Putting it right: service failure and customer loyalty in UK banks

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine minor service failures in UK banking and consider the impact that satisfaction with service recovery has on customer intentions to continue their custom and make recommendations, used as measures of loyalty behaviours. Design/methodology/approach – Data were gathered on customer satisfaction with service recovery attempts, intended loyalty behaviours and the sources of service failures were gathered by means of an on‐line survey from approximately 2,000 respondents. Findings – Few customers who complained about minor service failures report that they were very satisfied with the service recovery. Weak service recovery influenced customer intentions about continued custom and recommendation. Minor failures in account management and bank charges are shown to have a marked effect on intended loyalty behaviours. Research limitations/implications – This paper reports the work of a short, e‐mail survey, gathering frequency data from customers of UK banks and reports the impact of service recovery on customer intentions rather than their actions. Further investigation is needed using more a more sophisticated instrument. Practical implications – In this paper low levels of satisfaction with managing service recoveries are reported, no matter which channel the customer used, no matter how the service failure is managed. Originality/value – The preliminary work in this paper demonstrates the impact that weak service recovery of minor complaints has on customers' intended loyalty behaviours in UK banking.