People Mix in Airline Industry
In the service industry, service personnel come in direct contact with their customers in the course of production and consumption of the services.
Because people provide most services, the selection, training, and motivation of employees can make a huge difference in attaining customer satisfaction. Ideally, employees should exhibit competence, caring attitude, responsiveness, initiative, problem solving ability, and goodwill. Many service organizations trust their people enough to empower their front-line personnel to resolve customer problems.
The airhostess in any airline come in contact with the customers in the process of providing the service, while the cock-pit crew are employees who contribute to the service product but do not come in direct contact with the customers.
The physical presence and the percentage of time the customer is present reflect the customer contact and extent of contact respectively. Services with high contact are more difficult to control and manage because of the degree of variability in the quality, demand and nature of service.
The service contact personnel in the airline industry is an airhostess who is expected to possess a pleasing personality with polite service handling. While on the other hand the cock pit crew, being categorized as a low contact personnel, require to possess high analytical and technical attributes. In the airline industry, there is also the ancillary service personnel, the travel agent who helps to create the service exchange but is not a part of the service.
While delivering services, airlines ensure that the service is delivered as promised and this is often totally with in the control of the front-line staff. This ensures some amount of reliability. This in turn affects the degree of responsiveness sought from customers. The quality of service that the front-lone staff provides is highly depended on his/her ability to communicate their credibility. Airlines deliver caring and individualized attention to customers through their airhostesses. Empathy implies that these personnel will listen, adapt, and be flexible in delivering what individual customers need. Also the appearance of an employee are important aspects as it forms the tangible dimensions of quality along with other factors like service quality, decor etc.
To start off, airlines hire the right personnel with essential requirements. They recruit the right people and develop, and train them to deliver quality service. These employees are provided with effective and sufficient support systems and are motivated in a manner, they stick to the organization. They are more treated as customers, rather than employees.
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