Critical incident techniques - Towards a framework for analysing the criticality of critical incidents

The traditional critical incident technique (CIT) and variants of the same have frequently been applied in service research for several decades. The t echnique has often been used to capture data on and analyse both negative a nd positive critical incidents. nile one technique displays hosts of critic al incidents in benchmark-type series (SIT), another variant describes the dynamism in one discrete critical incident and a third the dynamism of the configuration of critical incidents (SPAT). In this article the different v ariants are discussed in relation to psychological theory focusing on the c oncepts of time, history and memory. To be able to analyse the criticality fro m, the individual customer's perspective, we argue that one must unders tand the significance of critical incidents in the light of human memory me chanisms and judgement processes. The discussion forms the basis for sugges ting a new, tentative framework for analysing the criticality of critical i ncidents. We call this criticality critical incident technique (CCIT).