Service recovery implementation

When customer service replies to service failure on social media, it is crucial to show that the customer’s problem has been acknowledged by the company and to reply within a reasonable timeframe, Grégoire et al. (2015, 179) for instance indicated that being in an hour. In addition, deleting or ignoring customer’s comment is the worst thing to do as it creates a double deviation. Due to the nature of social media, the next step depends on the problem as all issues cannot be discussed in public. If the problem is simple, customer should receive a public reply as then other consumers are also able to see how effectively and fast the issue is being solved. Whereas more complex problems should mostly be communicated via private messages (Ibid.) It should be noted that by providing the customer with only a phone number or web site link where to seek further assistance, they feel less satisfied compared to the information where the social media customer service has forwarded the issue to other department or manager. Even without a disclosure the customer is satisfied by the ongoing process. It is critical for social media customer service personnel to take immediate and personal care about the issue rather than just providing further instructions on where to contact to get the problem solved. (Fan & Niu 2016, 1024-1025)

After choosing recovery strategy, the recovery practices are implemented. The outcome of the recovery implementation, meaning whether the customer is satisfied with the recovery efforts or not, is determined by perceived justice, which is a part of equity theory. Various researchers including Tax et al. (1998), Gonzalez et al. (2005) and Grönroos (2007) have investigated perceived justice which is an essential part of service recovery implementation.

When discussing the problem, disappointed customers always evaluate recovery strategy, process and outcomes together with interpersonal behaviors which leads to their perception of justice in this specific situation. (Gonzalez et al. 2005, 61) In other words, perceived justice determines how fair or unfair the service recovery practices have been in the eyes of the customer (Grönroos 2007, 126). Moreover, perceived justice includes distributive, procedural and interactional aspects which have been studied by many researchers including Tax et al. (1998), Grönroos (2007) and Balaji et al. (2015).

According to Grönroos (2007, 126) most of the researchers have used the term “justice”

whereas he suggested that it should be replaced by “fairness” since it does not have a legal meaning unlike the first mentioned term. Thus, the term “justice” has been replaced by

“fairness” on this study. Distributive fairness occurs on the situations related to outcomes of the service recovery process, whether customer expectations have been fulfilled or not (Grönroos 2007, 127; Balaji et al. 2015, 635). For example, if customer has the knowledge of how other customers have been treated in the same situation, they expect to be treated the same way. Thus the customer may evaluate the service recovery outcome based on both their and others’ earlier experience on similar situations along with the magnitude of the failure perceived. (Tax et al. 1998, 62)

To meet the conditions of procedural fairness customer has to feel to have had the possibility to influence the process, company’s procedures were suitable and the failure was corrected within an appropriate timeframe (Grönroos 2007, 127). Whereas Tax et al. (1998, 62) explained that the purpose of procedural fairness is to solve the situation in a way that the relationship continues even if one or both parties are not satisfied with the outcome. In addition, the researchers concluded that procedural fairness has five factors including customer’s control on both process and decision, easiness to access the process, time spent on the process and how well company is able adopt their practices on the customer’s situation. (Tax et al. 1998, 62)

When customers feel the employees have treated them well during the recovery process, interactional fairness occurs. In other words, the employees have to be fair, polite, show empathy and be willing to solve customer’s problem. (Grönroos 2007, 127). This dimension of fairness explains why customer may feel treated unfair even though distributive and procedural outcomes were positive (Tax et al. 1998, 62). Tax et al. (1998, 62-63) concluded that interpersonal fairness includes politeness, empathy, honesty, explanation and authentic willingness to solve the problem. Next figure (Figure 13) summarizes the main points of each fairness dimension.

Figure 13: Fairness dimensions on service recovery implementation (Adapted from Tax et al. 1998, 62-63; Grönroos 2007, 127)

It is clear that today’s customers require companies to be responsive. Even though organizations have the desire to interact and have dialog with their customers on social media, they are not able to show their empathy due fear of vulnerability. (Parmar 2015) Parmar (2015) stated that lack of empathy may be caused by the employees who do not have the willingness or skills to step in to the shoes of the customer. In addition, the CEO of a British based bank has concluded: “We all know it’s important to be empathic, but how do I galvanize 48.000 people in my UK operations - most of whom think that empathy is for wimps?”, which shows that even though companies are aware of the positive power of empathy on customer encounters, employees may hinder its implementation, yet empathy is seen as word mongering which looks good in the company’s publications. (Ibid.)

Parmar (2015) also highlights that many companies have the misunderstanding that empathy cannot be measured because it is seen as a soft skill. Actually, empathy is a hard skill which should be embedded throughout the organization with leading by example. In other words companies should show their empathy not only to their clients and employees but also to the public on social media. The Empathy Global Index provides information on 160 global brands (to learn more, see Lady Geek’s website), which combines data from publically available data. The index is based on the findings of Simon Baron Cohen who has created the models named “Empathizer” and ‘”Systemizer”. To conclude, empathy can be learned but it requires knowledge on both the company’s strengths and weaknesses compared to other companies along with willingness to change existing practices. For example Telefonica Germany implemented empathy-training program throughout the country, which increased customer satisfaction by 6% in 6 weeks. (Ibid.)

According to Blodgett et al. (1997, 201) customers are more willing to use company’s services again if they perceived greater level of distributive and interactional justice, which also decreases willingness to spread negative WOM. The authors concluded that customers are more willing to re-patronage if they not only receive acceptable solution including refund or discount but are also treated well. In addition, if treated bad even full compensation does not correct the situation as these individuals are more likely change service provider and spread the word about their negative experience. Customers evaluate justice on two stages: first they evaluate whether the employees have treated them well and if not, they consider secondly if they have perceived distributive justice. Moreover, if the customer has perceived interactional justice, the overall perceived justice is dependent on the offered redress. To summarize, interactional justice is the most powerful component of total perceived justice, thus to respond to customer’s disappointment with the right skills and proper procedures employees should be trained properly. (Ibid.)

Yet, all of these three aspects: distributive, procedural and interactional fairness are integral part of the service recovery leading to total perceived fairness. It should be noticed that service recovery is actually a multidimensional process requiring fair treatment at every contact point with the customer. Therefore it is not enough that the outcome of the process is fair if customer has perceived unfairness when for example communicating with employees. In other words, the whole customer experience has to be positive. (Grönroos 2007, 127)

In case the customer is not pleased with the service recovery outcome double deviation occurs, yet it may also occur when customer’s comment is ignored on social media. Both may act as triggers for the complaint to go viral, increasing the possibility to face a massive social media crisis. Double deviation is to be avoided at any cost, yet should it happen reactive recovery needs to be focused on damage control. Reactive efforts include two steps: first, to find acceptable solution the customer should be contacted via private channels and second, the community members should be provided with an explanation as when the message is on social media, it creates public concern (Balaji et al. 2015, 650;

Grégoire et al. 2015, 181). In more detail, after a fair solution has been found and the cause of double deviation has been identified, company’s processes should be properly fixed to avoid repeating the failure. At this point social community should be informed on how the company fixed the issue, as without the information it seems that no actions were taken.

(Grégoire et al. 2015, 181)