Introduction

Quality movement has swept the manufacturing sector over the last decade is beginning to take
shape in the service sector worldwide (Business Week 1991; Crosby 1991, Bitner et.al, 1994).
According to some, the shift to a quality focus is essential to the competitive survival of service
business, just as it has become essential in manufacturing (Heskett et al.,1994; Schlesing er and
Heskett 1991 , Bitner et al., 1994 ).
Service quality researchers have suggested that the proof of service [quality] is in its flawless
performance (Berry and Parasuraman 1991), a concept akin to the notion of zero defects in
manufacturing. Others have noted that breakthrough service managers pursue the goal of
100% defect-free service (Heskett and Sasser, 1994; Bitner 1999). Customers consider that the
most immediate evidence of service occurs in the service encounter or the moment of truth
when the customer interacts with the firm. Thus, zero defects in the service is the most
expected goal to achieve a 100% flawless performance in service encounters. Here, flawless
performance is not mean to imply rigid standardization, but rather 100% satisfying performance
from the customers point of view. The cost of not achieving the flawless performance is the
cost of quality, which includes the costs associated with redoing the service, or compensation
for the poor service, lost customer, negative word of mouth.
For the customer, the observable symptom is decreasing quality in what has been termed the
"service encounter," or the moment of interaction between the customer and the firm (Czepiel,
Solomon, and Surprenant 1985; Lovelock 1983; Shostack 1985; Solomon et al. 1985; Surprenant
and Solomon 1987). Many times that interaction is the service from the customer's point of view,
yet front-line employees are not trained to understand customers and do not have the freedom
and discretion needed to relate to customers in

ways

that ensure effective service and

ultimately dissatisfied customers.

Althoughmorefirmsarerealizingtheimportanceofservicequalityandcustomersatisfaction,it
isnotalwaysclearhowtoachievethisgoal(Bitneretal.,1994).Inthesituationwhereservice
qualityislowbytheencounters,theproblemmaybearisefromthedisagreementofboththe
customerandtheemployee.Inserviceencounterssuchdisagreements,suretodiminishcustomer
satisfaction.

Discussion
The researchers have encountered many of researches and found four common themes as the
sources of customer satisfaction and dissatisfaction in memorable service encounters. The
themes are recovery, adaptability, spontaneity, coping.

RecoveryEmployeeResponsetoServiceDeliverySystemFailures
Itincludesallincidentsinwhichtherehasbeenafailureoftheservicedeliverysystemandan
employeeisrequiredtorespondinsomewaytoconsumercomplaintsanddisappointments.One
of the root causes of the customer dissatisfaction is the employee response to service delivery
system failure (Bitner et al., 1994). According to the service providers the failure of the service
delivery system is the first most important reason for customer dissatisfaction. In explaining the
reason for slow service they shared few external reasons. The service delivery system fails firstly
because of the slow speed of the service. Secondly, if the service is not available, the specific
reason is not known by the employees, it depends on the management. Sometimes they blame
each other. In addition, the employers shared that the failure of the core service sometimes
depends on the mood of the employee. It can be concluded that employee response to service
delivery system failure is the first reason for customer dissatisfaction and the employees should
be in recovery mood to handle the customer encounters.

Adaptability Employee Response to Customer Needs and Requests

It underlying satisfaction/dissatisfaction in service encounters is how adaptable the service
delivery system is when the customer has special needs or requests. On the basis of employee
flexibility and system in these cases customer judge service encounters quality. Customers
request for customization of the service to meet a need. The second important reason for
customer dissatisfaction is employee response to customer needs and requests, which has a
similarity with the study findings of Bitner et al.(1994) . The employees feel that they should
consider the special needs of the customer to satisfy them. But it is really difficult to pay
customer attention to each individual customer. Some of the employees consider that they should
admit customer errors. For example, if the customer forgot to purchase ticket or forgot to bring
ticket, then they should consider their problem, otherwise customer will be dissatisfied.

Spontaneity -Unprompted and Unsolicited Employee Action:

Employee spontaneity in delivering memorably good or poor service is thetheme.
Satisfyingincidents inthis grouprepresent verypleasant surprises forthe customer (special
attention, being treated royalty, receiving something nice but not requested) whereas
dissatisfyingincidents inthisgrouprepresentnegativeandunacceptableemployeebehaviors
(rudeness,stealing,discrimination,ignoringthecustomer).Even when there is no system failure
or no special requests or needs, customer can still remember service encounters

as being very

satisfying or dissatisfying. Unprompted or unsolicited employee behavior means unexpected

employee behavior. They consider that if the employees do not act according to the cultural
norms or in adverse conditions then the customers are dissatisfied. According to

t he present

study, unprompted and unsolicited employee action is the third reason for customer
dissatisfaction. Again the present study has similarity with the research findings of Bitner et al.
(1994).

Coping-Problematic Customers:
Employees consider that customers were the cause of their own dissatisfaction. Such customers
are basically uncooperative customers; they are unwilling to cooperate with the service provider,
other customers, industry regulations and/or policies and the law. In this cases nothing the
employee could do would results in the customer feeling pleased about the encounters. The term
coping is used to describe these incidents because the term generally required of employees to
handle problem customer encounters. Rarely are such encounters satisfying from the customers
point of view. Also of interest is that customers themselves did not relate any problem
customer incidents. That is, customers either do not see, or choose not to remember or retell,
stories of the times when they themselves were unreasonable to the point of causing their own
dissatisfactory service encounter.

Implications
In this study service encounters provided by the Hotels in Coxs Bazar city (Bangladesh) to gain
understanding of the particular events and related behaviors of employees that cause customers
satisfaction and dissatisfaction. Coxs Bazar is really a great place to visit for a tourist in
Bangladesh. Every year a huge number of tourists come here from across the world. Thats why
so many high class hotels are driving their business in the Coxs Bazar. Though Coxs Bazar city
is not so big but having the world's longest (120 kilometers) beach, miles of golden sands,
towering cliffs, surfing waves, rare conch shells, colorful pagodas, Buddhist temples and tribes,
delightful sea-food makes Cox's Bazar the tourist capital of Bangladesh There are no official
figures on the numbers of visitors to Cox's Bazar this winter ( October 2014 to January 2015),
but hotel owners said the 10,000 rooms available were full almost seven days a week in
November and December, 2014 and a second rush is expected for the New Year of 2016. The
winter season helps the Hotel industries to go through the rest of the year.
The questionnaire consisted of 13 questions to find out the customer satisfaction regarding
service encounters from the above mentioned determinants where 4 questions is from both
Recovery& Adaptability, 3 questions from Spontaneity and 2 questions from Coping. The
customers were asked to fill in a structured questionnaire by indicating their degree of agreement
on a five-point Likert scale (strongly agree to strongly disagree).

RecoveryEmployeeResponsetoServiceDeliverySystemFailures

Figure1:EmployeeResponsetoServiceDeliverySystemFailures

Fromthefigure1weseethat,mostofthecustomersaresatisfiedwiththeserviceencounters
providedbythehotelsinthesectorofrecovery.Wealsoseethat,customersgetpleasure
bythewaytheygetrecovery.Whenthecustomersfacepromisedservicefailuresthenabout
67.9%ofcustomersaresatisfiedbytheirapologies,about77.1%getsatisfiedbytheirwayof
compensation for the mistakes, 73.58% get satisfied by their prompt services in recovery
process.But52.05%ofcustomersarenotsatisfiedwiththerecoverysystembywhichemployee
cannotsolvethecomplaintswithintheircommittedtimethoughtheytrywiththeirfulleffort.

AdaptabilityEmployeeResponsetoCustomerNeedsandRequests

Figure2:EmployeeResponsetoCustomerNeedsandRequests
From the above figure2, we see that most of the customers are satisfied with the service
encounters provided by the hotels in the sector of adaptability. We also see that when the
customersseekemployeeresponsefortheirneedsandrequests,about62.95%ofcustomersare
satisfiedbytheir(ServiceProvider)responsestomeettheirrequest;about53.9%issatisfiedby
gettingadequatetimefromtheserviceprovidersand62.64%issatisfiedbythewaytheyget
handledbythem(serviceprovider).But52.23%ofcustomersarenotsatisfiedwheretheythink
that, they dontget equal responses fromthe service providers while thehotel owners give

preferencestothosecustomerswhohaveagoodrelationwiththem.

SpontaneityUnpromptedandUnsolicitedEmployeeActions

Figure3:UnpromptedandUnsolicitedEmployeeActions
Fromtheabovefigure3,weseethatmostofthecustomersaredissatisfiedwiththeservice
encountersprovidedbythehotelsinthesectorofspontaneity.Though58.72%ofcustomersare
satisfiedwiththeattentiontheyhavereceivedfromtheserviceprovidersbutintherestofthe
factors(aimstohelpandinteractwiththecustomers)theyarenotsatisfied.About49%of
customersarenotsatisfiedwiththeaimsoftheemployeeshelpingand45.67%ofcustomersare
dissatisfiedwiththeaimsoftheemployeesinteractingwiththecustomers.

CopingEmployeeResponsetoProblemCustomers

Figure4:EmployeeResponsetoProblemCustomers
From the customers point of view (who observe the employees behavior to the problem
customers) in figure4 about 56.9 % of customers told that, hotel owners are very much
cooperativetohandletheproblemcustomers.But57.25 %ofcustomersthinkthat,hotelowners
havealackofabilitiesandefficienciestohandleanyconflictortoretainthegoodimageofthose
customers.

Conclusion
The behavior of the employee in the critical moment has a direct impact on the firm. Present
study has specified to identify the critical factor for the dissatisfactory service delivery of Hotel
in Coxs Bazar city. The service encounters that are provided by the hotels in Coxs Bazar, most
customers are satisfied with the factor of recovery and adaptability but dissatisfied in the sector
of spontaneity and coping. Hotel owners should overcome those lacking as soon as possible to
stay in the competitive market.

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