ABSTRACT
Errors occur in every hospitality organization. Errors have been defined as unintended deviation from plans, goals or adequate feedback processing as well as incorrect action that results from lack of knowledge (Van Dyck et al. 2005). Employees make errors as they speak, as they interact with others and as they pursue their everyday work activities. Errors can occur at any level and department in a hospitality organization: external errors involving customers – front-of-house (servers placing wrong orders, missing reservations) or back-of-house (cooks overcooking meat) – and internal errors involving employees, managers and departments (errors in accounts, finance and HR departments) (Guchait et al. 2016b). Hospitality researchers have concentrated on one type of errors: service failures. Service failures refer to service performance that falls below a customer’s expectations. Service failures include product defects, wrong orders, lost orders, missed reservations, food not cooked to order, mischarging and others. Service failure occurs because of several reasons such as time pressure, high workload and fatigue (Karatepe 2012a). Several negative consequences of service failures are possible including customer dissatisfaction, customer defection, negative word-of-mouth, loss of revenue, loss of time, increased costs, endangering employees and customers, and employee stress and poor performance (Swanson and Hsu 2011; Guchait et al. 2012).
