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the customer to the state of satisfaction after the
failure. Successful service recovery has signifi-
cant benefits: it enhances customers' perception
of the service and organization, leads to positive
word-of-mouth publicity, enhances customer sat-
isfaction, builds customer relationship, loyalty and
impacts on profits (Bitner et al., 1990). While fail-
ure is inevitable, it is critical for an organization
to establish service recovery strategies as part of
customer retention strategies. According to the
literature, there are various strategies for recovery,
for example apology and correcting the mistake
(Lewis & McCann, 2004). According to Cranage
(2004), the type of recovery strategy depends on
the severity of failure. Bell and Zemke (1987) sug-
gested five strategies for service recovery: apology,
urgent reinstatement, empathy, symbolic atone-
ment and follow-up, while Bitner et al. (1990) pro-
posed acknowledgement, explanation, apology
and compensation. An apology is sufficient for a
less serious failure, while a managerial intervention
is necessary for a more serious failure (Cranage,
2004). A good recovery can turn angry, frustrated
customers to loyal ones. It can create more good-
will than if things had gone smoothly (Hart et al.,
1990).
industry and focusing on employees as compared
to from B2B and in the manufacturing industry.
2.3
Theoretical development of ISRS
According to Santos-Vijande et al. (2013), there
are three dimensions in ISRS:
a) Failure detection—internal and external orien-
tation (customer and/or employees)
b) Failure analysis—service shortcomings are rec-
ognized collectively and the willingness to work
to avoid them becoming tangible
c) Response to failure—rapid response, fair
outcome, employee empowerment, learning
innovation.
Failure detection falls under the category of
recovery information. Smith, Karwan, and Mark-
land (2009) coined the term 'accessibility' in his
seven dimensions of integrated recovery system
but limit this dimension to capturing the voice
of the customers only. Hence, ISRS includes
customer and employees information pertaining
failure detection to enable the gathering of com-
plete data on why failure happens. Next is failure
analysis where Santos-Vijande et al. (2013) believes
that ISRS should include the analysis and collec-
tive assessment of information available on the
failure in order to establish proactively the neces-
sary measure for improvement and to respond as
efficiently as possible when failure occurs. John-
ston and Michel (2008) include the analysis and
interpretation of information on failure within
the 'process recovery' dimension and uses 'sys-
tem intensity' and 'comprehensiveness' as a meas-
ure of the magnitude of the resources devoted to
monitoring and controlling failures and gathering
information about all potential recovery activities.
However, it is essential to share and analyze infor-
mation on service failure given the potential com-
plexity of the organizational response necessary to
achieve service recovery and value creation so as to
foster joint interpretation of its implications, reach
a consensus on service improvement priorities and
achieve long-term improvements in performance
(Tax & Brown, 1998).
The following ISRS element is response rate
which fall under the category of recovery action
and presented in two fold orientation—external
and internal. The external orientation is targeted
to customer, primarily to front office (front-line)
corrective actions that seek to maintain or even
increase client satisfaction and avoid damaging the
intention to repurchase (Kau & Loh, 2006) while
the internal dimension corresponds with back office
operations that seek to transform the knowledge
generated within the firm into service improve-
ments, innovations and allow employee recovery
2.2
Integrated Service Recovery Strategies (ISRS)
Service recovery literature has always focused on a
single dimension, either investigating the customer
or the employee. In fact, there are more studies
on customer satisfaction with service recovery
compared to employee recovery satisfaction (Lin,
2010). The need to investigate internal recovery
is evidenced by that fact and with the new con-
cept called Integrated Service Recovery Strategies
(ISRS), the recovery can be managed in a more
efficient manner. ISRS is an integrated concept
of managing failure by proactively preventing
failures, efficiently recovering and learning from
mistakes and successfully maintaining long-term
relationship (Santos-Vijande, Díaz-Martín, Suá-
rez-Álvarez & Río-Lanza, 2013).
Tensions among customer recovery, process
recovery and employee recovery caused service
recovery to fail, reinforcing that effective recov-
ery management requires an integrated approach
(Michel et al., 2009). ISRS would assist businesses
in developing practices that allow firms to perform
the recovery procedures in a proactive, relational
and strategic manner (Santos-Vijande et al., 2013).
Santos-Vijande et al. (2013) also added that ISRS is
a holistic view of service recovery which reinforces
advisability of considering service recovery as a
comprehensive management system. This study
seeks to extend the existing work (Santos-Vijande
et al., 2013) by implementing ISRS in the hotel
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