The Effect of Recovery Service and Personal Failures on Customer Satisfaction in Health Services (Case study: Dental industry)

In the competitive industry of health services, especially dentistry, ensuring customer satisfaction in the continuity of the economic activity of the office and clinic is vital. On the other hand, due to the inevitability of failure in meeting patients' expectations, the role of failure recovery has become more important than before. In this study, the effect of three types of failure recovery strategies including emotional, cognitive, and behavioral recovery in two failure situations due to dental service and failure due to office/clinic staff investigated. The methodology of the present study was a survey experiment based on a 2 * 3 factorial design with six scenarios and data of 150 patients referred to dental offices and clinics in Tehran by paper-pencil and self report methodology and direct in-person visit. Customer satisfaction measured by the recovery strategy used by the dentist with a 5-point Likert scale questionnaire. General linear modeling procedure employed to evaluate the effects of recovery strategies using STATISTICA 12.5. Results revealed that patient satisfaction after recovery in due to service issues are generally higher failure than failure due to personnel. Patient satisfaction in behavioral and cognitive recovery strategies is similar and both are higher than emotional recovery. Finally, patient satisfaction after recovery in service failure due to using emotional and cognitive recovery strategies in both strategies is higher than staff; but the opposite is true for behavioral recovery strategies.The attitude and response of office and clinic staff are more effective than the patient quality of dentist service.