ASPECTS OF TOTAL QUALITY MANAGEMENT APPLIED IN ...

Annals of the University “Constantin Brâncuşi”of Tg-Jiu, No. 1/2008, Volume 2,
ISSN: 1842-4856
Regarding at the attitude towards dissatisfaction, consumers may feel different negative
emotions and generally act accordantly. The specific feelings are based on their attributions about who
is to blame for the problem.
Those who blame another party, typically the company or employee, generally feel anger, or
contempt. These negative emotions are the ones most likely to determine complaining, and probably
lead to negative word-of-mouth communication to family and friends.
Consumers who concluded that there is nobody specific to blame tend to feel distress or fear.
These emotions probably do not result in as much complaining because consumers feel powerless
compared to the company, perhaps because of its size or its market position. On the other hand, some
customers may not complain because they empathize with, or feel with compassion for, the employee
who causes the problem.
Customers that blame themselves usually experience shame or guilt. These negative emotions
will almost never influence them to speak up their disappointment.
In conclusion, there are a variety of responses available to consumers who experience service
failure, only one of which is complaining. However, without customer complaints, organizations may
only have limited information on the extent and nature of service failure and may not have the
opportunity to engage in service recovery.
3. Dealing with costumer complaints – the recovery
Service recovery can be analyzed as being concerned with the appropriate handling of
complaints and includes all actions taken by a service provider in order to try to resolve the problem a
customer has with their organization. Without complaints, a firm may be unaware that problems exist
and be unable to resolve the existing problems.
Studies made in this aspects show five actions for recovery:
- Apology: A first person apology rather than a corporate apology, and one which also acknowledges
that a failure has occurred.
- Urgent handling: Actions taken in order to put things right even if it is not possible to correct the
situation.
- Empathy: A sincere expression of feeling for the customer's problem.
- Symbolic compensation: A form of compensation that might include not charging for the service or
offering future services free or discounted.
- Analyzing the recovery: An after-recovery call to ascertain that the consumer is satisfied with the
recovery process.
Other specialists suggested that for a successful recovery an organization's response should include the
following four key elements:
- Acknowledgement of the problem
- Explanation of the reason for the failure
- Apology where appropriate
- Compensation such as a free ticket, meal or drink.
The process of recovery must be analyzed from two points a view: the recovery from a service
failure and the recovery from a negative response to service failure.
It was found that one set of actions can restore the customer to a satisfied state whereas an
enhanced set of action will delight the customer. Fast response and correction are fundamental to all
strategies, but an apology needs to be appropriate to the situation.
A modest apology probably would not be satisfactory in the situation of the inappropriate response to
problems, but a written apology would delight in the simple case of service failure.
274