خدمات مشتری در صنعت هوانوردی - تجزیه و تحلیل اکتشافی از فرودگاه های امارات متحده عربی

Customer satisfaction is given top priority by all service-oriented industries. The civil aviation industry is no exception. The highly competitive global aviation arena causes various airlines to vie for the top position with lot of importance being given to the customer service. The aim of this study is to analyze the methods and tools used by the United Arab Emirates' (UAE's) federal government and the various local governments in the country to improve the customer satisfaction with regard to the aviation industry in the country. This paper develops a framework to assess customer service in the aviation sector in the UAE and uses the framework to analyze and compare the three main airports in the UAE based on the feedback of passengers. This study used a multi-pronged approach to collect data. In all, 78 travelers were chosen at random and they were administered a structured and a semi-structured questionnaire. Responses to the former were used to perform Chi-square test and establish the differences between the three airports; the latter were used to gain deeper insight and gauge a more in-depth opinion of the respondents. Through the analysis of the data, this study was able to learn more about the public view with regard to the innovations and ideas implemented by the government of the UAE. A new customer service model has been developed to compare the three airports in UAE and gain more insights into opportunities for improvement.

Service quality leading to customer satisfaction is thought to be an attitude resulting from a comparison of actual performance of the product with built-in expectations of the user (Kien-Quoc and Simpson, 2006). Getting it right the first time is critical to the continued success of the organization. Organizations that avoid service failure fare lot better than organizations focusing on service recovery after failure (McCollough et al., 2000). To gain a higher level of service satisfaction, organizations need to understand a customer's journey – from the expectations they have before the experience begins to the assessments they are likely to make when it is over (Berry et al., 2002). Complete customer satisfaction is only possible when every influencing member of the organization has a complete understanding of customer needs and requirements (Asher, 1989). Customer service is a key aspect of any business and eventually determines the overall profits and sales of an organization. Like any other sector, airports need to have an emphasis on service quality improvement. Airport infrastructure is the first and last point of tourists' contact in their trip to a country. Therefore, services have to be processed at an airport in an efficient way in order to minimize travel time and to allow leisure time in the commercial areas of the airport (Martín-Cejas, 2006). Gorst et al. (1998) found that customer satisfaction could be viewed as a cyclical process that can increase or decrease over time. Each cycle begins with what the customer thinks or expects. As the customer avails the service over time, the classification changes to being a ‘past experience’. Two fundamental forces that drive the strategy in the aviation industry are safety and customer service (Appelbaum and Fewster, 2003). There is immense competition between airports to attract business and get more airlines to choose them as their destination. The quality of customer service could be the determinant that attracts airlines to an airport. Issues such as handling of customer complaints and proactively putting in plans to avoid them are very important for the overall success of an organization (Bell and Luddington, 2006; Robbins and Miller, 2004). To understand customer satisfaction, Martin (1992) introduced seven areas of customer research including critical service factors, customer priorities, parameters of performance, current performance standards, competitive performance standards, benchmark suppliers and service opportunities. This paper presents a model that has been developed by combining different customer service related models and compares customer service quality at three UAE airports. The model also helps in identifying opportunities for improvement at these airports. The paper is divided into five sections. The next section presents a review of literature around customer satisfaction in the aviation sector and different models that can be used for developing an assessment for UAE airports. Following the literature review section is the research methodology which establishes data collection process. The actual data collected from three UAE airports are analyzed in the results section and then the paper concludes, highlighting some implications that can be drawn from this research.

Tourism is one of the most important industries in the UAE today and is a large contributor to the local economy of the country. In addition to tourism, there is a large expatriate population in the UAE and that means the airports have to meet or exceed expectations of travelers who come from very diverse backgrounds and with a wide variety of expectations. The study of the three airports has shown that they all are meeting the five criteria studied and set for UAE airports. The study also established that Dubai International airport is significantly better than the Abu Dhabi International airport and Sharjah International airport in regard to criteria for exceeding international expectations about airport facilities, reaching and sustaining customer expectations and customer loyalty. This research had some limitations and, given the small sample size, it can only be regarded as an exploratory study. In order to further confirm these findings, a more elaborate data collection system with a significantly higher number of respondents is necessary. Because the data were collected from passengers who were traveling, there are variables to be considered that could affect the response. Such as the inability of a passenger to concentrate if they have a long trip ahead of them. Some of them could be in a hurry. Therefore, future studies should be done in calmer settings, if possible of passengers who are not preoccupied with getting to their gates. One of the main contributions of this research is the development of the assessment model for gauging the customer satisfaction with airports. An exploratory study of UAE has helped test the model and has demonstrated the ability to identify issues that can be explored further.