Faculty & Research
Complaint Communication: How Complaint Severity and Service Recovery Influence Guests’ Preferences and Attitudes
Vol 8 No 7
By: Alex M. Susskind Ph.D.
Executive Summary: A survey of 802 travelers found a connection between the mechanism that restaurant guests use to voice complaints and the nature and severity of the problems that motivate those complaints. Guests bring the most severe problems to management’s attention in one of two ways. As one might expect, most complaints about severe problems are made face-to-face, but contrary to expectations, some guests are just as likely to write a letter. The respondents viewed food issues and failures in food and service combined as the worst failures, but these also gave restaurateurs the best chance to cure the situation, earn the guest’s satisfaction, and improve the prospects for a repeat purchase. The guests tended to raise issues relating just to service directly with the server, again giving the restaurant the chance for a rapid recovery. Most puzzling were complaints relating to other factors, such as atmosphere, that are not related to food or to service. Although the respondents generally considered failures in those issues to be the least severe, these were also the complaints that were most likely to cause the guest to decide never to return to the restaurant, even when the problem had been addressed to the customer’s satisfaction.
Your Comments Please
If this CHR Report made a positive impact on your management approach or business operations, we welcome your commentary. We would like to post your comments on our website. Please submit your comments to js372@sha.cornell.edu and rohit.verma@cornell.edu.
Download The Report
To view the whole report, please click on the link below
- Complaint Communication: How Complaint Severity and Service Recovery Influence Guests’ Preferences and Attitudes By: Alex M. Susskind Ph.D.
| If you have trouble downloading a pdf, and are able to install software on your computer, try upgrading to the latest version of Adobe Acrobat Reader to see if that allows you to read it. |
Comments
My congratulations to CHR and the authors on publishing this wonderful report on a critical issue. The report contains obviously very important features to understand the flaws prevalent in restaurant - customer communication. One can use findings as basis for business improvement.
As business development consultant, I feel that it is an eye opener for me that the restaurant customers even in the United States feel shy/ignore to lodge a complaint against bad food or service quality provided against hard cash. Obviously, the restaurant operators will only be able to improve their food quality and service if they receive feed back. There can be at least two basic reasons to welcome the complaints:
1- Supposing the most ideal situation: the hospitality entrepreneur understands the "customer satisfaction" concept and feels committed to provide best food/service. The entrepreneur feels pleasure in doing a good job thus he/she would react positively to the customer complaints, thinking that the feed back is helping him/her in making improvements. The customers are providing an indirect support in boosting the profits.
2- The hospitality entrepreneurs feel threat that on offering bad food/service they would not get repeated customers and loose fresh customers due to negative promotion through " word of mouth". In this case the restaurant operator is not the type that has pleasure in work but is only concerned about his/her business survival and would react
accordingly.
In both the cases it is important that the customers lodge direct complaints to the concerned managers or restaurant owner on getting bad food/service in a restaurant. Waiter/waitress in not the right person to lodge a complaint. It is an amazing learning that the food buyers at a restaurant accept bad quality, bad service and even inflated bills and do not check the billed items (especially when in company of friends/guests as host).
Best regards,
Zafar Iqbal, Consultant
Small Business Development
Peshawar, Pakistan
Other Reports or Articles You May Find of Interest
- A Consumer’s View of Restaurant Reservation Policies, by Sheryl E. Kimes
- Examining the Effects of Full-Spectrum Lighting in a Restaurant, by Stephani K.A. Robson and Sheryl E. Kimes
- Restaurant Capacity Effectiveness: Leaving Money on the Tables, by Gary M. Thompson
About Alex M. Susskind Ph.D.
Alex M. Susskind is an associate professor at the School of Hotel Administration and a member of the Graduate Field of Communication at Cornell University. He earned his PhD in communication from Michigan State University with cognates in organizational communication and organizational behavior where he also earned his MBA with a concentration in personnel and human relations. Susskind's research is based primarily in organizational communication and organizational behavior. He is currently researching: (a) the influence of customer-service provider interaction as it relates to organizational effectiveness and efficiency from the perspective of guests, employees and managers; and (b) the influence of communication relationships upon individuals’ work-related attitudes and perceptions surrounding organizational events and processes such as teamwork and downsizing.
For more information visit http://www.hotelschool.cornell.edu/research/facultybios/faculty.html?id=81
