Business Letter and Literature Summary Thesis

Instead, the better service recovery strategy was to focus on what empirical research suggest is most critical to British airline passengers, and that is the managing of customer request/fault scenarios (Lorenzoni, Lewis, 2004). Providing 15.000 credited miles on the Virgin Atlantic Flying Club is three times the amount of miles flown on the leg of the flight being complained about. This is payment for not only the flight but the stress of not having food for nearly eight hours that was palatable to the passenger. Again reverting to the perceived severity of the issue, opting to provide the 15,000 air lines is very low cost but very high perceived value, an excellent strategy for overcoming sever service recovery issues (Craighead, Karwan, Miller, 2004). Second, mailing the £100 American Express Gift Certificate in the letter written says that Virgin Atlantic is very sincere in its apology. In effect the Gift Certificate says that the discomfort of the passenger is so empathetically felt that now the customer can have an excellent meal anywhere in London they wish on the airline. Third, the call from Richard Branson seals the service strategy with accountability and transparency, two critical elements in any service recovery initiative (del Rio-Lanza, Vazquez-Casielles, Diaz-Martin, 2009). All of these factors must contribute to an over-balancing of the scales in the customers' perception if service recovery is to be complete (White, Yanamandram, 2007).

References

Christopher W. Craighead, Kirk R. Karwan, and Janis L. Miller (2004) The Effects of Severity of Failure and Customer Loyalty on Service Recovery Strategies. Production and Operations Management 13, no. 4, (December 1): 307-321.

del Rio-Lanza, A., R. Vazquez-Casielles, and A. Diaz-Martin.(2009). Satisfaction with service recovery: Perceived justice and emotional responses. Journal of Business Research 62, no. 8, (August 1): 775.

Natalia Lorenzoni, and Barbara R. Lewis (2004) Service recovery in the airline industry: a cross-cultural comparison of the attitudes and behaviours of British and Italian front-line personnel. Managing Service Quality 14, no. 1, (January 1):

11-25.

McCole, P. (2004) Dealing with complaints in services. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 16-16, 345-354.

Michel, S., and S. Coughlan. (2009). The Service Recovery Paradox: Dispelling the Myth. Perspectives for Managers no. 174, (September 1): 1-4.

White, L. & Yanamandram, V. (2007) A model of customer retention of dissatisfied business services customers. Managing Service Quality, 17-17,…