Determining The Effect of Catering Companies' Attitudes Toward Customer Complaints on Customer Loyalty

Abstract

Catering companies are organizations that provide catering services with a pre-agreed menu and price, prioritizing public health. This study aimed to determine the effect of catering companies' attitudes toward customer complaints coming to customer satisfaction management systems on customer loyalty. For this purpose, 175 customer complaints, the corrective and preventive action reports, and customer loss reports that came to three catering companies for twelve months between 2021 and 2022 were examined by the document review method, and all data were subjected to content analysis. As a result of the content analysis, customer complaints were categorized into four themes: (1) food safety problems, (2) food quality problems, (3) delivery problems, and (4) service quality problems. It was determined that the themes on which the complaints were mostly concentrated were respectively 40.57% food safety problems, 38.29% food quality problems, 19.42% shipping problems, and 1.71% service quality problems. According to the corrective and preventive action reports and customer loss reports, satisfaction levels after solving customer problems (92%) and customer loyalty (79%) were found to be high. These results show that companies that are aware of their mistakes and try to correct them are more successful. Another result of the content analysis applied to the documents is that (1) the competence of the company personnel, (2) the understanding of customer requests, and (3) the establishment of relational communication with the customers reduce complaints and ensure customer loyalty. Overall, it was determined that the attitudes of catering companies towards customer complaints were positive but insufficient, and a positive attitude also positively affected customer loyalty.