Chapter 9
SERVICE FAILURES AND SERVICE RECOVER
INTRODUCTION
The previous chapters have given us an understanding on guests’ expectations through
research, together with knowing that they are individuals requiring a genuine relationship. With
these information at hand, an establishment would really be gearing up for success. But most
especially, in the field of tourism and hospitality, service failure cannot be averted. Even in a
world class company with best intentions, failure is inevitable. This is why we need to understand
our costumers and what they expect whenever a service failure happens.
WHAT IS SERVICE FAILURE AND RECOVERY?
Service failure is service rendered not meeting the expectations or standards of a guest,
leading to guest dissatisfaction. Usually, a failure would be because a service was unavailable
when it was promised; a service was done slowly or late; a service was wrong and poorly
implemented; or a service staff may be rude in the execution.
As failure is inevitable, service recovery can remedy this is the soonest possible time. Service
recovery is an organization’s response to a failure it committed to improve the guest experience.
This has great impact on guest satisfaction, loyalty, word of mouth, and ultimately, performance.
TYPES OF SERVICE FAILURES
To further illustrate the different service failures that a hospitality and tourism establishment may
commit, discussions on these concepts are follows:
1. Failures on service products. These are failures which involve issues on the core product.
These would include delayed or cancelled flight, cross contaminated food, dirty guest rooms,
unavailable menu items, and absence of service staff.
2. Failures on costumers request delivery. These failures on adhering to specific special quest
request, such as seat assignment, special arrangement on menu items, hotel room guest setup,
and program schedules.
3. Failures on costumers service. These include problems and on intentional or unintentional
actions of service staff exhibiting offensive attitude to guests, such frowning or failure to smile
and display a positive disposition to guests and deliberately ignoring a guest request.
4. Failures brought about by other organizational key players. These are failures caused by
unforeseen happenings, other gusts, and other unusual complaints which a guest still expects to
be corrected.
GUEST RESPONSES TO SERVICE FAILURES
If service recovery mechanism is not in place and the organization has failed to turn back
around the situation in favor of the guest, a lot of responses may be displayed by the guest. The
following are some of there responses.
1. Never return. A lot of guest have this as a response. Some guests will not even give the staff
a hint based on there reactions that they will never return. As discussed, a guest not returning is
an opportunity lost forever. This one of the reasons why empowering service staff to deliver
immediate service recovery is deemed a priority.
2. Complaints. Complaints filed by a guest are seen by traditional organizations as a problem.
However, these should not be seen that way. Modern organizations today take complaints as a
form of feedback. It is an opportunity for an organizatidisplay how better they can make things
positive for a guest.
3. Negative word-of-mouth. Another response of guest is to bad-mouth an organization.
He/she will speak ill of his/her experience and try to tell others not to avail the services of the
said company. He/she will be so motivated to do this depending how far he/she was
inconvenienced by said company.
4. Strike back and get even. Retaliating is another response a guest can make. More than bad-
mouthing, a guest will make actions just to even the score or get revenge for the inconvenience
he/she has experienced with the establishment. In this day and age, this very easy for a guest to
do using social media. He/she can simply post his/her experience on a social media site through
videos and memes, and immediately, the establishment will be the talk of the town. Other ways
include going to legal authorities and filling lawsuits, publishing in other media forms, and even
boycotting a specific brand.
In order to prevent from happening, credibility should be established as how an establishment
operates. Even if a mishap has happened, with the credibility of the company, added with
positive response on the side of the company, this situation will be a quick turn around.
SERVICE RECOVERY STRATEGIES
The most significant thing after a service failure is a quick turnaround. So, focus is really
embedded on how to make a failure into an opportunity. Unfortunately, these are also times that
a problem cannot be remedied right there an then as it is rooted deeper on how the system
works. The following are some ways or service recovery:
[Link] and monitor complaints. When guests are encouraged to leave a feedback, may it be
in a form of complaints, a problem will be made known and it will be easy for the organization to
remedy it.
2. Learning from solutions made. The service recovery situations that were utilized should should
not only be seen as immediate solutions, also as inputs in improving future instances of service
delivery.
3. Learning from lost opportunities which are guests. As grateful are we that a guest patronizes
our services, it is also important to study why a guest leaves. It is good to know that we can also
learn from them
4. Introducing a service fail-safe. What is best to do to provide excellent quality service? Do it
right the first time! To do this would be to really study the playing field. Information on service
operations are usually available anywhere the experience we have as individuals who, at some
point, are also guests to these organizations. Even if it will be costly for the organizations to invest
on this, a guest will invest nothing but the best