[4] The guarantees also facilitate more ease and more likelihood for customers to complain, since they expect the front-line staff to be ready with resolutions and appropriate compensations.
Christopher Hart states that the following criteria should be met in designing service guarantees:[6] If we, in your opinion, do not deliver on this commitment, we will give you $20 in cash.
Thus, the impact of providing an explicit guarantee would be minimal and it would be difficult for, for example, a highly rated hotel to attract new customers by signaling higher quality.
[11] For service providers whose reputations have been strongly established, guarantees may not be necessary since they might be incongruent with their image and might create confusion in the market.
[12] On the contrary, firms which are experiencing poor service delivery must improve their quality to the level where customers invoke guarantees on a more regular basis.