Importance of Customer Complaint Handling Satisfaction for MSMEs in B2B Context

Abstract

Achieving perfection is an ideal far from reality in any sphere of business (Varela-Neira et al., 2010). But the world has come a long way in terms of progress. Systems like 6 Sigma, etc., have brought down the level of quality defects to miniscule level and there are ways to measure and quantify the defect. By this we can take corrective actions to rectify the defects. But when it comes to handling of complaint, if the complaint is not handled to the satisfaction of customer the damage will be exponential and often irrepairable. The biggest challenge is to measure or quantify the damage created by even small or miniscule level of defective product or service. An effort is made here to study the complaint resolution satisfaction and its effect on customer loyalty for micro, small and medium enterprises in business to business context. Primary data are collected by 5 point Likert scale questionnaire and impact of complaint handling on customer loyalty is measured through (a) simple linear regression and analysis of variance and (b) descriptive statistics like frequency and mean. This study implies that satisfactory complaint resolution is a very important factor for continued customer retention.