China Southern Airlines: Customer Service Analysis & Recommendations

This report provides an analysis of China Southern Airlines' customer service based on a customer's negative experience. It examines the airline's performance in terms of customer expectations, satisfaction, and service quality, utilizing the 7Ps framework to highlight deficiencies in patience, perceptiveness, politeness, pragmatism, and professionalism. The report concludes with several recommendations for improvement, including the adoption of smart technology for better accountability and networking, leveraging customer feedback for problem-solving, implementing disruptive business models for efficient information processing, and investing in infrastructure to ensure safe and comfortable flights, ultimately aiming to enhance customer satisfaction and loyalty. Desklib offers a wealth of similar resources for students seeking academic support.

Running head: CUSTOMER SERVICE ANALYSIS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
Customer Service Analysis and Recommendations
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1CUSTOMER SERVICE ANALYSIS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
Analysis and recommendations for China Southern airlines
Expectations Analysis
To analyze the situation faced in the aspect of expectations, it is important to mention that
the theories of customer expectations and satisfaction revolve around the facts that the
expectations of the customers form the benchmark or the level of expertise that is expected out of
the services provided by a firm or an organization (Sengupta, Balaji and Krishnan 2015). As
services are intangible so they are exposed to the risk of being ambiguous and not of the same
level of satisfaction to the customers every time. This theory is of immense importance to the
service marketers as it helps in creating and generating higher levels of revenue and sales by
providing the customers with the type and quality of service that they want and avoid any gap in
the quality expected and delivered (Cook 2017).
In this case, it can be asserted with confidence that even though the customer did not
have high expectations from the airlines firm, the amount of expectations that he had were not
satisfied or catered to by the firm. The airlines firm in this case failed to provide a comfortable
and enjoyable flight and also failed to keep up to the expectations of providing the services on
time, that is the cancelation of the return flight sheds light on the inefficiency of the airlines
company to cater to the basic needs of the customers.

2CUSTOMER SERVICE ANALYSIS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
Customer satisfaction
Customer satisfaction is a measure of by how much or by what quantity a firm has been
able to surpass the level of customer expectations (Hill and Brierley 2017). In other words,
customer satisfaction is defined as the percentage or ratio of customers who have reported to
have experiences with the firm which has exceeded their expectations (Bansal and Taylor 2015).
It is essentially a cognitive concept based on the emotional nature of the customers up to some
extent but can usually be measured with quite an amount of accuracy.
To apply this concept in this particular case, it can be stated that the level of customer
satisfaction has not at all been reached by the China Southern airlines as the type of service and
accountability shown by the firm was extremely poor. The customer claims not to recommend
this firm to anyone else as even though its services are cheap, the firm fails to cater to the
standards of customer satisfaction in every way including cancellation of flights and a long wait
time even in terms of catering to customer complaints and also the level of comfort provided
during the travel to the customers.
Service quality
The quality of service provided by the firm to the customers and clients is also related to
the above mentioned concepts of customer expectations and customer satisfaction (Yu et al.
2017). This is also again an intangible concept but can be measured on the basis of some
attributes that help in measuring and comparing the quality of services provided by different

3CUSTOMER SERVICE ANALYSIS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
firms operating in the same industry. These attributes measured help in deciding the solutions to
the problems faced by the firm in this respect (Hussain, Al Nasser and Hussain 2015).
In this context, again in this case, the firm has failed to provide quality service to the
customers. The delay in the response of the customer complaint executive, the cancellation of
flights, the lack of proper infrastructure inside the flights that would provide a comfortable stay
and also the problems faced in terms of the visa all suggest and portray the low quality of service
provided by the company and calls for the firm to take up steps to improve the same.
7Ps Analysis
The concept of the 7Ps, if applied in this context also portrays that the firm is extremely
inefficient with respect to the values that the firm needs to possess or apply for providing a better
quality of experience of the customers (Luo, Roach and Jiratchot 2015). The values of patience,
perceptiveness, politeness, pragmatism and professionalism are absolutely missing in the type
and quality of services provided by the China Southern airlines.
Further, the review of the customer claims that he had a terrible experience with the firm
and would not recommend the same to other customers. This clearly shows the level of
dissatisfaction and distrust that the firm has provided the customer with because of the poor
quality of professionalism and services provided by it.

4CUSTOMER SERVICE ANALYSIS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
Recommendations
Depending upon the experience which is described in detail by the customer of China
Southern airlines it is seen that the firm needs to work on a number of areas that will help
improve its capacity in terms of catering to the customer’s demands and needs and changing the
level, variety and quality of services provided to the customers. The list of recommendations for
this firm are provided and enlisted in this section as follows:
 The firm should use smart devices and innovative technology for overcoming the
problems related to the quality of servicing in terms of accountability and networking so
that the flights are not delayed or cancelled. It will also help the firm to use the latest
information and data to analyze the best methods of providing better quality services at
low costs.
 The firm should also increasingly use feedbacks of customers in determining the major
challenges and problems in terms of servicing and customer satisfaction prioritize them
and then try solving and providing solutions for the same.
 The firm should also apply the use of disruptive business models in gathering and
processing information do that they can expand and provide quick and easy solution
which are both pragmatic and professional to the customers.
 The firm should take up steps and incur expenditure necessary for providing both safe
and comfortable flights to the customers. It should take up steps to install the
infrastructure that is necessary to at least meet the expectations of the customers if not
exceed the expectations set by the customers.

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References
Bansal, H.S. and Taylor, S.F., 2015. Beyond service quality and customer satisfaction:
investigating additional antecedents of service provider switching intentions. In Proceedings of
the 1999 Academy of Marketing Science (AMS) Annual Conference (pp. 75-82). Springer, Cham.
Cook, S., 2017. Measuring customer service effectiveness. Routledge.
Hill, N. and Brierley, J., 2017. How to measure customer satisfaction. Routledge.
Hussain, R., Al Nasser, A. and Hussain, Y.K., 2015. Service quality and customer satisfaction of
a UAE-based airline: An empirical investigation. Journal of Air Transport Management, 42,
pp.167-175.
Luo, A., Roach, S. and Jiratchot, C., 2015. The effect of the 7Ps of the marketing mix on air
freight customer satisfaction and repurchase intention. Journal of Supply Chain Management
Research and Practice, 9(2), pp.28-36.
Sengupta, A.S., Balaji, M.S. and Krishnan, B.C., 2015. How customers cope with service
failure? A study of brand reputation and customer satisfaction. Journal of Business
Research, 68(3), pp.665-674.
Yu, Q., Allon, G., Bassamboo, A. and Iravani, S., 2017. Managing customer expectations and
priorities in service systems. Management Science.