Service Quality Qantas Airlines

Question: Write about theService Quality for Qantas Airlines. Answer: Introduction of Qantas Airlines Qantas Airways is an Australian Airline which is the largest airline in the world by its international flights, destination and fleet size. This third oldest airline was founded in 1920 and began its journey with international flights in 1935. It is based in the Sydney airport. The company has around sixty five percent domestic markets share in Australia and as per the reports of 2014 the airline carried around 14.9% of the passengers who were travelling out and in Australia. There are several other subsidiary airlines that operate in various regional routes under the brand name of the airline. Since 1920, the airline has made several business deals with different other international brands which had enhance its business in the global level. In the year 1934, Qantas with the Imperial Airways of Britain formed another company, the Qantas Empire Airways Limited that used to operate between Darwin and Brisbane. The company also had joint ventures with the British Overseas Airways Corporation. In 1992, Qantas had merged with the national airline of Australia and therefore started its rebranding. Gradually the airline was privatized and as per the legislation the 51% of its share has to be owned by the Australian shareholders. The in flight service offered by the airline is outstanding as it has installed several video audio entertainment systems. Also there are facilities of audio or video on demand which is done by the Panasonic Avionics system. There are number of entertainment programs offered in the flights; movies are shown in the longer flights whereas TV programs are provided in the shorter ones. Since 2007, all the classes in Qantas airways have wireless internet access as well. Customer Relationship Management In terms of the customer relationship management, any company has to follow both the ways of quality and productivity, whereas quality is focused on the potential advantages for the consumers, the productivity triggers the financial costs acquired by the company. In Qantas airways, all the subdivisions such as human resources, operations, marketing work together for achieving the improvements in quality and productivity of the company. However, the company has faced severe issues regarding customer relationship management few years back. There was a major failure in the flight engines in 2010. During this time, three engines of Qantas airlines have failed back to back in three consecutive months, August, September and November. After this huge set back the company has also faced internal issues between the company unions and workers. Due to this conflict the company had to cancel numerous flights which had led to harassment of around sixty eight thousand customers. The company has al so faced huge negative shaming on the social media for these setbacks. Due to such problems the company may need to redesign its customer relationship management and the customer complaint handling. In the customer relationship management, the company needs to identify the gap between the expected service of the consumers and their perceived service according to the GAPS Model. This model was first proposed in the year 1985 to recognize the customer gap or the difference between the expectations and perceptions. The more the consumer gap increases, the number of unsatisfied customers increases as well (Kumar 2012). Therefore, the company needs to find out the exact reason of the existing consumer gap. There can be several reasons for this, therefore only after detecting the reason the company will be able to identify the consumer gap. In this scenario, the primary reason for the customer gap was that the company could not meet the primary requirements due to its own internal conflicts. Therefore, Qantas may lower its prices in the future flights so that they can provide the customers a different experience within a low price. Customer Complaint Handling In customer complaint handling, the company needs to be swift and prompt, so that they can reach the consumers as soon as possible. Due to the continuous mishaps in the flights the company had faced a huge negative publicity. In fact, while the company had started a new hashtag about luxury flights soon after the mishaps, it has faced tremendous negative publicities. Therefore, their entire complaint handling department was at stake. However, even after the negative publicities, the company should be prompt and reply to each of the customers personally. The company should be patient while taking these complaints and remain entirely impassive while facing the criticism (Basfirinci and Mitra 2015). They should also give the consumers adequate attention, so that they know that their problems are being listened. The company should also remember that they should not generalize the complaints even if they have faced such an issue before. Patiently dealing with all the problems will lead th e company to remove the negative publicities effectively. Reference List and Bibliography Allred, A.T. and Addams, H.L., 2013. Service quality at banks and credit unions: what do their customers say?.International Journal of Bank Marketing. Basfirinci, C. and Mitra, A., 2015. A cross cultural investigation of airlines service quality through integration of Servqual and the Kano model.Journal of Air Transport Management,42, pp.239-248. Knox, S., Payne, A., Ryals, L., Maklan, S. and Peppard, J., 2012.Customer relationship management. Routledge. Kumar, V., 2012.Customer relationship management. John Wiley Sons, Ltd. Wu, H.C. and Cheng, C.C., 2013. A hierarchical model of service quality in the airline industry.Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management,20, pp.13-22. Zurich, L.B., 2017. Service Operations and Management.