BATELCO Customer Satisfaction and Beyond

Abstract

abstract : Customer satisfaction is becoming the focus of companies to achieve success in a highly competitive products and service industries. Companies' strategies are shifting from an internal focus of operations efficiency improvement, perceived by management, to outward orientation toward customer satisfaction. As the world is going through new global competition, derived by the World Trade Organization's new policies, tougher competition is emerging that requires more customers' satisfaction, customers retention policies, and the creation of 'loyal customers.' Bahrain Telecommunication Company (Batelco) is one of the companies that has focused its efforts on more customer satisfaction. The company has gone through organization development and reorganization to gain a substantial customer focus. Consequently, customers' satisfaction must be measured to evaluate how much customer focus and improvements were achieved in serving its customers. The company must act upon the results and formulate short and long term strategies to achieve full customers' satisfaction and create loyal customers in the long run. This research was conducted to measure Batelco customers' satisfaction in key services' aspects to identify customers' perceptions about the level of the services they receive. The results of the survey have shown high dissatisfaction in three key areas: the customer service centers, the operator services, and the services tariffs. Most significantly the results have shown that the majority of Batelco's customers were not 'very satisfied' and therefor could not be characterized as loyal customers. Such customers could be lost in future competitions when the telecommunication services are liberalized in Bahrain. Batelco has to develop strategies with an objective beyond customers' satisfaction. It must create loyal customers in the long run. To achieve this, it is recommended that management must be highly committed, provide high quality perceived services, adopt customer profiling, and elevate staff performance through linking with customer's satisfaction.