When Should You Apologize for a Service Failure?

April 7, 2022

Apologies, when given appropriately and at the right time, can mitigate the severity of harm from a service failure, research shows. Today, technology allows companies to see even small service faux pas in real-time. While a customer satisfaction boost is the intent of an apology, ergo restoring trust, this may not always be the end result, or so the researchers who conducted this study, Mason R. Jenkins, Paul W. Fombelle and Mary L. Steffel, found.

We propose that, not only will proactive apologies sometimes backfire relative to reactive apologies, they will backfire relative to no apology at all. This is because, by declaring that they failed to provide an adequate level of service, service providers may increase the likelihood that consumers will encode a service experience as a failure.

To investigate, a five-month field experiment was set up with a restaurant delivery service. Here the specific scenario they looked at was, for orders that were going to be one to 15 minutes late, frontline employees either didn’t apologize or proactively apologized by notifying the customer before the order arrived. A post-purchase survey measured the effects of whether customers received an apology or not. The study also tracked repurchase behaviors for 90 days after an initial order took place.

Although we think of it as a courtesy, a proactive apology for a late order most likely reduced customer satisfaction with a service experience, the study found, when compared to receiving no apology. Those who received an apology were less likely to place another order within the next 90 days. When they did, they took longer to place their order and spent less money than customers who received no apology. Researchers also tested a recovery strategy, adding a five-dollar discount to a late order. But unfortunately, it did not improve outcomes significantly.

Read the full working paper.

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