Can service firms overdo service recovery? An assessment of non-linearity in service recovery satisfaction
Owing to the human nature of service delivery service failures occasionally occur. Persistently poor service delivery will, however, have a harmful impact on the survival and growth prospects of service firms. Service failure thus calls for remedial action, better known as service recovery. A variety of remedies have been proposed over the years. These remedies or tactics include fixing the problem, apologising, compensation (financial compensation or other forms of redress), a timely response and offering an explanation. A general theme in the service recovery literature is that ‘more is better'. The validity of this contention has, however, not been adequately considered. In other words, in a service recovery context, is more always better? Can service recovery be over-done (known as ‘over-benefitting')? If so, what are the consequences? Based on the results of two field-type experimental studies involving a sample of 12 800 respondents the conclusion is that over-benefitting can be counter-productive. Over-benefitting consistently produced satisfaction scores lower than service recovery that was more moderate in nature.
Year of publication: |
2012
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Authors: | Boshoff, C. |
Published in: |
South African Journal of Business Management. - Cape Town : African Online Scientific Information Systems (AOSIS), ISSN 2078-5976. - Vol. 43.2012, 3, p. 1-12
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Publisher: |
Cape Town : African Online Scientific Information Systems (AOSIS) |
Saved in:
freely available
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