Critical Incidents

A study of 373 instances in which guests at all types of restaurants experienced service failures found that the most common error is poorly prepared food. Using the critical-incident technique, researchers asked restaurant guests to recall service failures and to rate how serious they considered those failures. The researchers sorted the incidents into three predetermined categories: failures of the service-delivery system, inappropriate employee responses to customer requests, and unsolicited employee actions. Failures of the service-delivery system comprised the incidents that were at the same time most common, most severe, and best remembered. The subcategory comprising the most serious incidents was that of seating problems, while the subcategory with the most common errors was that of poorly prepared food. The respondents were, however, more tolerant of this type of error than those involving facility cleanliness. Nevertheless, on a scale of 1 to 10, where ten was most serious, no group of errors averaged less than 5, meaning that all failures carry at least some weight.