A Little Bit of That Human Touch: Avoid and Recover Service Failures

Managers who handle complaints often assume that customers report all service failure and passively wait for service personnel to resolve the problem solution (i.e., the service recovery). Here, based on decades of service recovery research, we seek to problematize the common conceptualization of a service failure. In particular, we argue for a broader understanding of what constitutes a service failure, encompassing failures that are not necessarily associated with the service provision, but can cause interruptions in the service experience. Using this new understanding of service failures, we outline advice for service managers to consider to avoid causing failures, and optimize their recovery processes by emphasizing the importance of the human service employees.