Proceedings of The 9th International Conference on Opportunities and Challenges in Management, Economics and Accounting
Year: 2022
DOI:
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Cultural Intelligence, Communication Effectiveness and Customer Satisfaction
Faruk Şahin
ABSTRACT:
The main purpose of the present study is to explore the relationship between service employees’ cultural intelligence and customer satisfaction, as well as to examine whether the communication effectiveness of service employees has a mediating role in this relationship. Data was collected in 2021 from both service employees in the hospitality industry in Fethiye (Turkey) and the customers. The convenience sampling technique was used in the selection of service employees who are supposed to interact with customers from different countries due to their job roles. All in all, there were 177 usable responses from service employee-customer dyads. The PROCESS, an SPSS macro, was used to conduct multiple regression analyses to test this mediation model. Findings indicate that cultural intelligence was positively associated with communication effectiveness. A positive relationship between communication effectiveness and customer satisfaction, controlling for cultural intelligence, was found. Finally, the findings show that there was a significant indirect effect for communication effectiveness in the relationship between cultural intelligence and customer satisfaction. Given the evidence that cultural intelligence is effective in service roles, firms should consider this ability as a significant factor in service staff selection and placement.
keywords: cultural intelligence, communication effectiveness, customer satisfaction, service employee, hospitality management.