You are enjoying a piece of carrot cake as a dessert at the end of a delicious meal in a famous restaurant. As you are about to eat a piece of the cake, you see a human hair mixed among the cake ingredients

Suddenly your opinion of this famous restaurant and your entire meal changes to the point that you say you will never return to this establishment again. How could finding this hair in your piece of carrot cake be addressed by the restaurant through the critical incident technique?

The critical incident technique is a way to measure service quality that involves collecting and closely analyzing very specific customer complaints. If this type of critical incident--problems with the food--has been previously identified, then the restaurant should have a plan in place to deal with such problems before they occur. Ideally, employees would be empowered to solve the problem, perhaps by offering to pay for the meal or by offering a gift certificate for a future meal.