The goal Growing demands for outstanding customer experiences need the strategic integration of customer-focused, cross-functional teams (marketing, sales, and service divisions). Nonetheless, research attention is still drawn to the lengthy history of interface disputes across functional teams. Triadic interface conflict between custom-focused teams and their sub-conflicts in a business-to-business (B2B) sales process has received less attention in previous study than conflicts between marketing and sales teams. In order to provide a more comprehensive description of functional team conflict, this research article aims to quantify the triadic interface conflicts and related sub-conflicts between customer-focused teams, talk about conflict resolution techniques, and conduct a sensitivity analysis (SA).

Design/methodology/approach: To discover and resolve conflicts in customer-focused team interfaces, multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM), which is based on the analytic hierarchy process (AHP), is suggested. In this study, thirty managers from a major electronics industry took part. During training sessions on interface conflicts and conflict management/resolution techniques, the authors gathered data from managers of customer-focused teams. The robustness of the rankings of conflict resolution strategies is tested by the authors using SA.

According to the results, managers believe that tasks are the primary conflict factor that separates teams, with poor communication coming in second. Managers ranked the inability to have regular meetings as the second most significant conflict characteristic for the sub-conflicts, behind how to complete the assignment. Managers said that integration or cooperation was the greatest approach overall for conflict resolution, with compromise coming in second. Managers may feel certain in the reliability and consistency of these solutions when they utilize the AHP-based MCDM to settle disputes involving customer-focused team interfaces. Testing the SA also revealed that the final result remained resilient (stable) when the priority of the primary deciding factors were raised and lowered by 5% in each combination. Limitations and implications of the research This research focused on interface disputes between customer-oriented divisions and only looked at a big B2B electronics corporation in the Middle East and Africa. These limitations may be addressed in future studies. Our knowledge of customer-focused team interface conflicts in a business-to-business sales process is improved by this research. Additionally, it offers insightful information on how to handle major and sub-interface disputes effectively. In order to enhance customer experience and corporate success, this paper offers a framework and useful insights on how interface conflicts—which are common in the marketing, sales, and service sectors—can be handled.

By creating an AHP-based MCDM, this study adds to the body of literature. It not only deepens our conceptual understanding of interface conflicts between customer-focused teams by highlighting their triadic nature, but it also offers insightful strategies and useful insights into how these conflicts can be resolved in a B2B firm's sales process. In terms of methodology, SA is useful for guaranteeing the validity of the rankings of conflict resolution techniques that will impact pertinent, practical decision-making.