The impact of human error on delivering service quality

This paper opens a new avenue for investigation of quality issues in servic es. We take the viewpoint that a substantial portion of service failures is the result of human error in the delivery process. Drawing upon the Generi c Error Modeling System (GEMS) from the cognitive science literature, we de velop a framework for understanding the role of human error in service fail ures. An empirical investigation assesses the applicability of this framewo rk to services, identifies which error mechanisms are important sources of service failure, and clarifies how the different roles of customers and pro viders affect the errors made by each.