The myth of service recovery
Rick GarlickMaritz Research Hospitality Group, United States
INTRODUCTION
Service recovery has been defined as the actions an organization takes in response to a service failure (Gronoos, 1988). Since customers naturally feel a sense of entitlement to have their problems acknowledged and compensated, any number of strategies may be employed to restore customer satisfaction and loyalty (Danaher and Mattsson, 1994; Sparks and McColl-Kennedy, 2001). Minimally, service recovery strategies involve an acknowledgement of the problem, as well as an explanation for why the problem occurred and a sincere apology for the resulting inconvenience. There is often...