Applying Critical Incidents Technique to Explore the Categories of Service Failure and Service Recovery for Taiwanese International Airlines

The service quality is one of the important reasons that affect the travelers’ purchase intention of airline service. During each airline service process, however, service failure might result from various reasons and leads to a low customer satisfaction. Thus, it is important to know what kinds of service failure there are and possible recovery for airline service. This study used Critical Incident Technique (CIT) as a research method to collect the data of unsatisfied experiences during the international flight of Taiwanese airlines. In addition, the service process is used to draw out more details in each service failures. The collected data from service failure and service recovery were categorized into various types. This study conducted a cross tabulation comparison on service failure and service recovery. With the analysis results, the research provides some managerial implications for the airlines as well as the suggestions for future research.