Service Guarantees In The Ghanaian Courier Industry

This study investigated how courier industries in Ghana apply service guarantees to their operations in serving customers. It explores what internal mechanisms (processes), couriers have in place as service guarantee policies when there is service failure. The fact that service is performed and consumed in real time is intangible and has the consistent dyadic interaction between its representatives and customers, gives rise to its failure prone nature. This study adopts the qualitative research approach. Face-to-face interview with top management from six couriers were used to gain first-hand information on the internal procedures and perceptions towards service guarantee. The data were audiotaped, transcribed and analysed using various themes drawn from the interview. Four constructs were used as a guide to carrying out the investigation. These are; types of guarantee, theory, enabler and organisational effect. The study reveals that courier industry staff in Ghana are not able to fully handle service guarantee. This comes as a result of lack of trusted employees. The inability of frontline staff to start and finish the process from the point of the customer complaints to the point of taken their claims cast further doubts on the effectiveness of service guarantees in the courier industries in Ghana. Again, the study reveals that couriers in Ghana do not have any scientific approach to track the effectiveness of their service guarantee efforts, thus, rely on the feedback from their customers. Additionally, they concentrate on operational failures and neglect time and personal failure, which are the source of most reported service failures. The averseness of customers to complaint suggest that couriers should be proactive in their approach and promptly respond when they receive complaints. To improve their service guarantee efforts and ensure customer satisfaction after a service failure, couriers should embark on automatically invoke guarantee strategy and ensure that they monitor and address complaints of customers.