The ‘PARA’ (primary diagnosis, advanced diagnosis, review, action)
model presented in this paper seeks to have the voice of customer
(VOC) taken into account in the diagnosis of failures within a
service system. Based on the data mining analysis of a customer
complaint database, the model enables a comprehensive diagnosis
of service failures and develops appropriate improvement actions.
The empirical case study reported in this paper has demonstrated
the practical efficacy of the four stages of the ‘PARA’ model
in diagnosing service failure and developing an improvement strategy
in the context of regional public-sector services in Taiwan