The impact of customer compassion on face-to-face and online complaints

Abstract

Customer complaints play an important role in firm performance as complaints enable service recovery and provide feedback for new product development. This study is among the first to investigate the impact of customer compassion on face-to-face complaints and online review posting behaviors following a service failure. Using an experimental design, either compassion or neutral emotion was primed. In an ostensibly unrelated task, individuals read a service failure scenario in the restaurant (Study 1) and hotel setting (Study 2). In Study 1, results show that individuals primed with compassion (vs. neutral emotion) were less likely to lodge a direct complaint. In Study 2, results show that participants were equally likely to post a negative online review regardless of the emotion prime. Practitioners might want to consider diversifying their customer complaint channels to deter compassionate customers from turning to social media to voice their dissatisfaction. 客户投诉在公司绩效中起着重要作用，因为投诉有助于恢复服务并为新产品开发提供反馈. 这项研究是首次调查同情对客户面对面投诉的影响，以及服务失败后的在线评论发布行为. 使用实验设计，无论是同情还是中性情绪都被激发. 在表面上不相关的任务中，个人在餐厅（研究 1）和酒店设置（研究 2）中读取服务失败场景.在研究1中，结果显示，以同情（与中性情绪相对）为患者不太可能直接提出申诉. 在研究2中，结果显示，无论情绪如何，参与者都同样有可能在网上发布负面评论. 从业者可能考虑分散他们的抱怨渠道，包括匿名调查链接，以阻止富有同情心的客户转向社交媒体来表达他们的不满.