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The purpose of this paper is to extend thinking on service recovery processes and satisfaction with service recovery, using multi‐dimensional consumer outcomes. The objective of the work was to propose that satisfaction with service recovery should be based on customers' expectations of the recovery encounter, which would be shaped by their expectations of “non‐failed” encounters.

The paper adopts a theoretical approach. Using the existing service recovery literature as well as the traditional services literature, the conceptual framework and associated research propositions are developed.

The proposed framework suggests that service recovery is a service encounter it its own right. The effectiveness of recovery encounters will be based on how encounters operate relative to customer expectations and experiences with regard to the recovery activity.

The research propositions and proposed framework need further empirical investigation.

The proposed framework suggests that managing service recovery should be undertaken in a similar fashion to managing any service, and thus managers need to understand customers' recovery expectations. Organisations also need to consider how a recovery action impacts on a range of customer outcomes, as focusing on one aspect will not capture consumers' full set of behaviours.

The proposed model identifies that service recovery should be evaluated with regard to consumers' recovery expectations and satisfaction is not based on expectations with regard to non‐failed encounters.

This qualitative study collected regarding recalled service encounters by consumers across a broad range of encounters not just in service failures found respondents recalled service encounters from the hospitality leisure industry in 42% of encounters. Usually, the consumer recalls and reports at least two types of fairness when recalling a service encounter with procedural fairness the most reported, followed by interactional and then distributive fairness. The study suggests using fairness across a spectrum of service encounters and not just when a service failure is recalled and is also the first hospitality or service sector study to view service encounter outcomes into types of initial satisfaction, service recovery, and double deviation and then to follow up by assessing fairness types across outcomes.

The purpose of this paper is to uncover the desired qualities and behaviours that patients believe general practitioners (GPs) should have in medical (service recovery) encounters. In particular, the authors try to reveal the qualities and behaviours of GPs that patients value, to understand the underlying benefits that they look for during personal (service recovery) encounters, and to graphically illustrate the findings in a so‐called hierarchical value map. This will prove to be important in order to understand patients' needs and desires correctly.

An exploratory research study using the qualitative laddering interviewing technique was regarded as appropriate as it allows researchers to gain a deeper insight into an underdeveloped research subject. In total, in‐depth laddering interviews with 38 respondents were conducted.

In case of a service recovery encounter, patients believe that GPs need to show competence, friendliness and empathy in order to restore trust in them. GPs should also listen actively and do the appropriate checks in order to find the root cause of the problem. “Health” was the main value sought by patients. This value is considered by patients to be the gateway to moving on with their everyday lives and search the attainment of other values such as well‐being, belongingness, accomplishment, and self‐realization. Moreover, respondents would like to gain knowledge about their disease in order to prevent them in the future and to have some sense of control over the decision of the treatment. Patients also want a more active role in the medical (service recovery) encounter, which calls for a more shared approach by GPs in the interaction with their patients.

This paper gives a valuable first insight into the desired qualities and behaviours of GPs during medical (service recovery) encounters. The study results especially indicate that complaining patients are people first and patients second, where the primary importance is the satisfaction of basic social needs. The fact that this study has revealed the highest number of values in published laddering studies so far shows how crucial these medical (service recovery) encounters in general and GP qualities and behaviours in particular are for patients. Another strong contribution of this paper is the finding that all the identified concepts from the laddering interviews that are shown in the hierarchical value maps must not been seen in strict isolation, as in previous research, but have to be understood as a network of interrelated concepts.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to determine the role of emotions in customer evaluation of service failures; and second, to examine how customers’ emotion regulation impacts customer satisfaction and behavioural responses (e.g. repurchase intentions and negative word-of-mouth).

A scenario-based survey was used to elicit responses in a hospitality setting. Structural equation modelling and hierarchical regression analysis were used to test the proposed hypotheses.

Results show that both positive and negative emotions mediate the relationship between perceived injustice and customer satisfaction. The emotion regulation of customers through suppression and reappraisal influences the effects of satisfaction on both negative word-of-mouth and repurchase intentions.

This study advances service managers’ understanding of customer experience during service failure by demonstrating how emotion regulation influences customer response behaviours. With a better understanding of customers’ emotion regulation strategies, managers and frontline employees can more effectively develop and execute recovery strategies which adapt to customer emotions while eliciting more satisfying outcomes.

This research is one of the first to examine the moderating role of customers’ emotion regulation strategies in determining their behavioural responses. Conducted in the hospitality services context, this study provides support for relationships among perceived injustice, customer emotions, emotion regulation, customer satisfaction, negative word-of-mouth and repurchase intentions.

The purpose of this paper is to identify types of service failures in a double deviation scenario within the contexts of online retailing.

Critical incident technique; customer complaints to online third parties; and four‐factor justice dimensionality.

Findings of this paper show distinctive sets of service failures in two separate service failure stages of double deviation (i.e. the initial service failure and recovery failure stages) within online retailing. Initial service failures mainly reflect cognitive issues generated from an online‐specific store atmosphere and threaten distributive or procedural justice perceptions. In comparison with distributive and procedural justice perceptions still being dominant, service failures in the recovery failure stage consist of interpersonal and emotional issues generated from customer‐company interactions, threatening interpersonal justice perceptions.

This paper contributes to broadening the current understanding of the dynamics of online customer dissatisfaction, by first identifying types of service failures that occur in both stages of online double deviation. This paper also introduces customer complaints to online third parties as a useful data resource for the study of service failure/recovery.

Emotions play a significant role in the workplace, and considerable attention has been given to the study of employee emotions. Customers also play a central function in organizations, but much less is known about customer emotions. This chapter reviews the growing literature on customer emotions in employee–customer interfaces with a focus on service failure and recovery encounters, where emotions are heightened. It highlights emerging themes and key findings, addresses the measurement, modeling, and management of customer emotions, and identifies future research streams. Attention is given to emotional contagion, relationships between affective and cognitive processes, customer anger, customer rage, and individual differences.

Service robots are taking over the organizational frontline. Despite a recent surge in studies on this topic, extant works are predominantly conceptual in nature. The purpose of this paper is to provide valuable empirical insights by building on the attribution theory.

Two vignette-based experimental studies were employed. Data were collected from US respondents who were randomly assigned to scenarios focusing on a hotel’s reception service and restaurant’s waiter service.

Results indicate that respondents make stronger attributions of responsibility for the service performance toward humans than toward robots, especially when a service failure occurs. Customers thus attribute responsibility to the firm rather than the frontline robot. Interestingly, the perceived stability of the performance is greater when the service is conducted by a robot than by an employee. This implies that customers expect employees to shape up after a poor service encounter but expect little improvement in robots’ performance over time.

Robots are perceived to be more representative of a firm than employees. To avoid harmful customer attributions, service providers should clearly communicate to customers that frontline robots pack sophisticated analytical, rather than simple mechanical, artificial intelligence technology that explicitly learns from service failures.

Customer responses to frontline robots have remained largely unexplored. This paper is the first to explore the attributions that customers make when they experience robots in the frontline.

Consumer travel and multinational service corporations have increased the opportunity for service failures where consumers from one culture experience service problems in another cultural setting. This study extended the Stauss and Mang model, which proposed the possibility that intercultural service failures exhibit lower seriousness ratings due to the customer's attributing errors to cultural distance. Such a possible outcome has important implications for service providers whose customers are from different cultures, such as tourist or visiting businesspeople. A pretest, employing the critical incident technique, established descriptions of common service failures and recovery strategies for the sample frame. Domestic (in Taiwan) and foreign (outside Taiwan) service encounters were then compared in both failure and recovery stages, reported in an online survey employing a modified critical incident technique. Results showed that the apparent reduction in intercultural failure seriousness can be attributed not to the error itself, but to increased acceptance of the recovery strategy. These findings broaden the Stauss and Mang model by including the importance of recovery strategies, and the benefit gained by any recovery attempt within an intercultural service setting.

This study aims to develop a model based on attribution theory and intercultural literature to explain the underlying customer satisfaction process in intercultural service encounters.

In-depth interviews were used to develop an understanding of customer experience and evaluations in intercultural service encounters. A quasi-experiment with 236 customers was used to empirically examine the relationships between perceived culture distance, cultural attribution, intercultural competence and customer satisfaction.

Perceived culture distance is positively related to customer satisfaction, with cultural attribution mediating the relationship between perceived cultural distance and customer satisfaction, and partially mediating the moderating effect of intercultural competence on the relationship between perceived culture distance and customer satisfaction.

This study focuses on cultural attribution in intercultural service encounters. It is acknowledged that there are other attribution dimensions such as stability and controllability which may interact with perceived culture distance and influence subsequent customer satisfaction evaluation. Future research should consider these various dimensions and examine their mediating role in customer satisfaction.

It is recommended that service firms educate their customers of diverse cultures about local norms and practices, and proactively manage their expectations throughout the service experience.

Despite the growing importance of intercultural service encounters, the findings of the relationship between perceived cultural distance and customer satisfaction are mixed. This study contributes to the literature by advancing our theoretical knowledge and empirical evidence of the role of cultural attribution and intercultural competence in intercultural service encounters.

This paper investigates self‐service technology (SST) encounters among Canadian B2B (business‐to‐business) customers. It provides an understanding of key determinants of satisfaction and dissatisfaction. This research also explores issues relating to service recovery in case of SST failure and effects of favorable/ unfavorable SST encounters on business relationships. The study finds that B2B customers experience satisfaction from different sources as compared to B2C customers. These sources include speed, process efficiency and cost savings. Service recovery has been found to be a critical problem with regards to SST.