Complaints in general and consumers’ behavior about expressing their complaints are of vital importance to the improvement procedures aimed at performance excellence in the service industry. The article by Patwary and Hamimi (2016) provides an extensive overview of the key factors influencing consumer complaining behavior and the channels they use to report their complaints. The authors identify two key issues related to complaints in the service industry. They include: the consumers are not likely to provide feedback on services without encouragement, and it is likely that unsatisfied customers might report complaint matters to “outsiders” or competitors (Patwary & Hamimi, 2016, p. 310). The researchers found that consumer complaints occur via voice responses, private responses, and third-party responses. The complaints are transmitted through such channels as “face-to-face with the manager, face-to-face with the employee, written (letter, e-mail, Internet), and reporting complaints about the comment card” (Patwary & Hamimi, 2016, p. 312). Following the complaint report, a service provider carries out actions according to the severity of the complaint.
The article provides an overview of the application of the concept of customer complaining behavior addressed by Bateson (1999) from the perspective of its usefulness in service improvement. The actions related to responding to a complaint might be taken to either public or private domain and might be managed through either interactive or remote channels. The choice of responding actions and the nature of channels determines the effectiveness of complaint management and the overall success of a company is working with service failures (Bateson, 1999). In my opinion, the problem of proper usage of communication channels in complaints management is essential for maintaining performance excellence in such a highly competitive industry as a service industry. Moreover, since the digital era provides numerous additional channels and tools for feedback collection and complaint reviews, companies should utilize the technological advantages to expand their work on failure management.
References
Bateson, J. E. G. (1999). Service recovery. In Managing services marketing: Text and readings (pp. 310-323). Dryden Press.
Patwary, A. K., & Hamimi, O. (2016). An overview of consumer complaining behavior and the choice of complaint channels in service industry. International Journal of Business and Technopreneurship, 6(2), 309-318.