A Study of Customer Responses to Service Failure andRecovery: The Role of the Service Provider’s Recovery Effortand Customer-Employee Rapport

Abstract

This study investigated the effect of the service provider’s recovery effort and pre-failure customer-employee rapport on post-recovery consumer response such as satisfaction, purchase intention, and positive word-of-mouth communication. First, this study explored the interaction effect of recovery effort and customer-employee rapport on post-recovery consumer response. The result shows that when the level of pre-failure customer-employee rapport is high, customer positive responses decreased slightly even though they perceived a low recovery effort. However, when the level of pre-failure customer-employee rapport is low, customer responses were decreased considerably in case of low recovery effort. Second, this study examined the ‘service recovery paradox’ which is post-recovery consumer satisfaction which is greater than the case of no service failure. The result shows a recovery paradox was not supported in all samples regardless of the level of recovery effort and customer-employee rapport. Synthetically, customer-employee rapport took a buffering role in customer response after service failure although it's not the same as an error-free state.