An Analysis of Service Failures and Recovery Strategies in the Turkish Third Party Logistics Service Industry

Abstract

Service literature indicates that both service failure and service recovery have a strong impact on the business relationships between service providers and their customers. The purpose of this research is twofold: to explore and analyze the most common service failures and implemented recovery strategies in Turkish third party logistics service industry and examine their impact on business relationships. Critical Incident Technique (CIT) was used. Thus, information on critical incidents were collected from both third party logistics service providers (3PLs) and their customers, failures and recovery strategies were categorized and the impact of service failures and recovery strategies on future relationships between customers and 3PLs examined. The findings indicate that service failures are most frequently encountered in customer services and port operations and that symbolic service recovery is the most common recovery strategy implemented by third party logistics service providers. The findings also show that third party logistics service providers and carriers are the most common sources of failure in third party logistics services.