Service Quality Strategy Challenges for Managers and Frontline Employees in the South African Post Office in the North West Province

Abstract

This paper addresses the possible factors that hamper service quality strategy implementation by managers and frontline employees and thus hindering consumer satisfaction with the South Africa Post Office (SAPO) in the North West province of South Africa. This study was grounded on the contingency theory which emphasises the need for management, managers and frontline employees to utilise various methods for resolving problems that may obstruct strategy implementation. This study adopted a qualitative research approach with semi-structured interviews to obtain data from selected participants. Data was collected from three post office branch managers, one area manager and ten frontline employees, making a total of fourteen participants and the data were analysed using Atlas-ti (Version 8.1). The results obtained indicate that post offices struggle to implement their specific strategies due to factors such as vision barrier, management barrier, resource barrier, issues with organisational leadership and commitment, lack of proper implementation of plans, inability to communicate effectively as a challenge to strategy implementation, technological barriers as a challenge to strategy implementation and culture, environment, and change management. The study recommends that post offices should allocate adequate resource and funding during the implementation process and deploy skilled personnel to improve strategy implementation. It is further recommended that managers consider strategy implementation as a priority, as well as the need to include frontline employees as part of strategic planning. Effective collaboration with management, managers and frontline employees, high leadership commitment, improved technological advancement and considering the environmental factors will improve high service quality. All this is in an endeavour to facilitate strategy implementation to accomplish reasonable service delivery to all postal consumers in South Africa.