Three dimensions of service recovery: examining relationship and impact

Purpose The aim of the paper is to evaluate the interrelationship between process recovery, employee recovery and customer recovery in a financial services call centre. We also investigate how process recovery affects customer recovery via employees- the bridge between organisation and customers.

Design/methodology/approach A case study based approach is adopted in this study, and data triangulation is achieved through multiple data collection methods including semi-structured interviews, employees’ survey, and company reports. Justice theory is the theoretical lens considered to understand the ‘service recovery’ phenomenon.

Findings The research helps in understanding the relationship of process and employee recovery with customer recovery. Findings suggest that service recovery could be used for complaint management as well as in understanding and addressing the gaps in internal operations and employee skill-sets. Factors such as training, operating systems, empowerment, incentives, and feedback, were identified as critical in providing effective service recovery. Process improvement is necessary to control complaints by conducting root cause analysis and learning from failure.

Research limitations/implications Findings are limited to a case company in financial services sector and thus limits its generalisability to other context. Questionnaire distributed to employees only included important dimensions of service recovery, which would be further developed in future research.

Originality/value This paper explores the specific reverse exchange strategies, termed in this paper as service recovery, and analyses the different factors responsible for better performance in the exchange process. The paper highlights how the imbalance in the process and employee recovery dimensions can impact on customer recovery. Closing the customer complaint loop by using the service recovery perspective may help organization to not only deal with complaints in a better way but also prevent such complaints in the future.