ServiceFriday: Time is Money – When Service Firms Should Employ Trust Recovery Tactics

According to the 2017 US National Customer Rage Survey, conducted in partnership with the Center for Services Leadership and Customer Care Measurement and Consulting, only 21% of complainants were completely satisfied with how their complaints were handled. 51% felt they recieved nothing at all in response to their complaint. This begs the question, how can service firms regain customer trust after a service failure and the mishandling of customer complaints?

ServiceFriday: Group Think – How Customers Influence Each Other in Service Failure Scenarios

The breakfast buffet is closed when a customer arrives looking for scrambled eggs; a flight is delayed. Service failures may or may not be the providers’ fault, and they may affect a single customer or a group. But importantly, service failures are often unpredictable. A study published recently in the Journal of Service Research sheds light on the way groups react to service failure–which can be very different than when an individual experiences the failure–and recommends that companies plan in advance for the unexpected by establishing processes to deal with groups.

ServiceFriday: How Customer Involvement and Perceived Control Shape Service Recovery

In service research, much attention has been paid to the role of the customer when it comes to service delivery and service evaluation. However, less attention has been paid to the role of the customer in service recovery. In service recovery, the research tends to focus on two aspects of a company’s response to service failures: compensation in the form of refunds or replacements, and the attributes and behaviors of service employees.

ServiceFriday: I Really Want to Tell You I’m Sorry – How to Structure a Good Apology

Economists have come to recognize the importance of establishing trust and reciprocity in human interactions around financial transactions. Additionally, networks of trust and reciprocity are essential for bolstering all economic exchange.  

However, relatively less is known about the consequences of a violation of trust or reciprocity in customer relationships. When it comes to customer relationships, what actions can be taken to avoid the deterioration of mutual confidence when trust has been compromised in a service failure?

ServiceFriday: Will You Stay if We Pay? Benefits of Financial Compensation After a Service Failure

Financial compensation as a means to recover from service failures can serve as powerful tool. However, it is important that practitioners learn the ways in which to do this properly in order to receive the most desired outcomes for service recovery. Research from the Journal of Service Research examines the ways in which financial compensation should be applied to service recovery efforts, as well as the types of compensation that should be used according to the situation. 

ServiceFriday: How to Regain Trust When You’ve Failed Your Customer…Again.

It is commonly understood that service recovery efforts must follow in the wake of a service failure. But what if those recovery efforts are unsuccessful, creating what is called a “double deviation” from customer expectations? A research article published in the Journal of Service Research by Kenny Basso and Christiane Pizzutti provides insights on how to acquire trust after a customer has experienced an unsatisfactory service recovery. 

ServiceFriday: Channel Your Anger to Manage Service Failures

“…customers are more satisfied with failed service encounters when they are aware the employee was reprimanded.”

This research paper by Pugh et al. proposes a new and very cost-effective approach to mediate service recovery. To be effective, however, corrective actions must be performed in a very specific way:

How to Recover Customer Trust After Unsatisfactory Service

When done badly, service recovery can further damage the consumer trust. What can you do to restore the trust after failing a customer twice? As research shows, an apology and assurance that the problem won’t occur in the future are more effective than a monetary compensation.

What You Need to Know about the Impact of Service Crises

In sum, companies should focus on a stable (and good) service performance level. Such performance level has the best outcomes for customers’ service assessment, and takes much less effort compared to constant adjustments needed in response to peaks and troughs in service performance. A good and stable performance, in turn, is a strong argument for companies in their communication to customers, as it may engender favorable perceptions of the service quality.

Service crises and their impact on companies