Enhancing Internal Customer Satisfaction Through Organizational Development Intervention: A Case Study

Abstract

This action research identifies and investigates the impact of organizational development intervention (ODI) on enhancing internal customer satisfaction. The two foci of satisfaction in this study were organizational communication and information/knowledge sharing. AB, an in-house tour production unit of an Airline, was used as a case study. The ODI was designed and implemented by using a knowledge management project through the creation of the selling office’s community website which acts as a virtual community for selling offices to strengthen and improve organizational communication and information/knowledge sharing. The informants consisted of representatives from AB’s fifty-five selling offices worldwide. Both quantitative and qualitative approaches using questionnaires, interviews and observations were used to collect and analyze data. After the ODI, it was revealed that the satisfaction of selling offices, as internal customers, with both organizational communication and information/knowledge sharing was increased. Strong positive relationships between internal customer satisfaction with organizational communication and internal customer satisfaction with information/knowledge sharing, including the moderate to strong relationships among all dimensions  were discovered. In addition, a strong positive relationship between the number of website visits and packages sold was also revealed.