Don’t Let Service Recovery Become Another Service Failure

Don’t Let Service Recovery Become Another Service Failure: "
According to contemporary wisdom (in other words, according to what I hear), customers who experience service failures followed by effective service recoveries actually become more satisfied and loyal than customers who experience no failures at all. This is called the service recovery paradox, and academic research suggests that it's not as common or consistent as we might think. Many customers who experience solid service recoveries still end up less happy than their problem-free counterparts. Service failures are bad, after all. Otherwise, we'd call them pleasant surprises. Nonetheless, service recovery is still an important part of the customer experience. Paradox or not, there's value in making things less bad than they were. Unfortunately, each service recovery interaction provides another opportunity for failure.

Here's an example:

I recently traveled to the West Coast for a few meetings, and I decided to try an alternative airline to get a better in-flight experience. The flight out was great. I particularly enjoyed the seat-back entertainment console, which also accepted food and drink orders - sparing passengers from bathroom-blocking, elbow-crushing carts. On my way back to the airport three days later, I was excited to kick back, watch TV, and order a couple of drinks at my leisure. It was a Friday afternoon. Work wasn't happening (no judgment, please). Then things went south when the entertainment system broke. I couldn't watch TV, and I had to wait for a flight attendant to take drink orders. Boo hoo, I know. As Louie CK said about this kind of complaint, 'Everything is amazing, and nobody's happy.' Still, the airline didn't deliver the experience it had promised. Service failure.
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