Theoretical Advances in Service Breakdown Prevention and Recovery: Rich Service Enactment to Improve Server-Client Interactions and Outcomes

This study investigates service breakdowns and describes interventions, including simulations of learner-created service interactions. Constructing and enacting these interactions help in enabling agile, effective server responses. The research investigated the effectiveness of training using live role-playing in dealing with negative turns and solving ad hoc dilemmas in real client-server encounters, thus advancing service excellence and service recovery theory and practice. Seven tertiary institutions cross five nations engaged in training students in client-service performance in simulated contexts. Findings support the positive impact of the proposed iterative competency development plan on impromptu responses, higher-order thinking and situational memory in trainees/servers. The development of Rich Service Enactment Theory (RiSET) extends three perspectives. First, most service training focuses restrictively on what-to-do, excluding necessary training on what-not-to-do. Second, practicing in stimulating contexts with peer feedback helps to prevent repeated mistakes and disastrous service failures. Third, the RiSET model provides a new framework for educators/trainers to develop models that prepare trainees for dealing with unknown, possibly high-risk encounters. The study focuses on surfacing server knowledge and implementing server training to prevent or reduce dramatic turns during client-server encounters, rather than empirically testing a well-formed theory. The study offers empirical researchers’ configurations of conditions for contextual experimentation.