The Contribution of Professionalism and Skills on Customer Satisfaction Among Customers of National Water and Sewage Cooperation (NWSC) in Mbarara City, Uganda

Abstract

The study focused on Customer care service and customer satisfaction among customers of National Water and Sewage Cooperation in Mbarara City. The study was guided by the following objectives: To find out the effect of accessibility and flexibility on customer satisfaction among customers of National water and sewage cooperation, to determine the relationship between reliability and customer satisfaction among customers of national water and sewage cooperation in Mbarara city, to ascertain the contribution of professionalism and skills on customer satisfaction among customers of national water and sewage cooperation in Mbarara city. A non-experimental, cross sectional survey research design was used in this study with a mixed methods approach of data collection and analysis. Simple random and purposive sampling techniques were used to come up with a sample of 324 respondents from whom primary data was collected, these included; the branch managers of NWSC, and the customers of NWSC specifically the land lords and land ladies in Mbarara City. The managers were subjected to interview while the customers were subjection to questionnaires. A statistical package SPSS (version 20) was used to analyze the quantitative data collected through the questionnaires and thematic content analysis and narrative reasoning was used to analyze qualitative data collected. The findings of the study revealed that accessibility and flexibility have a strong positive affect on the customer satisfaction (r = 0.703, p<0.05). The findings on the relationship between reliability and customer satisfaction revealed that there is a moderate positive relationship between the two variables (r = 0.420, p<0.05). The study further revealed that professionalism contributes much towards customer satisfaction according to the results from interview with the branch managers of NWSC. From the study findings, it can be concluded that Customer care service is very pertinent in as far as customer satisfaction with the organizational services is concerned therefore, the management of NWSC should put in more effort to ensure they improve their customer care services to retain and maintain a stable customer base for the organization. The present study recommended that the management should open up more branches of NWSC within the city for easy accessibility by the customers and this will at the same time increase the reliability. Professionalism should be emphasized since it greatly contributes to the customer satisfaction among customers of National water and sewage cooperation within Mbarara city.