Human Errors and Human Factors in Service Delivery Processes: A Literature Review and Future Works

Abstract

The aim of this study is to review previous studies on human errors in the service delivery processes. Service industry is sharply growing in the advanced countries. Many people are looking for something to contribute to the service industry. Although there are many research topics related to service domain that human factors and ergonomics specialists can do contribute, a few researchers are studying such topics. This paper indicated how previous researches on human factors and human errors have addressed the service domain, in order to prompt human factor study on the service domain. A variety of sources were inspected for literature reviews, including books and journals of managements, medicine, psychology, consumer behavior as well as human factor and ergonomics. The characteristics of human errors in the service domain were investigated. Human error studies in several service sectors were summarized such as medical service, automotive service operation, travel agent service and call center service. Until now, human factors community was not much interested in human errors in service domain. However, there is much space to contribute to service domain; human error identification, human error analysis and control of human error. The research of human error in service domain can provide clues to improve service quality. This paper helps to guide to identify human error of service domain and to design service systems.