Service recovery strategies for single and double deviation scenarios

Service recovery is an important means of satisfying customers after a failure has occurred, Yet there seems to be some confusion about how to go about effecting a recovery and only limited empirical work exists, This work has not distinguished between the strategies needed to recover different types or levels of failure situations or whether the recovery should lead to delighted or merely satisfied customers. This exploratory study was based on data collected from customers in major UK banks and evaluated responses to a frequently occurring failure scenario. It found that customers have clear expectations of service recovery. The study also succeeded in distinguishing between the actions required in dealing with service failures (single deviation) and the situations where there was art inappropriate or inadequate response to the failure (double deviation), Furthermore, it was found that one set of actions can restore the customer to a satisfied state whereas an enhanced set of actions will delight the customer.