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Dealing with complaints in services
Patrick McCole

Introduction
The importance of maintaining current customers and attracting new ones is of great importance in marketing. Literature demonstrates that equal importance should be placed on maintaining current customers as well as “recruiting” new ones. An important element for keeping current customers is to demonstrate true commitment when a service failure occurs. Resulting from a series of exploratory investigations, this paper presents guidelines for understanding and dealing with customer dissatisfaction arising from service failure. The paper then forwards guidelines for effective recovery in an effort to reduce the potential “damage” that could be caused by poor service received and concludes with a framework that should be of use to senior management involved in service recovery efforts.

The author
Patrick McCole is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Marketing, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand.

Keywords
Complaints, Service industries, Service failures, Customer satisfaction

Causes of complaints
Whenever a relationship breaks down (in the marketing sense), it is important to distinguish between “unavoidable breakdown” and “avoidable breakdown”. With regards to “unavoidable breakdown” customers may move away, get bored with the service or simply decide to trade-up or down depending on personal circumstances. There is probably very little that management can do about this type of “breakdown”. “Avoidable breakdown” on the other hand is something that managers should be concerned about. “Avoidable breakdown” may occur because the buyer (or seller) has developed a poor perception of relationship value or quality. It may also be due to the failure of an organisation to adapt a relationship to the needs or the other party. Service encounters can result in failure (as perceived by customers) in a number of ways, which may in turn lead to relationship breakdown. Examples include unavailability of a service, slow service and errors in delivery (Bitner et al., 1990). By failing to deliver on promises, or failure to meet expectations, the trust which goes to the foundation of a relationship can be undermined. Through recovery efforts, however, service failure can be transformed into a positive act which creates increasingly strong attitudes of customers towards a supplier (Hart et al., 1990). It has also been argued that a failure occurring early in the customer’s relationship with a supplier will be perceived more adversely than one which occurs later in a relationship because the customer has

Abstract
Proposes a refined conceptual framework for understanding the holistic process of service failure and service recovery for managers from a customer’s point of view. The framework focuses on three main dimensions that are of particular relevance for service recovery research. The main dimensions are: awareness, process quality, and intent. The framework provides a holistic understanding of the antecedents and consequences of customer (dis) satisfaction in service failure and presents implications for management. It also presents an agenda for future research in this area.

Electronic access
The Emerald Research Register for this journal is available at www.emeraldinsight.com/researchregister The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at www.emeraldinsight.com/0959-6119.htm

International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management Volume 16 · Number 6 · 2004 · pp. 345-354 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited · ISSN 0959-6119 DOI 10.1108/09596110410550789

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Dealing with complaints in services

International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management Volume 16 · Number 6 · 2004 · 345-354

Patrick McCole

less experience of successful service experiences to counterbalance the failure (Boulding et al., 1993). When “avoidable breakdown” occurs, the customer in question is likely to engage in switching behaviour. Keaveney (1995) presented eight major reason or causes behind service switching behaviour. They included: . pricing (high price, price increases, unfair pricing and/or deceptive pricing); . inconvenience (location or hours, and/or wait times); . core service failure (service mistakes, billing errors and/or service catastrophes); . service encounter failures (uncaring, impolite, unresponsive and unknowledgeable staff); . responses to service failure (negative responses, no response, and/or reluctant response); . competition (found better service elsewhere); . ethical problems (cheating, and/or conflict of interest); and . involuntary switching (“unavoidable breakdown”). It is interesting to note that three out of the eight refer to service failure, and if these occur on a regular basis, even if there are structural bonds in place, then switching behaviour becomes increasingly likely. The important point here is that managers are able to distinguish between “unavoidable breakdown” and “avoidable breakdown”.

(2) complain in some form to the service organisation; (3) take some kind of overt action with a third party; and (4) defect and simply not patronise the firm again, and tell other people, thus engaging in negative word-of-mouth behaviour. There are a number of entry points for complaints. They include frontline employees, intermediaries, managers themselves at head or regional office, complaint cards, and complaints passed to the company by third-party recipients. The very least an organisation should do is provide an entry point for complaints. But that in itself is not enough. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the use of comment cards in service organisations has little value, and their main purpose is to make the customer feel that there is a avenue for complaints. Much of the “data” gathered however, (especially in smaller organisations) is never analysed, thus raising the question in the first place, what real use do they have? Managers should regard complaints as research data – as a stream of (inexpensive) market research information highlighting where improvements are needed. In addition it would be possible, through this “philosophy”, to identify a series of individual customer problems which need to be solved – that is the most frequently occurring complaints within an specific organisation. By placing importance on gathering data in this way, managers may view the complaint process as an early warning system and ensure not only that mechanisms are in place to record complaints, but that serious attention is given to analysing these complaints on a regular basis. Several factors influence consumers’ propensity to complain about a less than satisfactory service experience. As noted by the SOCAP/TARP (1995) study, the type of product influences the tendency to complain. In addition, as the cost and social involvement of the purchase rises, so does the propensity to complain. Other researchers have found that that following variables are also related to complaint behaviour (see Lovelock et al., 2001; Craig-Lees et al., 1995; Granbois, 1993; Zemke and Schaaf, 1989): . level of dissatisfaction felt, annoyance or “victimisation”; . cost of complaining (financially and psychologically); . benefits of complaining; . likelihood of resolution; . availability of resources (for making a complaint); . access (to a means of registering a complaint); . attribution of blame (who is to blame); and

Customer responses to service failure
The link between a satisfied customer, customer retention and profitability is well established (see for example Heskett et al., 1994). Long-term relationships just do not happen – they are grounded in the firm’s delivery of excellent service and value and complemented by an effective service recovery system when things go wrong. Not only do satisfied customers conduct repeat business, they also act as advocates and may even be less price sensitive. The first law of quality is to “do it right the first time” (Lovelock et al., 2001) – but unfortunately things do go wrong. Customer satisfaction is linked not only to fault free service, but also to what transpires when something does go wrong. According to Lovelock et al. (2001), when customers experience dissatisfaction they have four major courses of action. They include: (1) do nothing, but the service provider’s reputation is diminished in the customer’s eyes, and they’ll consider defecting if it occurs again;

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Dealing with complaints in services

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Patrick McCole
.

demographics, structural bonds, power bases, social norms.

It is therefore important that managers are able to acknowledge these factors, and ensure that there are mechanisms in place to encourage complaints (or comments and compliments – the 3Cs) from all users of the service. When customers lodge a complaint, managers must adopt standards for complaint handling. Standards Australia (1995) stated that “the overriding aim of any complaints handling process is to turn dissatisfied consumers into satisfied consumers. This is best done by speedy and effective remedies at the first point of contact”.

provide the product selection and level of service commensurate with the consumers’ effort and price paid.

The dimensions and principles of justice
Equity theory literature identifies “justice” as an appropriate comparative framework to assess inputs versus outputs in a organisation – consumer setting. The concept of justice has been linked to complaint handling through the use of global fairness measures (Blodgett et al., 1993; Conlon and Murray, 1996; Goodwin and Ross, 1992). From a process perspective, complaint handling can be viewed as a sequence of events in which a procedure, beginning with communicating the complaint, generates a process of interaction through which a decision and outcome occurs. Justice literature suggests that each part of the sequence is subject to a fairness consideration and that each aspect of a complaint resolution creates a justice episode (Bies, 1987; Tax et al., 1998). The service encounter and quality literature also stress the influence of interpersonal treatment, process elements and benefits/outcomes as core components of service evaluations (Parasuraman et al., 1985; Taylor, 1994). Justice therefore offers a comprehensive framework for understanding the complaint process from initiation to completion, and has been proven to be useful in understanding complaint handling situations in the past (see for example Tax et al., 1998). Justice involves the propriety of decisions. A three-dimensional view of the concept has evolved over time to include (Austin, 1979; Tax et al., 1998): . distributive justice (dealing with decision outcomes); . procedural justice (dealing with decisionmaking procedures); and . interactional justice (dealing with interpersonal behaviour in the enactment of procedures and delivery of outcomes). Within each of these dimensions there are important principles to be considered. Tax et al. (1998) provided an overview and definition of these dimensions and principles. These are presented in Table I. Put simply, distributive justice refers to the perceived fairness of the actual outcome, or consequences of a decision, for example the level of refund or exchange offered. It examines the manner in which resources are allocated among exchange parties either by proportionality or equality (Goodwin and Ross, 1992). Procedural

The benefit of solving complaints
Previous research has shown that it is possible to recover from failure and thus regain customer confidence (Kelley et al., 1993). A successful recovery will have a positive impact on postrecovery satisfaction and future purchase intention (Spreng et al., 1995), customer perceptions of fairness (Goodwin and Ross, 1992; Smith et al., 1999) and customer loyalty towards the firm (Webster and Sundaram, 1998; Levesque and McDougall, 2000).

What do customers expect?
Typically, customers expect to be compensated for the inconvenience caused by the service failure (Smith et al., 1999; Tax et al., 1998). As a result, many service organisations offer various combinations of refunds, credit, discounts and apology to make peace with dissatisfied customers. As one would expect, increasing the level of atonement tends to result in higher recovery satisfaction ratings (Boshoff, 1997; Hoffman et al., 1995) – but it is not necessarily as simple as that! Two important theoretical paradigms are prevalent in service recovery research. The first is disconfirmation theory, which takes into account the difference between expectations and perceptions (see for example Patterson, 1993). The second is equity theory and points to individuals’ perceptions of the fairness of a situation or a decision (Adam, 1965). Homan’s (1961) study considered equity as the consumer’s reward and investment proportion commensurate to some other proportion against which it is compared. Oliver (1996) developed this by introducing comparative entities, including person to person entities or person to merchant comparisons, where the role of the merchant is to

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Dealing with complaints in services

International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management Volume 16 · Number 6 · 2004 · 345-354

Patrick McCole

Table I Definition of justice elements and associated principles Principles of distributive justice Equity Provision of outcomes proportional to inputs to an exchange Equality Equal outcomes regardless of contributions to an exchange Need Outcome based on requirements regardless of contributions

Principles of procedural justice Process control
Decision control

Accessibility Timing/speed Flexibility

Freedom to communicate views on a decision process Freedom to which a person is free to accept or reject a decision outcome Ease of engaging a process Perceived amount of time taken to complete a procedure Adaptability of procedures to reflect individual circumstances

Principles of interactional justice Explanation/causal account Provision of reason for failure Honesty Perceived veracity of information provided Politeness Well mannered, courteous behaviour Effort Amount of positive energy put into resolving a problem Empathy Provision of caring individual attention
Source: Tax et al. (1998)

of dissatisfaction. The organisational level of the person involved in service recovery (“who”) efforts was also not significant as a main effect and only had a marginal impact if combined with time, but an immediate apology was important. In summary, Boshoff (1997) reported that it does not matter greatly who performs the service recovery as long as it is not left too late and as long as it is accompanied by acceptable levels of atonement. The above discussion can be applied to any situation where a complaint arises, and managers should be aware of the dimensions and principles that are known to be important in attempts to rectify customer complaints. Interestingly, Hoffman and Kelley (2000) suggested that distributive elements of justice would be more important when: . the depth of a relationship between a provider and consumer was low; . the relationship was conducted at arm’s length; . the duration of the encounter was short; . the degree of customisation was low, or were there is product or service standardisation; and . the switching costs were high. Hoffman and Kelley (2000) also posited that when a service or product was deemed to be “critical”, then corrective aspects of distributive justice were more important. These propositions suggest that, in the hospitality industry, consumers’ will evaluate the “fairness” of service recovery efforts based more on interactional aspects (and to some extent the procedural aspects) than they do on distributive justice elements due to the characteristics of the industry.

justice refers to whether the procedures, or criteria, used in making the decision are perceived as fair, for example how quickly a problem was resolved or if both sides were allowed to tell their story. It has also been referred to as a standard which can be applied to resolve conflicts (Lind and Tyler, 1988). Procedural justice is centrally concerned with satisfaction on a moral and ethical level, and is only attained when information which is given is awarded due to attention and consideration (Palmer et al., 2000). Interactional justice refers broadly to the fairness of the interpersonal treatment people receive during the enactment of procedures. Services typically are labour intensive, thus the importance of this dimension cannot be overstated. Literature demonstrates that the sooner recovery takes place, the higher the level of compensation provided and the closer the person who performs the recovery is to frontline personnel, the more significant would be the hypothesised improvement in customer satisfaction (Boshoff, 1997). Boshoff (1997) also reported that, relating to time (“how quickly”), over the short-term, speed of recovery is not very important but it is clear that disconfirmation cannot be allowed to ferment for too long. Boshoff stated that if it is left too long, recovery will require considerable levels of atonement to decrease levels

Complaint scenarios in travel and tourism
The author was involved in an exploratory study concerned with understanding customer complaints and perceptions of recovery efforts. The study was a qualitative, inductive study that was part of a larger project. In the exploratory phase, a narrative approach was used. The narrative approach is a useful way of understanding a customer’s personal experience (de Ruyter and Wetzels, 2000). It is concerned with individual evaluations of real life problems. In narrative research the individual participant narrates his or her experiences in the form of a chronological story (Newman, 1999). These stories are animated with plots and sub plots to emotionally describe the situation. There is usually purpose and causality behind the story. Narrative

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research is primarily used to gain greater depth in a small sample, where research has already been conducted in a larger sample. Narrative research does not provide any new knowledge but provides new aspects to previously known knowledge (Newman, 1999). To support the discussions in this paper, and to lead the reader into the last section, the author has selected one narrative to illustrate a complaint in the travel and tourism sector. This paper is not trying to claim representativeness in any way, and as such, the narrative serves to provide a detailed insight into the experience of one consumer. Studies employing small samples are useful for providing such detailed insight (Fournier, 1998). The narrative is presented next:
I flew recently from Europe to New Zealand on airline X. Bought and paid for the tickets from my own pocket for myself and my partner. I already had one of those frequent flier cards, so I wanted to accumulate air points so we could have a freebie somewhere, next year or whenever. My partner did not have one, so I signed her up with one too. Little did we know what was ahead of us . . .What did I expect from the flight? The flight was OK, nothing special . . . yes you got your movies and food and drink, but they didn’t have those game things on the back of the seat – I like those – it makes time fly – excuse the pun! We landed at our destination . . . tired and jet lagged . . . did our thing . . . had a nice holiday and then headed back home. The trip back was better. It was a different aircraft this time and we had the game thing, so that was good . . . little did we know what was ahead . . . So we landed home and awhile later, a month or so, I decided to check my frequent flier account. But there were no credits for the New Zealand flight . . . so I rang. Of course you are waiting on the phone for so long – God I hate those queues – and after pressing every button on the phone to go from one person to the next, I eventually got through to customer services. I explained, nicely, that myself and my partner had travelled on such and such a date to New Zealand with a carrier in group X, and my airmiles had not been credited to my account. They said they would look into it, and it would be helpful if I put my request in writing. So I did. Another month or so, after hearing nothing from them, I decided to chase up. During this time, I had contacted my travel agent, told them the story, and they said that there was no reason why this should not be sorted shortly. At this stage, I was quite angry and annoyed – after all, there was a considerable amount of airmiles to be collected – certainly enough to go within Europe for free . . . Again I went through the whole process, ringing, waiting . . . waiting . . . waiting . . . until I reached a human voice. I gave her all my details including my membership number and all that . . . and then I asked why our accounts had not been credited with airmiles? She said “sir, we received your letter and we regret to inform you that your flight did not qualify”. I was sick to the teeth, and even explained that my travel agent assured me that

this is not the case. Again, she just kept repeating the same thing, and when I asked her to clarify what she meant, she said that “your ticket was a special fare – you didn’t pay as much as you should have, and therefore will not receive any airmiles”. Talk about being angry, God I was fit to be tied! I paid nearly three and a half thousand pounds sterling for those tickets, and she says this, even though my travel agent said that I should qualify. So I ended up being angry at both airline X and travel agent Y. God I was so annoyed. Nothing! I received nothing . . . despite going through the pain of complaining . . . only to be told “tough luck mate”. So then what? Well I gave up . . . there is so much you can do. I tell you what though, my attitude towards airline X has changed . . . yeah they have good airplanes and all that, but commitment to customer service . . . don’t make me laugh . . . they couldn’t care less . . . they could have given me something . . . anything . . . I already had quite a few points on my card anywa y. . . nothing! As for my future intention . . . as long as I live, I will never fly with airline X again. I definitely won’t do business with that travel agent either. I mean you expect people to tell you the truth or whatever, you know . . . this is the situation, you don’t get airmiles on this route, even though the fare I paid for was not the cheapest option. Even now I am angry . . . and I am glad to talk to you, because I am passing my story on . . . don’t use airline X or travel agent Y! They are selfish people who don’t give a damn about the small man. Now I know I might be cutting my nose off to spite my face, but seriously, I’ll never take them again . . . I don’t like them anymore. I even hate their ads on TV, and when I see people getting on their planes I want to go up to them and say, “hey you know what, you are all being ripped off”. Even now I don’t think I was in the wrong, even though there might have been exceptions to the airmiles rule, but I wasn’t aware of it. The process is meant to be easy (Male, 27, computer programmer).

Discussion of narrative
For ease of reading, the author named the respondent in this narrative Jason. This is not his real name. From interviewing Jason, it was evident that he was quite angry and upset about the way he was treated. This was quite clear from non-verbal communication conveyed throughout the conversation, and his “story” illustrates how annoyed he was with the encounter. Jason, generally, had positive prior experience with the particular airline and generally had a positive attitude towards them, evidenced by the fact that he thought they were a reputable company, well established, and had a strong presence in the marketplace. Stemming from his belief that he

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Dealing with complaints in services

International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management Volume 16 · Number 6 · 2004 · 345-354

Patrick McCole

received poor value for money in terms of not receiving the benefits he was entitled to, this spurred a chain reaction that led to him lodging a complaint with the service organisation. Jason thought he was a “victim”. Jason had certain expectations regarding how his complaint should be dealt with. He wanted “something . . . anything”. Thus, equipped with certain expectations, he proceeded with his complaint. There are explicit references to the justice variables (Tax et al., 1998) in his story. He wanted some compensation or output (distributive). He was inconvenienced and annoyed at the process he had to go through (procedural). He was also displeased with the way in which he was treated by the airline’s personnel (interactional justice). Jason was greatly annoyed by the process itself and indeed the quality of process. This led to an overall perception of inequity, which in turn led to Jason being dissatisfied with the process. He had negative disconfirmation. What seemed to impinge upon this overall dissatisfaction was the concept of blame. In this case, Jason felt that the service organisation was to blame, and thus sought redress through the complaint process – only to find out that he received no output or what he perceived to be fairness from the process. What made matters worse was that he was told that he was to blame for not reading the small print on his ticket. Based on his assessment of the overall satisfaction that he received (which in his case was negative), Jason no longer trusts the company, displays negative commitment towards the service principal and has no intention of using the service again. In fact he is willing to “cut off his nose to spite his face”. It is also clear that as a result of his experience with the company in question that he will continue to engage in negative word of mouth promotion about his experiences to other people that he talks to. It is fair to say that some people may argue that Jason should have read the small print on his ticket, but that is not the point. He was dissatisfied and he firmly believed that he should have received “something”. As a result, his future intention is not to use the service provider in question again. Thus service providers need to be aware of customer perceptions and design strategies for atonement rather that letting them ferment into similar scenarios like Jason’s story.

“reasonable” and “unreasonable” ones is therefore important. In addition, managers must be aware that not all customers will complain. Such customers may hold certain values or beliefs about the very concept of complaining. For example, it is important that one is aware of the full set of values that an individual brings to a service encounter (e.g. the role of a doctor varies between cultures and groups within a country – could be seen as a “servant” of the patient; a “god” who is beyond reproach, or as a partner working together with the patient). It is these values, and the changes in these values that affect how customers see service failure (consider how Catholic church priests until recently could never have done anything wrong – attitude of suffering may be good – but now open to more criticism). In certain situations it may be in the manager’s best interest to “terminate” a customer relationship. The relationship may be unprofitable. It may be the case that the organisation is aware that it cannot fulfil segment X’s expectations. Or, it could be that the organisation in question chooses to change its customer focus. The decision to “terminate” a relationship therefore must be accompanied by a solid rationale. However, where it is a case of “avoidable” breakdown (from the customer’s point of view), the company should be concerned with understanding the nature of the failure and ensure that it does not occur again. Organisations should promote a “3C culture” (that is welcome compliments, comments and complaints) – and be serious about it! The worst scenario is when customer’s choose not to voice their complaint, decide never to choose the organisation again, and worse still, engage in negative word of mouth about the (poor) service received. Mistakes happen, but when they happen, they need to be fixed. Organisations must to proactive and be concerned about customer experiences. Figure 1 presents a framework to help managers understand the whole process of service failure, and specifically ways in which they need to (re-) satisfy customers when a service failure occurs, so that the potential life-time value of the customer is not severely damaged.

The APQI framework model
The author terms the model the APQI framework as it identifies three main stages in a service failure/ recovery situation. The first is awareness of service failure and/or attitude towards complaining (customers perspective). The second stage is the actual process of complaining and is concerned with understanding the overall quality and

A framework for dealing with customer complaints
Managers will be aware that not all complaints are genuine ones. The ability to distinguish between

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Figure 1 A framework to help managers understand the whole process of service failure

satisfaction of the recovery efforts from a customer’s point of view. The third stage is concerned with future intention, specifically maintaining (or restoring) trust, and commitment. Future intention and word of mouth (WOM) intention are other important components in this stage. The model takes into account that a customer’s evaluation of service recovery is dependent on the context in which is takes place. These contextual factors include understanding the severity or magnitude of the complaint (from the customer’s point of view including their annoyance level); whether the customer has had a previous complaint or grievance with the service in question; whether the customer lodging the complaint is a new or existing one; managers being aware of the “value” of the individual to the company and taking into account the attitudes held about the service provider pre-failure. Once the contextual factors are taken into account, it is then important to understand the complete process of complaining. Before any action can be taken of course, a customer has to lodge a complaint. This has been discussed earlier, and it is accepted that not all customers will want to lodge a complaint, that is they hold certain

values or beliefs about the actual act of complaining. The author is currently involved in identifying clusters of consumers who hold certain values/beliefs about complaining, but for the sake of this paper, let us assume that the complainer believes that the complaint being lodged is justified and that action should be taken to rectify the situation. The process dimension therefore (see Figure 1) is the actual process of dealing with a complaint. Customers lodging a complaint will have certain expectations as to how it should be dealt with. Once the process has been completed, they will then be able to reflect on the process and conclude whether or not expectations have been met. Disconfirmation is the difference between expectations and perceptions. The justice elements (discussed earlier) are an integral part of this comparison. The reader should recall that equity theory or perceived fairness (distributive, procedural and interactional) is based on the comparison of the ratio of the buyer’s inputs to the seller’s output in a service failure episode. Where expectations are greater than perceptions, the result is negative disconfirmation or dissatisfaction. Where perceptions are equal to expectations, the result is confirmation or mere

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satisfaction. Where perceptions are greater than expectations, the result is positive disconfirmation or delight (for a detailed description and discussion of these terms, see Patterson, 1993). Managers should actively involve displeased customers in the recovery process and be concerned not only with “solving it”, but being genuinely concerned about understanding and managing customers expectations and perceptions regarding the justice dimensions and principles – and use these experiences to improve service recovery policies. Jason’s story highlighted the concept of blame. Surprisingly this concept is not accounted for in the principles of the justice variables. The author proposes that the concept of blame should be included under the procedural dimension as an important principle. If the service provider does not accept responsibility and explicitly “blames” the customer without any further comment or interest, then it is likely that the customer will become infuriated and this in turn will have an adverse affect on his or her future intention (including WOM behaviour). Following an assessment of expectations versus perceptions, managers should be concerned with evaluating overall satisfaction with the service recovery episode. This is an important stage in the process dimension, and a consumer is likely to make a decision at this point as to whether or not he/she will use the service again. If confirmation of positive disconfirmation is achieved then it is likely that the customer will have positive future intentions regarding the service provider. Following a positive (or negative) evaluation of the process stage, managers must then be concerned with how the recovery effort impacts on the traditional relationship marketing variables (see for example Garbarino and Johnson, 1999; Achrol, 1991; Morgan and Hunt, 1994). Overall satisfaction with service recovery has a direct relationship with trust and commitment, which in turn affects future intention (see for example Tax et al., 1998). Overall satisfaction with service recovery is posited to have a direct relationship with WOM activity, which in turn will affect the future intention of the individual (and others who are informed of the scenario/experience).

to capture and monitor complaints data, which can then be used to change procedures and customer processes. Top management should ensure that there is a shift in the traditional mindset and that there is an alignment of systems, processes, measures and technology to ensure they support the “complaints as an opportunity culture” (James, 1999). This also involves training and empowerment and making sure that there is ownership of the complaint. Literature also provides guidelines for effective complaint resolution (Lovelock et al., 2001). Briefly these include: . act fast; . admit mistakes without being defensive; . show you understand the problem from the customer’s point of view; . don’t argue with customers; . acknowledge the customer’s feelings; . give customers the benefit of the doubt; . clarify the steps need to solve the problem; . keep customers informed of the process/ progress; . consider compensation; and . persevere to regain customer goodwill. These suggestions are useful, and are probably of more use to front-line personnel than they are to management. These suggestion are only good for short-term “fire fighting”. Management should be more concerned with understanding each individual service failure context. Managers must gauge an individual’s satisfaction with service recovery efforts based on an assessment of expectations/perceptions concerning the justice dimensions and principles highlighted in Table I. This is important because the result of this assessment will shape an individual’s future intention in terms of their decision to use the service again (or not, including WOM behaviour). Only then can such “training manual” advice like that given above be implemented.

Implications/suggestions for researchers
As for academics/researchers the APQI framework offers an exciting challenge. The APQI framework extends Andreassen’s (2000) work. Andreassen (2000) developed a theoretical model that tested the antecedents to satisfaction with service recovery. Andreassen (2000) included disconfirmation theory, equity theory and affectbalance theory in the model and concluded that perceived performance of service recovery has an impact on equity. In addition, the study reported that disconfirmation of expectations of service recovery and perceived fairness of the outcome of

Implications/suggestions for managers
Research in the area of service failure and recovery states that a firm’s service recovery efforts should be considered at two levels: managerial level; and specific guidelines to secure good recovery. At the managerial level, there should be top management commitment to expending resources

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service recovery have an impact on satisfaction with service recovery. However, Andreassen (2000) did not include all of the principles of justice (see Table I), and was not concerned with awareness elements or future intention. Thus the APQI represents a more holistic framework. In fact, the framework seems be addressing calls in the literature for advancing research in this area (see for example Maxham and Netemeyer, 2002; de Ruyter and Wetzels, 2000). For example, Maxham and Netemeyer (2002) stated that “what one party considers a recovery may or may not be considered a recovery by the other party. Future work needs to examine, if, when, and how customers and firms [employees] view recovery efforts differently”. The disconfirmation of justice approach (APQI) aims to do just that. Similarly, de Ruyter and Wetzels (2000) stated that “it might be valuable to do an investigation into perceptions of fairness for the most frequently occurring service failures, so that recovery actions can be fine tuned to maximise feelings of fairness without wasting resources. In fact, this kind of research could simply be effectuated by just asking customer what they expect after a service failure”. Again, the disconfirmation of justice approach (APQI) aims to do just that. Finally, the author suggests that framework should be tested in a real-life setting, using qualitative approaches. Previous positivistic models don’t perhaps reflect reality sufficiently. In fact, most of these positivistic models lack the framework required for a holistic understanding of service recovery and customer complaint behaviour. Models thus far may be termed somewhat myopic in their outlook and applicability.

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