Influence of Demographic Characteristics on Service Recovery Performance: A Study of Frontline Staff of India Post
Keywords:
demographic characteristics, service performance, rural and urban characteristicAbstract
Though adequate literature is available on service failure and recovery in private enterprises, it is quite limited in case of Government Departments and Public Sector Undertakings. Though a few studies have been undertaken on service failure and recovery in above mentioned organisations, it is all customer-oriented. There exists a gap in the literature regarding study of factors that influence the service recovery performances of frontline staff of Government departments.
Unlike goods, the involvement of frontline staff in delivery of services and service recovery in case of failure is quite high.The purpose of this study is to investigate the influenceof demographic characteristics of frontline staff on their service recovery performance. The study is carried out among the frontline staff of India Post, a government department coming under the ministry of communication, Government of India.
Primary data was collected from 202 frontline staff of Pondicherry Division, India Post, Government of India through structured questionnaire during Q4 2017 and hypothesis were tested through Independent sample t-Test, Chi-square testand Analysis of variance (ANOVA). The scale used here for measuring was adopted from the one developed by Boschoff and Allen(2000).
Demographic characteristics like Designation, Education and Training, Rural/Urban and Sub Division have significant influence on the perception of front line staff regarding service recovery performance, while gender, age and years of service do not exert any influence.
The Management should take note of the fact that education and training has negative influence on the perception of frontline staff regarding their service recovery performance. This needs further research and necessary steps should be taken to rectify the same.
India Post being the largest Postal network(1,54,880Pos), study of a single division may not reflect the real picture. While this study has considered only the frontline staff, the perception of back office staff involved in the service recovery also needs to be studied.
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