Perceptions, corrections and defections: implications for service recovery in the restaurant industry

Abstract

Focusing on service failures can assist organizations in improving service quality and improving long‐term customer retention. This study examined consumer perceptions of their personal service failures experienced in the restaurant industry. While the study found a large percentage of the respondents to be very “forgiving” with respect to returning to the restaurant where they had experienced a failure, the data also indicate that those less likely to return had, in fact, perceived the failure as major and had judged the method the restaurant used to recover the failure as not very good. Implications are for identifying failure points in the service delivery process and identifying methods to prevent, as well as recover, these failures to prevent negative customer perceptions and the ensuing customer loss and potential negative word of mouth.