Service Failure and Recovery: Comparison Between Health Care and Automobile Service Station

Purpose - The paper aims to give insights into customers' perceptions and response regarding service failure and recovery process for health care and automobile service station. It compares and recommends the service recovery strategies between the two to gain higher satisfaction, trust and loyalty. Design/methodology/approach - The paper is empirical and involves data from 150 respondents from India. The sampling unit is customers of health care and automobile service station and the data collection instrument is a structured, non-disguised questionnaire. The questionnaires have been filled through individual interviews. Findings - The study found conclusive results on the reasons for service failure and recovery strategies in the health care and automobile service station business in the Indian context. It also lays emphasis on the behavioral aspects of customers' perception towards these failures and their responses to the same. The paper further looked into the recovery strategy employed by health care and automobile service station and the customers' perception towards the recovery strategies. Practical implications - The study has important managerial implications as it facilitates the understanding of failure - points and its occurrence. The comparative study shows, how the two sectors differ for similar category of failure in context to, severity of failure and recovery strategy for it. The paper is also helpful in designing policies and procedures to proactively eliminate such failure points. Originality/value - The paper is valuable as very little has been done in the Indian context. It also creates a comparative perspective as to service failure in the health care and automobile service station sector.