Can service firms overdo service recovery? An assessment of non-linearity in service recovery satisfaction
Date
2012
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
AOSIS
Abstract
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.
Description
CITATION: Boshoff, C. 2012. Can service firms overdo service recovery? An assessment of non-linearity in service recovery satisfaction. South African Journal of Business Management, 43(3):a470, doi:10.4102/sajbm.v43i3.470.
The original publication is available at https://sajbm.org
The original publication is available at https://sajbm.org
Keywords
Business enterprises -- South Africa
Citation
Boshoff, C. 2012. Can service firms overdo service recovery? An assessment of non-linearity in service recovery satisfaction. South African Journal of Business Management, 43(3):a470, doi:10.4102/sajbm.v43i3.470.