Proposed multi-dimensional approach to evaluating service recovery

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to extend thinking on service recovery processes and satisfaction with service recovery, using multi-dimensional consumer outcomes. The objective of the work was to propose that satisfaction with service recovery should be based on customers' expectations of the recovery encounter, which would be shaped by their expectations of “non-failed” encounters.

Design/methodology/approach – The paper adopts a theoretical approach. Using the existing service recovery literature as well as the traditional services literature, the conceptual framework and associated research propositions are developed.

Findings – The proposed framework suggests that service recovery is a service encounter it its own right. The effectiveness of recovery encounters will be based on how encounters operate relative to customer expectations and experiences with regard to the recovery activity.

Research limitations/implications – The research propositions and proposed framework need further empirical investigation.

Practical implications – The proposed framework suggests that managing service recovery should be undertaken in a similar fashion to managing any service, and thus managers need to understand customers' recovery expectations. Organisations also need to consider how a recovery action impacts on a range of customer outcomes, as focusing on one aspect will not capture consumers' full set of behaviours.

Originality/value – The proposed model identifies that service recovery should be evaluated with regard to consumers' recovery expectations and satisfaction is not based on expectations with regard to non-failed encounters.

Do organizational service recovery actions impact on hotel guests future intentions and does speed of recovery matter?

This paper investigates hotel guests’ responses to organizational actions dealing with service failure. Eight service failure scenarios were used to identify guests’ intentions towards future visits. Guests’ intentions to switch hotels, revisit the property and remain loyal to the chain were found to vary based on the recovery efforts undertaken. This research found that empowering employees contribute to positive consumer intentions toward the service provider. Compensation was also found effective if offered through empowered employees. Speed of response to service failure was also identified as important action to improve consumer future intentions. Based on these findings, implications for future research are highlighted. Recommendations to the practitioners of hospitality and tourism sector were made for the management of failed service encounter.

Effects of differential methods of compensation and employee empowerment on customer satisfaction and loyalty in service recovery

This research examined the effects of varying compensation (refund and replacement) and employee empowerment (empowered and non-empowered) in service recover situations, using a 2x2 experiment. Analysis was undertaken using mean contrasts and ANOVA's. Findings suggest that empowerment and refund independently impact on post recovery consumer loyalty and satisfaction, but there is no interaction effect.

Recover : A seven-element concept for evaluating recovery

In recent years empirical investigations into service recovery have examined the impact of firm’s recovery attempt on consumers’ post-purchase decisions. However, these measurements tended to be based on one or two outcomes ignoring the complexity of post purchase behavior. As such, there exist limited empirical studies of multiple consumer outcomes. This paper considers the need to examine the impact of service recovery processes using multiple customer-based factors. Seven outcome issues are identified and described in this paper that relate to the essence of a positive after-service affiliations of customer with the service provider.

Role of organizational service recovery actions on sustomer switching intentions in a process based service failure : does speed of recovery matters?

The study examines how organizational activities of compensation and empowerment impact on consumers switching intentions and also whether these differ based on the speed of service recovery. Data is collected using hypothetical scenarios in a situation of process failure. It is found that there is no direct effect of either compensation or empowerment on switching intent, although the interaction effect is significant when recovery occurs quickly.

The recovery journey : employment support for people with depression and other mental illnesses

This paper presents the qualitative findings of a larger mixed method study aimed to articulate factors that clients and staff of the Disability Employment Network (DEN) identify in relation to re-engagement into the workforce. The DEN is a supported job training and employment program funded by the Australian Federal Government, established to assist clients with health disabilities, including mental health diagnoses, to seek and retain employment. Two DEN sites participated in the study (one regional and one metropolitan). Semi structured interviews and focus groups were undertaken with seven employment counsellors and 16 clients until data saturation occurred. Analysis of the narrative data identified two overarching emergent concepts articulated by clients and employment counsellors: employment enablers and employment barriers. The notion of recovery and re-engagement in the workforce in the context of mental illness is complex. The qualitative results of this study highlight the essential nature of supporting clients’ mental health and vocational needs concurrently through such means as service collaboration, vocational peer support and, importantly, provision of employment support congruent with phase of recovery.

Family recovery from youth substance use related problems : a pilot study of the BEST plus program

Youth substance use related problems are increasingly common, and families experience considerable stress in attempting to cope with these problems. A pilot study of 34 Australian parents from 21 families (38% sole parent families) participating in an 8-week group program, designed to assist families recover from youth substance use related problems, provided the context to explore family change processes. Participants reported a number of significant improvements over the course of the four groups that ran from late 2003 and through 2004. Regression analyses found general support for the program logic model in identifying significant associations between program-targeted parent changes and post-program improvements in stress symptoms and cohesive family behaviors. The study's limitations are noted.

Service recovery in a service guarantee context

This study employed a 2 x 2 full-factorial, between-subjects design experiment examining the influence of service failure severity and fix on hotel guests’ satisfaction following invocation of a service guarantee. The study involved a sample of 130 online panel members. As expected, guests are less dissatisfied following a minor (versus a major) service failure while satisfaction is enhanced when the problem is corrected. Surprisingly, fix has a stronger influence on satisfaction when a severe failure occurs, and satisfaction evaluations are approximately equal regardless of the severity of the failure when the problem is fixed.

Transparent and autonomic rollback-recovery in cluster systems

Cluster systems provide an excellent environment to run computation hungry applications. However, due to being created using commodity components they are prone to failures. To overcome these failures we propose to use rollback-recovery, which consists of the checkpointing and recovery facilities. Checkpointing facilities have been the focus of many previous studies; however, the recovery facilities have been overlooked. This paper focuses on the requirements, concept and architecture of recovery facilities. The synthesized fault tolerant system was implemented in the GENESIS system and evaluated. The results show that the synthesized system is efficient and scalable.

Passive flow through an unstalked intertidal ascidian: Orientation and morphology enhance suspension feeding in Pyura stolonifera

Passive flow is believed to increase the gains and reduce the costs of active suspension feeding. We used a mixture of field and laboratory experiments to evaluate whether the unstalked intertidal ascidian Pyura stolonifera exploits passive flow. We predicted that its orientation to prevailing currents and the arrangement of its siphons would induce passive flow due to dynamic pressure at the inhalant siphon, as well as by the Bernoulli effect or viscous entrainment associated with different fluid velocities at each siphon, or by both mechanisms. The orientation of P. stolonifera at several locations along the Sydney-Illawarra coast (Australia) covering a wide range of wave exposures was nonrandom and revealed that the ascidians were con- sistently oriented with their inhalant siphons directed into the waves or backwash. Flume experiments using wax mod- els demonstrated that the arrangement of the siphons could induce passive flow and that passive flow was greatest when the inhalant siphon was oriented into the flow. Field exper- iments using transplanted animals confirmed that such an orientation resulted in ascidians gaining food at greater rates, as measured by fecal production, than when oriented perpendicular to the wave direction. We conclude that P. stolonifera enhances suspension feeding by inducing pas- sive flow and is, therefore, a facultatively active suspension feeder. Furthermore, we argue that it is likely that many other active suspension feeders utilize passive flow and, therefore, measurements of their clearance rates should be made under appropriate conditions of flow to gain ecolog- ically relevant results.

Improving comfort levels in Darwin houses through passive design

Darwin`s climate is hot and humid and as a result the use of residential air-conditioners is high. Although this technology allows the occupant to achieve thermal comfort, its use contributes directly to an increase in the emission of greenhouse gases. More environmentally-friendly ways of achieving residential thermal comfort in this climate need to be investigated. One method is to improve the home`s passive design. The aim of this research was to increase the thermal comfort of typical Darwin homes without the use of air conditioning. Temperature data from two houses (lightweight elevated and concrete) was recorded over a nine-day period and used to validate a TRNSYS simulation model of each house. Simulations were run using these validated models and three months of climatic data (January—March) to evaluate various passive design strategies. The success of three strategies was analysed using PMV and PPD indicators. As a single strategy, it was found that ventilation and air velocity by far increased the level of thermal comfort for occupants of both houses. Although the passive design strategies of increased shading and insulation were beneficial, Darwin`s ovemight low temperature and humidity are still too high to reduce these levels within the house significantly without air conditioning.

The influence of guarantee compensation and fix on service recovery

This study employed a 3 x 2 full-factorial, between-subjects design experiment examining the influence of service guarantee compensation and fix on hotel guests’ satisfaction following invocation of a service guarantee. The study involved a sample of 390 online panel members. As expected, satisfaction is enhanced when the problem is corrected, however overcompensating guests beyond what was initially promised does not enhance satisfaction evaluations. Increasing compensation from the low to the medium (promised) level results in stronger satisfaction ratings when the problem is fixed versus when it is not.

Skeletal muscle fat metabolism during post-exercise recovery in humans

Recovery after prolonged or high-intensity exercise is characterised by a substantial increase in adipose tissue lipolysis, resulting in elevated rates of plasma-derived fat oxidation. Despite the large increase in circulating fatty acids (FAs) after exercise, only a small fraction of this is taken up by exercised muscle in the lower extremities. Indeed, the predominant fate of non-oxidised FAs derived from post-exercise lipolysis is reesteriflcation hi the liver. During recovery from endurance exercise, a number of changes also occur hi skeletal muscle that allow for a high metabolic priority towards glycogen resynthesis. Reducing muscle glycogen during exercise potentiates these effects, however the cellular and molecular mechanisms regulating substrate oxidation following exercise remain poorly defined. The broad arm of this thesis was to examine the regulation of fat metabolism during recovery from glycogen-lowering exercise hi the presence of altered fat and glucose availability. In study I, eight endurance-trained males completed a bout of exhaustive exercise followed by ingestion of carbohydrate (CHO)-rich meals (64-70% of energy from CHO) at 1, 4, and 7 h of recovery. Duplicate muscle biopsies were obtained at exhaustion and 3, 6 and 18 h of recovery. Despite the large intake of CHO during recovery (491 ± 28 g or 6.8 + 0.3 g • kg-1), respiratory exchange ratio values of 0.77 to 0.84 indicated a greater reliance on fat as an oxidative fuel. Intramuscular triacylglycerol (IMTG) content remained unchanged in the presence of elevated glucose and insulin levels during recovery , suggesting IMTG has a negligible role in contributing to the enhanced fat oxidation after exhaustive exercise. It appears that the partitioning of exogenous glucose towards glycogen resynthesis is of high metabolic priority during immediate post-exercise recovery, supported by the trend towards reduced pyruvate dehydrogenase (PDH) activity and increased fat oxidation. The effect of altering plasma FA availability during post-exercise recovery was examined in study II. Eight endurance-trained males performed three trials consisting of glycogen-lowering exercise, followed by infusion of either saline (CON), saline + nicotinic acid (NA) (LFA) or Intralipid and heparin (HFA). Muscle biopsies were obtained at the end of exercise (0 h) and at 3 and 6 h in recovery. Altering the availability of plasma FAs during recovery induced changes in whole-body fat oxidation that were unrelated to differences in skeletal muscle malonyl-CoA. Furthermore, fat oxidation and acetyl-CoA carboxylase (ACC) phosphorylation appear to be dissociated after exercise, suggesting mechanisms other than phosphorylation-mediated changes in ACC activity have an important role in regulating malonyl-CoA and fat metabolism in human skeletal muscle after exercise. Alternative mechanisms include citrate and long-chain fatty acyl-CoA mediated changes in ACC activity, or differences in malonyl-CoA decarboxylase (MCD) activity. Reducing plasma FA concentrations with NA attenuated the post-exercise increase in MCD and pyruvate dehydrogenase kinase 4 (PDK4) gene expression, suggesting that FAs and/or other factors induced by NA are involved hi the regulation of these genes. Despite marked changes hi plasma FA availability, no significant changes in IMTG concentration were detected, providing further evidence that plasma-derived FAs are the preferential fuel source contributing to the enhanced fat oxidation post-exercise during recovery. To further examine the effect of substrate availability after exercise, Study III investigated the regulation of fat metabolism during a 6 h recovery period with or without glucose infusion. Enhanced glucose availability significantly increased CHO oxidation compared with the fasted state, although no differences in whole-body fat oxidation were apparent. Consistent with the similar rates of fat metabolism, no difference hi AMPK or ACCβ phosphorylation were observed between trials. In addition, no significant treatment or time effects for IMTG concentration were detected during recovery. The large exercise-induced PDK4 gene expression was attenuated when plasma FAs were reduced during glucose infusion, supporting the hypothesis that PDK4 is responsive to sustained changes in lipid availability and/or changes in plasma insulin. Furthermore, the possibility exists that the suppression of PDK4 mRNA also reduced PDK activity and thus maintained PDH activity to account for the higher rates of CHO oxidation observed during glucose infusion compared with the control trial.