HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT’S CONTRIBUTION TO THE IMPLEMENTATION OF STRATEGIES FOR CUSTOMER SATISFACTION: THE CASE OF 3 STAR HOTELS IN SRI LANKA

Abstract

Customer satisfaction (CS) has been the focal point in all most all marketing management strategies in business organizations. Further, this emphasis on CS has penetrated into the other functional areas of organizations redirecting their activities towards customer satisfaction. Human resource management (HRM) plays a significant role in achieving CS, specially in service organizations like hotels, banks etc. it has made HRM required a particular set of strategies for creating CS in these service organization. However, few studies have been carried out to investigate adequately the HRM strategies for CS and assess their contribution for CS in organizations. The present study examined the HRM strategies of selected three star hotels and the level of CS in their customers. Further, it assessed the contribution of HR strategies for customer satisfaction the sample organizations. A random sample of 50 managers whose population stands around 280 and two hundred employees out of nearly around 1200, were drawn for data collection. The HR strategies profile developed by the research and Customer satisfaction Questionnaire (CSQ) were utilized for data collection. The factor analysis and multiple regressions were applied for data analysis in relation to hypotheses testing. It was revealed that HRM contribute significantly to CS in hotel industry, further, it was found that strategies such as customer oriented value system, Empowerment, behavior based employee evaluation, and performance based rewards systems are prominent in enhancing CS in three star hotels in Sri Lanka.