The Effect of Service Failure and Service Recovery on PLN ULP Helvetia Customer Satisfaction with Customer Trust as Intervening Variables

Abstract

PLN ULP Helvetia is one of the units of PLN UP3 Medan Utara which is responsible for serving the community in meeting electricity needs and providing the best performance in a sustainable manner, especially in administrative and electricity services. However, PLN ULP Helvetia has complaints from customers ranging from frequent power outages, as well as poor service from customer service whose slow response makes customers feel disappointed with the service which can lead to service failure.

The aim of this research is to analyze the influence of service failure and service recovery on PLN ULP Helvetia customer satisfaction with customer trust as an intervening variable. The population of this research is PLN ULP Helvetia postpaid electricity customers with a total sample of 397 samples using the Slovin formula. Data analysis was carried out with SEM (Structural Equation Modeling) using the SmartPLS 3 program.

The results of this research show that based on the indirect influence test, it was found that the service failure variable had a negative and significant effect on customer satisfaction through trust as an intervening variable with a coefficient value of -0.138 with a p value of 0.001 < 0.05, the service recovery variable had a positive and significant effect on customer satisfaction through trust as an intervening variable with a coefficient value of 0.186 with pvalues 0.00 <0.05. Managerial implications and suggestions for improvement for PLN ULP Helvetia will also be explained at the end of this research section.