THE ROLE OF PUBLIC RELATIONS IN ENHANCING CUSTOMER’S SATISFACTION

The role of public relations in enhancing customers satisfaction in a government parastatal (a case study of the Enugu state Idater Corporation) is hinged on disclosing the necessity of applying public relations and the role public relations can play in rendering a satisfactory service which will not only retain customer but attract more customers to a government firm. Accordingly, customer satisfaction has to do with serving the customers in a most respectable and satisfying manner as well as conducting such services in a way he customer like or want according to John Hoepers (1985) “in the free market economy, one gains wealth only through serving the customers best d determined by the opinion of the customers themselves. The researcher has investigated on how the management sees the public relations department of the Enugu state water corporation and what satrapies it has employed in including the satisfaction of the corporations customers and how these strategies have affected the relationship of customers with the government organizations Questionnaires and oral interviews were used by the researcher to obtain data. A total of 150 questionnaires were given to respondents comprising the employee, management and customers of Enugu state water corporation but only 122 questionnaires were returned. The researcher also makes use of reluctant and reliable test books written by authors on public relations. From findings, the researcher was able to observe that the public relations department of the Enugu Sate water corporation is highly regarded and its action ties have contributed to the tremendous growth of the corporation and its suggestions also form the basis of their policies. Another major observation is that the corporation through the role of the public relations department has adopted and implemented some suggestion made by customers in order to serve them better. In ending this study, the researcher has made some recommendations both for the growth and progress of the corporation and also for further studies in this area. The project, for the purpose of easy understanding is divided into five chapter. The first chapter entails the introduction of the topic under study which the second chapter deals with the review of relevant literatures that have been used in this project. Chapter three deals with the outline of the methodology used where as chapter four contains the analysis and interpretation of the result. The summary of this work is discussed in chapter five together with conclusion and recommendations for further study.