How Can Service Failures Be Recovered? Start with Star Ratings, Personnel Rank, and Failure Severity

Wen-Chin Tsao,Yu-Chen Liu,Yu-Shan Lin,Shu-Fen Li,Qi-Xin Chen

doi:10.5539/ibr.v13n7p56

Abstract

In recent years, companies have had to continuously pursue higher service quality and maintain customer satisfaction because of rising consumer awareness. Due to the special industry attributes of the service industry, it is particularly important for the service industry to recover service failures. The purpose of this study is to explore how to propose the solutions from the constructs of hotel star ratings, service staff ranks, and service failure severity. Eight scenarios were constructed by experimental design, which were performed on the network platform to collect data. A total of 320 subjects participated in this study. The results of this study show that hotel star rating and service staff rank can affect post-recovery satisfaction. In addition, the three variables of hotel star rating, service staff ranking, and service failure severity will affect corporate image. Finally, this study has also verified that better post-recovery satisfaction will help improve corporate image. Managerial implications for the marketing managers of the hotel industry and directions for future research are also discussed.&nbsp;&nbsp;

Highlights

Due to the popularity of business and improved transportation convenience, the number of visitors to Taiwan for tourism or business purposes has increased year by year, and the demand for hotel accommodation has increased
With superior service recovery, the customer's overall satisfaction with the service may exceed the satisfaction with no failures at all, resulting in a second satisfaction, which shows the importance of service recovery in the service industry
Cronbach ’s alpha of Post-recovery satisfaction (PRS) and corporate image were 0.967 and 0.954, respectively, indicating these two constructs have a high degree of internal consistency (Wortzel, 1979)

Summary

Introduction

Due to the popularity of business and improved transportation convenience, the number of visitors to Taiwan for tourism or business purposes has increased year by year, and the demand for hotel accommodation has increased. Due to the characteristics of intangibility, inseparability, variability, and perishability of the service industry, coupled with customer participation in the service delivery process, service failures are unavoidable (Tsao, Hsieh, Ye, & Tsai, 2014; Tsao & Jhang, 2019). Since service failures cannot be avoided, a good service recovery mechanism has become an important management mechanism to retain customers and avoid customer defection (Tsao, 2018). With superior service recovery, the customer's overall satisfaction with the service may exceed the satisfaction with no failures at all, resulting in a second satisfaction, which shows the importance of service recovery in the service industry

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