Service Recovery Dynamics in Customer Experience Management
Summary
Service recovery dynamics examine how organisations respond to failures in service delivery and the processes by which they restore customer satisfaction, trust and loyalty. This field integrates theories of justice, attribution and emotion to explain how customers judge remedial actions and how these judgments influence their subsequent behaviours, such as repurchase intention or negative word-of-mouth. Recent work highlights the impact of digital channels, social comparison among customers and the role of corporate reputation in shaping recovery outcomes. Practical applications span airlines managing overbooking, peer-to-peer platforms navigating crises and food delivery apps seeking to mediate forgiveness, underscoring the global significance of rapid, equitable and personalised recovery strategies.
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Service Recovery Dynamics in Customer Experience Management publication trend
The graph below shows the total number of articles in service recovery dynamics in customer experience management across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).
Technical terms
Service recovery: Actions taken by a provider to redress a failed service encounter and restore customer satisfaction.
Distributive justice: Customer perception of the fairness of outcomes or compensation offered after failure.
Procedural justice: Perceived fairness of the processes and policies used to resolve a service failure.
Interactional justice: Quality of interpersonal treatment, including respect and empathy, during recovery encounters.
Valence of forgiveness: Degree to which a customer feels exoneration or lingering resentment following recovery efforts.
Word-of-mouth: Informal communication by customers about their service experiences, positive or negative.
References
- Webcare’s effect on constructive and vindictive complainants. Journal of Product & Brand Management (2019).
- Role of downward versus upward social comparison in service recovery: Testing a mediated moderation model with two empirical studies. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services (2023).
- The Impacts of Perceived Risk and Negative Emotions on the Service Recovery Effect for Online Travel Agencies: The Moderating Role of Corporate Reputation. Frontiers in Psychology (2021).
- Proactive Handling of Flight Overbooking: How to Reduce Negative eWOM and the Costs of Bumping Customers. Journal of Service Research (2020).
- The effect of the valence of forgiveness to service recovery strategies and service outcomes in food delivery apps. Journal of Business Research (2022).
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