Appreciation vs. apology: Research on the influence mechanism of chatbot service recovery based on politeness theory

Failures in human-chatbot interactions are becoming inevitable such as failure of chatbots to maintain contextual awareness. Thus, an effective service recovery strategy is essential for e-commerce enterprises to restore customers and resolve their complaints. Therefore, based on politeness theory, this study explores the fundamental mechanism and boundary conditions for a chatbot politeness strategy (appreciation vs. apology) on consumers' post-recovery satisfaction using four scenario-based experiments. The results indicate that establishing a good human-chatbot relationship (appreciation) is a more effective recovery strategy than admitting the chatbot's limited competence (apology) in redressing service failures; face concern mediates the effect of the politeness strategy on post-recovery satisfaction; and time pressure plays a moderating role in the effect of the politeness strategy on face concern and post-recovery satisfaction. This study extends the research of politeness theory and face concern in the field of chatbot marketing, and provide practical guidance for e-commerce enterprises to deal effectively with chatbot failure.     

The distinctive agenda of service failure recovery in e-tailing: Criticality of logistical / non-logistical service failure typologies and e-tailing ethics

What is so different about executing service failure recovery in an online environment as in e-tailing?Answering this, the present research points out to the need of considering e-tailing's natural propensity to foster multiple avenues of service failures which are either logistical or non-logistical in nature. Furthermore, given the distant location of the product, e-tailer, and the buyer, e-tailing is posed with risks of ethical transgressions. Therefore, by contextualizing on an Indian e-tailing scenario, we explore how service failure recovery in this challenging setting could be shaped. Justice building failure mitigation strategies such as response speed and compensation emerge to improve recovery efforts, however, apology seems to not work well in establishing justice to drive service failure recovery. Interestingly, an e-tailer's watchfulness toward the strengthening of its online ethics synergistically redeems recovery satisfaction, customer forgiveness, and positive word-of-mouth for the grieving consumer. This synergy can further mitigate the adverse impacts of service failure severity on recovery outcomes. Yet, a consumer having faced a severe service failure instance can have reservations in spreading positive word-of-mouth despite forgiving. Lastly, when considering logistical vs. non-logistical service failure typologies, the synergistic influence of e-tailing ethics and justice over recovery satisfaction becomes very strong in the case of non-logistical service failures.     

Hotel Service Recovery and Service Quality: Influences of Corporate Image and Generational Differences in the Relationship between Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty

ABSTRACT

As the number of tourists continues to grow globally, the hospitality industry players inevitably face more challenges. High competition among the competitors and the emergence of new technologies such as online booking platforms make the competition more intense among players in the hospitality sector. The quality of services provided is undoubtedly crucial to the success of the hotel. Hence, any service failure has to be addressed appropriately in order to maintain a high level of customer satisfaction and to keep the image of the hotel intact. It is therefore vital that service recovery programs are carefully planned to meet various types of service failures which may inevitably occur. In this study, questionnaires were distributed to customers who had experienced service failures. The aim was to investigate the influence of service quality and service recovery on satisfaction and, ultimately, the effect on customer loyalty. The research also tested the mediating effect of corporate image between the relationship of customer satisfaction and customer loyalty. The findings showed that both service recovery and service quality had a significant impact on customer satisfaction. Similarly, it was found that customer satisfaction induced customer loyalty towards the hotel operator. The result also showed that corporate image mediated partially between the relationship of customer satisfaction and customer loyalty.     

Effect of service recovery on customers’ perceived justice,satisfaction, and word-of-mouth intentions on online shopping websites

As consumers become better informed and more demanding about their purchase of services, service provider's failure to satisfy all consumers during delivery of service is unavoidable. Consequently, to alleviate consumer dissatisfaction that results from service failure has become important. However, empirical consensus has been lacking on the effects of various service recovery activities. Thus, this study examines the impact of different types of service recovery on customers’ perceptions of justice, post-recovery satisfaction, and word-of-mouth (WOM) intentions. The results indicated that consumers’ perceptions of distributive and interactional justice differ by the types of service recovery and supported significant relationships among perceptions of justice, satisfaction, and WOM intentions. The results implied that consumers respond differently to different types of service recovery and that consumers particularly favor apology among types of service recovery.     

Perceived controllability and service expectations: Influences on customer reactions following service failure

Endeavors to address issues surrounding service failure have centered mainly on the topic of service recovery. In particular, perceived fairness and organizational responses to service failures are highly popular topics in the literature. Yet the vast majority of customers fail to voice their dissatisfaction to the firm. Consequently, it is important to understand how consumers process service failures regardless of the recovery outcome. This study examines the impact of perceived controllability over service failures and service quality expectations on customer reactions to those failures. Findings indicate that customers react quite negatively when they believe the service firm could have easily prevented the failure. Conversely, when customers feel partly responsible for the failure or are ambiguous about its cause, the negative effects of poor performance are somewhat mitigated. Finally, high service quality expectations also buffer the firm from the negativity effect. Managerial implications of these findings are briefly discussed.     

The effect of service failure types and service recovery on customer satisfaction: a mental accounting perspective

Service failure recoveries play an important role in the service process. Previous research on service recovery has focused on the development of classification schemes, such as service failure types (e.g. outcome- or process-related failure), service recovery attributes (e.g. psychological or tangible recovery), and failure magnitude. Few studies in the literature have developed a theory-driven model of customer satisfaction that considers whether different types of service failure warrant different types of service recovery. This article, which reports the results of two studies, draws on mental accounting theory to examine the effect of the relationship between service failure and service recovery on customer satisfaction. The results of Study 1 show that customer satisfaction is greater when service recovery efforts truly make up for what customers have lost and that prior experience of service failure has a significant influence on the effectiveness of those efforts. The results of Study 2 indicate that the magnitude of a service failure also has an impact on the effectiveness of service recovery efforts.     

Matching service failures and recovery options toward satisfaction

Service failures are inevitable in any service delivery process that establishes the need for a good service recovery. This study aims to investigate the relationships among service recovery variables to develop appropriate recovery options considering different levels of failure severity and satisfaction. Using a scenario-based survey approach and structural equation modeling, the results are failure severity negatively relates to satisfaction; recovery justices positively relates to satisfaction regardless of the level of failure severity; complaining behavior strengthens (weakens) the relationship between the failure severity (recovery justices) and satisfaction; and relationship quality is a stronger predictor of post-purchase behavioral intentions than satisfaction. A service recovery matrix is proposed to depict appropriate recovery options for different situations.     

The impact of culture on consumers’ perceptions of service recovery efforts

The increasing globalization of business provides a compelling reason for understanding the cultural context of consumer behavior. The research reported here examines the impact of culture on consumers’ perceptions of service recovery efforts. In particular, we studied in an experimental setting, across East-West cultures, the combined effects of explanation and compensation in shaping customers’ attributions and post-recovery perceptions in a medium contact service—a restaurant setting. Our findings show that the differential sensitivity of East Asian and American consumers to situational constraints influence their attributions for service failures, and thus moderate their satisfaction with service recovery process. More specifically, the results suggest that a causal explanation for service failure decreases the likelihood of US consumers falling prey to the fundamental attribution error. Conversely, among East Asians, an explanation had minimal influence in attributional processes. Finally, our results indicate that attributional processes influence customer perceptions of employee effort, which in turn is linked to post-recovery satisfaction.     

Does delaying service-failure resolution ever make sense?

Conventional wisdom suggests that service providers should respond to their failures as quickly as possible. Some research, however, points out that delaying resolutions may produce highly desirable results. The study here investigates these competing views by examining under which conditions an immediate or a delaying resolution produces more positive consumer responses in term of re-patronage and negative word-of-mouth intentions. Based on the concept of service separation, this research identifies an interaction effect between service separation (separated service, non-separated service) and response timing (immediate response, delaying response) on consumers' post-consumption intention. This research also finds that the relationship between service separation-response timing interaction and consumer response is mediated by consumers' negative emotions. This study contributes to refining our understanding of consumer psychology in service recovery. Practically, the studies also enable service providers to better allocate their resources to recover different types of services' failure.     

All's well that ends well: Effective recovery from failures during the delivery phase of e-retailing process

E-commerce retail has been on an exponential growth since late-1990s and now with COVID-19 crisis it is more popular and prevalent than ever before. But failures during the e-retailing process, specially when the business is under pressure, is a severe challenge with deteriorative impacts on customers' attitude and behavioral intention. While the majority of failures during e-retail process takes place at the ‘product delivery phase’ (the last phase of e-commerce process), little attention has been paid towards investigating how e-retailers can effectively recover from service failure encounters during the delivery phase. Seeking to address this gap, the present study draws on cognitive dissonance theory to examine the determinants of effective recovery from service failure encounters during the delivery phase of e-retailing. In doing so, a scenario-based experiment was conducted to collect data from 320 online customers. The findings provide empirical insights on how perceived recovery endeavor interacts with criticality of situation and brand equity to mitigate the negative consequences of service failure at delivery phase. The theoretical and managerial implications of the findings are discussed along with avenues for future research.     

From disconfirmation to switching: an empirical investigation of switching intentions after service failure and recovery

This research proposes and empirically tests a customer switching intentions model from a disconfirmation perspective in a service failure and recovery context. Specifically, the research examines how initial (discrepancy between service failure expectation and service performance) and recovery (discrepancy between recovery expectation and recovery performance) disconfirmations influence satisfaction when a service failure occurs and a recovery offer is given, and subsequently impact switching intentions. The results support the hypotheses that both initial and recovery disconfirmations influence switching intentions via satisfaction. In addition, switching costs directly influence switching intentions and also moderate the effect of satisfaction on switching intentions.     

The journey from customer participation in service failure to co-creation in service recovery

Customer participation is growing into a widespread phenomenon in the service context. Despite the inherent significance of customer expectations to service failures in the high-participation service context, scant research exists on studying the links among customer participation, customer expectation of service recovery, and service outcomes (e.g., word-of-mouth or WOM). Even more pressing is the lack of research on the type of service recovery that can countervail the inflated customer expectation of service recovery and restore service outcomes. This research demonstrates that high contribution of customers in the beginning of service provision procedure leads to high recovery expectations and low satisfaction. The results also support that co-created service recovery (CCS-R), as contrasted to firm and customer recoveries, has a greater positive effect on satisfaction. Further, the contrasting impacts of each service recovery type on positive and negative WOM are presented. An experiment was conducted using service failure and recovery scenarios. Regression analysis was used to test the hypotheses. The current research has some important implications for scholars and managers who wish to effectively recover failed high-participation service encounters.     

Co-creation and service recovery process communication: effects on satisfaction,repurchase intentions,and word of mouth

After service failure situations, firms often carry out transactional activities to achieve customer recovery (CR), using corrective actions to restore the exchange (e.g., economic and social compensations). Furthermore, during the service recovery process, firms can encourage activities of co-creation (CC) to prevent similar future failures. This paper discusses the importance of CC and service recovery process communication (RPC), in which customers are informed of the adoption of solutions to address the cause of the failure, so as to avoid the same problem happening again. Experimental studies investigate the impact, individually and together, of CR, CC, and RPC on satisfaction, repurchase intentions, and word of mouth. The results indicate that CC and RPC improve customer’s satisfaction, repurchase intentions, and word of mouth. Firms that want to maximize the return on their efforts to prevent service failures, should encourage CC, develop solutions to prevent future failure recurrence, and implement strategies of RPC. Firms must decide how to promote CC and which media to use for RPC.     

Managing social media recovery: The important role of service recovery transparency in retaining customers

This research examines the influence of service recovery transparency on customer forgiveness to retain customers in the context of service recovery via social media. We propose that customer forgiveness mediates the effect of service recovery transparency on switchover intentions. We further posit that the effect of service recovery transparency on customer forgiveness is moderated by two additional recovery strategies, i.e., apology and explanation. The results of two studies, i.e., a survey and a scenario-based experiment, show that service recovery transparency acts to elicit customer forgiveness, which subsequently negatively affects switchover intentions. Furthermore, both apology and explanation moderate the effect of service recovery transparency on customer forgiveness. The positive effect of service recovery transparency on customer forgiveness is attenuated when an apology/explanation is absent.     

Distinguishing between the impact of social media public and private compliments on customers’ future service recovery expectations

We seek to explore whether customers’ levels of service recovery expectations differ across customers who, prior to the service failure, publicly complimented the firm on social media and customers who, in advance of the service failure, privately complimented the firm on social media. We explore these differences in terms of satisfaction with the service provider and willingness to go back to the service provider. We conduct an experiment to test the research hypotheses. Our study results show that customers who complimented the service provider publicly (relative to privately) on social media in advance of a service failure require a higher level of service recovery to be satisfied with the service provider and go back to the service provider. Further, these effects are partly moderated by customer loyalty and social media usage intensity.     

Hospice Informal Caregivers' Perception of a Good Death Experience: A SERVQUAL Analysis

ABSTRACT

This research study explores hospice informal caregivers' perceptions of service quality and a good death experience during end-of-life care. It demonstrates how service dimensions of the SERVQUAL analysis affect overall customer satisfaction. This study addresses contrast and dissonance theory as relative to marginal gaps in actual service performance and the effect on overall customer satisfaction. The research indicated that while reliability was the core of the service outcome, peripheral variables (e.g., assurance, empathy, responsiveness, and tangibility) integrated emotions and feelings into the hospice service process that equated to a positive disconfirmation of expectations and a good death experience.     

Group service recovery strategies effectiveness: The moderating effects of group size and relational distance

The extant service recovery literature focuses on consumers' responses to individual failures. However, group service failures are in fact common, but they have received insufficient research attention. This study contributes to theory and practice by applying social impact theory to explain the social nature of group failures. Findings from two studies show that group size and relational distance substantially affect consumers' response to group service recovery strategies. Specifically, private economic recovery creates less consumer satisfaction as group size increases, whereas consumers with a distant social relationship are more satisfied with public recovery for both economic recovery and social recovery. However, consumers with close relationships are more satisfied with public economic recovery and private social recovery. Apart from offering practical insights, this study expands the theoretical understanding of service failures, suggesting that they occur in a complex social ecology instead of relatively simple dyadic interactions between service providers and consumers.     

Strategies to offset performance failures: The role of brand equity

In this research, we examine the role of brand equity as a strategy to offset the negative effects of a performance failure. Two independent studies, spanning four industries and involving 669 respondents are employed to investigate this issue. Results suggest that high brand equity leads to more favorable satisfaction evaluations and behavioral intentions than low brand equity. The brand equity effect is identified as a prevailing advantage that spans the entire failure and recovery sequence. This is an important finding because it implies that the advantages of high brand equity theoretically can apply to all failures, not just those for which recovery is attempted. Further inspection, however, reveals that despite the prevailing advantage, high-equity brand failures lead to a more drastic decline in customer evaluations immediately after the failure episode. Managerial implications and future research are addressed.     

The effect of organizational responses to service failures on customer satisfaction perception

This paper explores how organizational responses to service failures affect perceived justice and recovery satisfaction using responses from 410 customers who experienced service failures in Hong Kong. The results indicated that the acknowledgement of and prompt action to fix service failures were positively linked to perceived justice, which in turn affects recovery satisfaction. Moreover, customer relation orientation moderated the relationship between acknowledgement of service failure and justice perceptions of service recovery, while customer task orientation moderated the relationship between prompt action for service recovery and justice perceptions of that recovery.     

The influence of the source and valence of word-of-mouth information on post-failure and post-recovery evaluations

The purpose of this paper was to better understand the impact that word-of-mouth recommendations (WOM) source (i.e., personal vs. impersonal sources) and WOM valence (average vs. excellent) have on satisfaction and trust following a failure and recovery event. Our results showed that customers who received WOM recommendations from personal rather than impersonal sources (WOM source) were less dissatisfied with the organization when severe versus mild failures occurred. Likewise, failure severity had less negative impact on customer satisfaction evaluations when the valence of WOM information was excellent versus average. These results were more pronounced for severe failures. In addition, WOM source and WOM valence both moderated the relationship between recovery quality and trust with the organization. Specifically, excellent recovery quality had a much greater influence on trust when WOM information was obtained from personal versus impersonal sources (WOM source). Finally, when customers received WOM information that rated the service organization as excellent (WOM valence), customers also considered recovery quality to have a greater impact on their perceptions of trustworthiness than if these recommendations were average.