areas of its service.
The disparate nature of the different avenues through which feedback is collected poses a major challenge as regards analyzing the feedback into a single pool of useful information. Qantas uses multiple avenues of collecting feedback, in which the processing or examination is done separately. Large resources are necessary to harmonize these avenues and procedures used, and therefore maintain real time information on customer feedback. Monitoring and processing feedback from Qantas social media profiles, the Qantas Feedback Panel, emails, feedback received via phone as well as direct contact in Qantas’ current feedback practices requires significant resources that may not be available. Another major limitation as to the use of customer feedback obtained is in mapping feedback received against individual customer segments. The feedback obtained and responses made by Qantas are in some aspects haphazard and generalized. This can is evident from the series of complaints from customers regarding the actions taken as a response to feedback (Australianfrequentflyer.com, 2010). Qantas may currently not be in a position to map the customer feedback system to the specific segment markets, which would achieve better results. This is a consequence of the practices at the airline involving feedback collection which generalizes the market.
There is a significant potential for improvement in obtaining and processing of customer feedback at Qantas Airlines by implementing a knowledge management information system (Dellarocas, 2003). Although much has been done to ensure the Company’s customer feedback practices reflect the best practices in the industry, the resources and practices being used are not sufficient to deliver the highest quality of information from processing the feedback. Qantas can achieve better service quality and therefore higher customer satisfaction by streamlining its practices in obtaining and processing customer feedback. Currently, the Company’s customer feedback system is not integrated to acceptable standards as a premium airliner. The separate units that are involved in obtaining and processing feedback should be integrated such that the outcome is tailored to specific groups or segments through the implementation of a knowledge management system. Such a system will effectively reduce the amount of effort currently being used to address customer complaints across the company’s market segments, or in filtering valuable information to be used in improving service quality. Maintaining top service quality in all aspects is crucial in shaping Qantas image as a premium airline company. This can hardly be achieved if the customer feedback system does not fully align with the sort-after image. Customer complaints can be reasonably reduced through a more sophisticated and elaborate system of obtaining and processing customer feedback. Improvements will require
Significant financial outlays may be required to implement an effective knowledge management system for a large Company like Qantas. This is largely due to the sophisticated nature of information systems to be put in place. The benefits are however long-lasting and therefore financial requirements should not be the major obstacle in implementing this system. Qantas may have to borrow funds if necessary. The system will have significant impacts on both the practices of obtaining and processing customer feedback, but also on the development of the skills of personnel involved. An information system will automatically integrate the various avenues through which feedback is obtained and match them with specific segments. Information can then be processed at segment level instead of basing on the avenues through which the feedback is achieved. Additionally, solutions to problems can then be customized by expert employees who constantly rely on the trend in feedback to expand their knowledge. Well designed information systems can easily maintain information over time and use it to gauge the existing condition. Improvements can be determined through comparisons of similar complaints over time, or the performance rating in a specific service quality dimension. The latter can be achieved through linking particular aspects of the customer feedback to service quality performance in those aspects, and the trend is observed over time.
References
Australianfrequentflyer.com 2010. Qantas Feedback Panel. [Online] Available at: http://www.australianfrequentflyer.com.au/community/qantas-frequent-flyer-program/qantas-feedback-panel-26804.html [Accessed 19 February 2013]
Dellarocas, C. 2003. Promise and Challenges of Online Feedback Mechanisms. A Journal of the Institute for Operations Research and Management Sciences [e-journal] 59 (2), Available through http://mansci.journal.informs.org/content/49/10/1407.short [Accessed 19 February 2013]
Traveldaily.com. 2012. QF Appointments. [Online] Available at: http://www.traveldaily.com.au/news/qf-appointments/4463 [Accessed 19 February 2013]
Qantas.com. 2013. Customer Service Charter. [Online] Available at:
http://www.qantas.com.au/travel/airlines/customer-charter/global/en [Accessed 15 February 2013]
