Service recovery

Alejandro Nadal
INDUSTRIAL AND SERVICE MARKETING

A Case Study of Service Failure and Recovery in Tourism within China Southern
Airline.
Questions
1.- Did China Southern take the right moves? Why? Where the strategies proposed on
the article taken?
2.- Is the cultural business environment influencing the decisions that companies make
on failure recovery? To which extent?

1) The effect of the lack of airline’s response to a service failure is that the
relationship with the airline is weakened or even broken, but China Southern did
service recovery efforts in the right way as the customer said when the service
recovery process ended: “comforted my upset to an extent”. The Company took the
strategies proposed on the article for fixing service failures:

Apology, which is demonstrated to have a positive impact on the consumer

psychology, was well approached. Having been informed of what happened, the front-
line employer replied: “We’re very sorry about that. What an unfortunate situation!
We will try our best to help you.”. So, it looks like front line employers have the
desirable interpersonal skills to politely and empathetically assist customers with a
service failure.

Attentiveness. Referring to the care and attention that customers receive. The
following days since the service failure, employer kept ringing back to the customer to
ask how it was going and proposing actions to rectify the situation.

Being Proactive. In a service failure, a higher level of post-recovery satisfaction is seen

in companies acting proactively. The way the employer keeps ringing and not waiting
for the customers to complain, is a proof how Southern China proactively recognize
failure and customer needs.

Compensation. As is well known that a mere apology without compensation would not
be enough to satisfy customers with a service failure, in the end China Southern gave
600$ refund as compensation to the customer, that is the point when the customer
really felt his annoyance comforted.

But the Company doesn’t really have specific strategies for tag-less Baggage. It is the
bad step in the process as it would have fixed the failure with a better tagging baggage
strategy. As it is said, after the apologize and when the employer searched with the
track-code, nothing was found.

2) Customer evaluations of services are influenced by their evaluations of the

service failure and service recovery, and these evaluations are surely shaped by their
cultural orientation. Cultural differences on consumer satisfaction seems to indicate
also differences in the way consumers evaluate services as well as how it is expressed
(complaints).
Service recovery
Alejandro Nadal
INDUSTRIAL AND SERVICE MARKETING

The same recovery strategy could be evaluated differently across cultures. This
difference in perceptions may have an impact on customer satisfaction and
repurchase. Some countries have more developed service industries, then service
expectations would be much higher than in other countries. But an adequate
compensation will always be surely well received. Regarding cultural dimensions, in
cultures with high power distance apology may be more effective than compensation,
compensation may work better in low power distance and high individualism cultures.

There is a need to incorporate cultural factors in service recovery strategies. Universal

service recovery strategies may not be viable for global service providers. Global firms
need to evaluate the level of maturity and expectations of the country service industry
and adapt its service recovery strategy.