A Longitudinal Study of Complaining Customers' Evaluations of Multiple Service Failures and Recovery Efforts

Abstract

The authors report a repeated measures field study that captures complaining customers' perceptions of their overall satisfaction with the firm, likelihood of word-of-mouth recommendations, and repurchase intent during a 20-month span that includes two service failures and recovery attempts. The findings suggest that though satisfactory recoveries can produce a “recovery paradox” after one failure, they do not trigger such paradoxical increases after two failures. Furthermore, “double deviations” can occur following two consecutive unsatisfactory recoveries or following an unsatisfactory recovery in response to a second failure. The findings indicate that customers reporting an unsatisfactory recovery followed by a satisfactory recovery reported significantly higher ratings at the second postrecovery period than did customers reporting the opposite recovery sequence. The outcome of the second recovery also demonstrated a significant influence on customer ratings (positively if the recovery was satisfactory, negatively if the recovery was unsatisfactory), regardless of whether the customer found the first recovery satisfactory or unsatisfactory. In addition, although the increased change in recovery expectations and failure severity ratings from the first failure to the second is more dramatic for customers who previously reported a satisfactory recovery, the increase in attributions of blame toward the firm is more pronounced for customers who previously reported an unsatisfactory recovery. Last, the results show that recovery efforts are attenuated when two similar failures occur and when two failures happen in close time proximity.