An exploratory study of the sales-production relationship and customer satisfaction

Over the past three decades, many researchers have studied the relationship between sales and production departments. This has raised the question: Does the quality of the relationship between production and sales affect the customer? This study uses survey methodology to examine the link between customer satisfaction and the interface variables (connectedness, conflict, coordination) from both a sales and a production perspective. Customer satisfaction responses are aggregated for each sales-production combination and analyzed to determine the impact of the relationship between production and sales personnel. Product type (i.e. engineered-to-order (ETO)) is introduced as a moderating variable. Results indicate that there is a significant impact on customer satisfaction as a result of the cross-functional situation when moderated by product type. The main managerial implication is that the internal relationship between sales and production is important to the customer, specifically in ETO product situations.