On the basis of research that documents thousands of service encounter stories, four common themes—recovery (after failure), adaptability, spontaneity, and coping—have been identified as the sources of customer satisfaction/dissatisfaction in memorable service encounters. 53 Each of the themes is discussed here, and sample stories from the research of both satisfying and dissatisfying incidents for each theme are given in Exhibit 4.2 . The themes encompass service behaviors in encounters spanning a wide variety of industries.