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论优化服务营销增强顾客忠诚（文献翻译） 9
to switch to a different health care provider than were those who happy with how their problems were addressed. The study also found that satisfaction with service recovery was the second most important factor out of 11 service attributes in predicting overall customer satisfaction. The most important, not surprisingly, was perceived medical outcome.
An effective service recovery strategy has multiple potential impacts. It can increase customer satisfaction and loyalty and generate positive word-of-mouth communication. A well-designed, well-documented service recovery strategy also provides information that can be used to improve service as part of a continuous improvement effort. By making adjustments to service processes, systems, and outcomes based on previous service recovery experiences, companies increase the likelihood of “doing it right the right the first time.” In turn, this reduces costs of failures and increases initial customer satisfaction.
Unfortunately, many firms do not employ effective strategies. A recent study suggests that 50 percent of customer who experienced a serious problem received no response from the firm. There are tremendous downsides to having no service recovery strategies. Poor recovery following a bad service experience a service failure, they talk about it to others no matter what the outcome. That recent study also found that customers who were satisfied with a firm’s recovery efforts
3.2
Some customers are more likely to complain than others for a variety of reasons. These consumers believe that positive consequences may occur and that there are social benefits of complaining, and their personal norms support their complaining behavior. They believe they should and will be provided compensation for the service failure in some form. They believe that fair treatment and good service are their due, and that in cases of service failure, someone should make good. In some cases they feel a social obligation to complain — to help others avoid similar situations or to punish the service provider. A very small number of consumers have “complaining” personalities — they just like to complain or cause trouble.
Consumers who are unlikely to take any action hold the opposite beliefs. They often see complaining as a waste of their time and effort. They do not believe anything positive will occur for them or others based on their actions. Sometimes they do not know how to complain — they do not understand the process or may not realize that avenues are open to them to voice their complaints. In some cases noncomplainers may engage in “emotion-focused coping” to deal with their negative experiences. This type of coping involves self-blame, denial, and possibly seeking social support. They may feel that the failure was somehow their fault and that they do not deserve redress.
Personal relevance of the failure can also influence whether people complain. If the service failure is really important, if the failure has critical consequences for the
How Customer Respond To Service Failures
论优化服务营销增强顾客忠诚（文献翻译） 10
consumer, or if the consumer has much ego involvement in the service experience, then he or she is the more likely to complain. Consumers are more likely to complain about services that are expensive, high risk, and ego involving (like vacation packages, airline travel, and medical services) than they are about less expensive, frequently purchased services (fast-food drive-through service, a cab ride, a call to a customer service help line). There latter services are simply not important enough to warrant the time to complain. Unfortunately, even though the experience may not be important to the consumer at the moment, a dissatisfying encounter can still drive him or her to a competitor next time the service is needed.
If customers initiate actions following service failure, the action can be of various types. A dissatisfied customer can choose to complain on the spot to the service provider, giving the company the opportunity to respond immediately. This reaction is often the best-case scenario for the company because it has a second chance right at that moment to satisfy the customer, keep his or her business in the future, and potentially avoid any negative word of mouth. Customers who do not complain immediately may choose to complain later to the provider by phone, in writing, or via the Internet. Again, the company has a chance to recover. Researchers refer to these proactive types of complaining behavior as voice responses or seeking redress. Some customers choose not to complain directly to the provider but rather spread negative word of mouth about the company to friends, relatives, and coworkers. This negative word-of-mouth communication can be extremely detrimental because it can reinforce the customer’s feelings of negativism and spread that negative impression to others as well. Further, the company has no chance to recover unless the negative word of mouth is accompanied by a complaint directly to the company. In recent years, customers have taken to complaining via the Internet. A variety of websites, including web-based consumer opinion platforms, have been created to facilitate customer complaints and, in doing so, have provided customers with the possibility of spreading negative word-of-mouth communication to a much broader audience. Some customers become so dissatisfied with a product or service failure that they construct websites targeting the firm’s current and prospective customers. On these sites, angry customers convey their grievances against the firm in ways designed to convince other consumers of the firm’s incompetence an evil.
Finally, customers may choose to complain to third parties such as the Better Business Bureau, to consumer affairs arms of the government, to a licensing authority, to a professional association, or potentially to a private attorney. No matter the action (or inaction), ultimately the customers determine whether to patronize the service provider again or to switch to another provider.
3.3
When they take the time and effort to complain, customers generally have high expectations. They expect the firm to be accountable. They expect to be helped
Customers’ Recovery Expectations
论优化服务营销增强顾客忠诚（文献翻译） 11
quickly. They expect to be compensated for their grief and for the hassle of being inconvenienced.
In many service failure situations, customers are not looking for extreme actions from the firm; however, they are looking to understand what happened and for firms to be accountable for their actions (or inactions). One study identified the seven most common “remedies” that customers seek when they experience a serious problem; three of these remedies were to have the product repaired or service fixed, to be reimbursed all their money, or to be reimbursed part of their money. Interestingly, however, the other four remedies — including an apology from the firm, an explanation by the firm as to what happened, an assurance that the problem would not be repeated, and an opportunity for the customer to vent his or her frustrations to the firm — cost the firm very little to provide.
These four non-monetary remedies consist primarily of providing employees the opportunity to communicate with customers. Understanding and accountability are very important to many customers after a service failure, for if they perceive an injustice has occurred, someone is to blame. Customers expect an apology when things go wrong, and a company that provides one demonstrates courtesy and respect; customers also want to know what the company is going to do to ensure that the problem does not recur. Results from the study mentioned in the previous paragraph suggest that when a firm does nothing about a service failure, 86 percent of the customers are dissatisfied with the “response”; however, if a firm provides an apology to the customer, the percentage of dissatisfied customers drops to 20 percent. Providing customers with an opportunity to vent their frustrations has a similar effect, because doing so reduces customer dissatisfaction with the response to about 33 percent. Customer discontent can also be moderated if customers understand why the failure occurred and what specific actions were undertaken to recover. Customers clearly value such communication, because these nonmonetary remedies were found to be positively related to satisfaction with the complaint process, continues loyalty, and positive word-of-mouth communication.
Ultimately, how a service failure is handled and the customer’s reaction to the recovery effort can influence future decisions to remain loyal to the service provider or to switch to another provider. Whether customers switch to a new provider following service failure will depend in addition on a number of other factors. The magnitude and criticality of the failure will clearly be a factor in future repurchase decisions. The more serious the failure, the more likely the customer is to switch no matter what the recovery effort.
The nature of the customer’s relationship with the firm may also influence whether the customer stays or switches providers. Research suggests that customers who have “true relationships” with their service providers are more forgiving of poorly handled service failures and are less likely to switch than are those who have a “pseudo-relationship” or a “first-time encounter” type of relationship. A true relationship is one in which the customer has had repeated contact over time with the same service provider. A first-time encounter relationship is one in which the
论优化服务营销增强顾客忠诚（文献翻译） 12
customer has had only one contact, on a transaction basis, with the provider. And a pseudo-relationship is one in which the customer has interacted many times with the same company, but with different service providers each time.
Other research reveals that the individual customer’s attitude toward switching will strongly influence whether he or she ultimately stays with the provider and that this attitude toward switching will be even more influential than basic satisfaction with the service. This research suggests that certain customers will have a greater propensity to switch service providers no matter how their service failure situations are handled. Research in an online service context, for example, shows that demographic factors such as age and income as well as individual factors such as risk aversion will influence whether a customer continues to use an online service or switches to another provider. The profile of an “online service switcher” emerged in the research as a person who was influenced to subscribe to the service through positive word-of-mouth communication; who used the service less; who was less satisfied and less involved with service; who had a lower income and education level; and who also had a lower propensity for taking risks.
Finally, the decision to switch to a different service provider may not occur immediately following service failure or poor service recovery, but may follow an accumulation of events. That is, service switching can be viewed as a process resulting from a series of decisions and critical service encounters over time rather than one specific moment in time when a decision is made. The process orientation suggests that companies could potentially track customer interactions and predict the likelihood of defection based on a series of events, intervening earlier in the process to head off the customer’s decision to switch.
3.4
A guarantee is a particular type of recovery tool. In a business context, a guarantee is a pledge or assurance that a product offered by a firm will perform as promised, and if not then some form of reparation will be undertaken by the firm. Although guarantees are relatively common for manufactured products, they have only recently been used for services. Traditionally, many people believed that services simply could not be guaranteed given their intangible and variable nature. What would be guaranteed? With a product, the customer is guaranteed that it will perform as promised and if not, that it can be returned. With services, it is generally not possible to take returns or to “undo” what has been performed. The skepticism about service guarantees is being dispelled, however, as more and more companies find they can guarantee their services and that three are tremendous benefits for doing so. “service organizations, in particular, are beginning to recognize that guarantees can serve not only as a marketing tool but as a means for defining, cultivating, and maintaining quality throughout an organization.” The benefits to the company of an effective service guarantee are numerous:
Service Guarantees