Service Failure, Recovery and Complaint Handling

Service failures – temporary or permanent interruptions of the customer’s regular service experience – occur quite frequently in a customer’s everyday life. Service failures provoke a strong negative emotional reaction in customers and the desire to restore the initial situation to obtain what the service organization should have delivered in the first place. Organizations need to handle service failures and customer complaints by providing a set of appropriate responses aimed at restoring the customer’s regular service experience and correct internal operations. This includes reestablishing customer emotional and cognitive reactions to failures by providing an array of organizational responses that allow a successful complaint handling. To accomplish this, organizations are required to set up an effective and sustainable service recovery system.