Customer Experience Management – Session 8: Negative Critical Incidents & Recovery

These flashcards review key ideas from Session 8 on Negative Critical Incidents, consumer cognitions, emotions, behaviors, and effective recovery strategies—including justice norms, empathy vs. explanation, appreciation, service recovery paradox, brand warmth, greenguard effect, fishbone analysis, and more.

What is meant by a “Negative Critical Incident” (NCI)?

A moment of conflict or friction between a consumer and a firm/brand—often referred to as a “moment of truth.”

Which three broad categories make up Negative Critical Incidents?

Service Failures, Brand Transgressions, and Product-Harm Crises.

Define a Service Failure.

A situation in which service performance falls below one or more consumers’ expectations.

Which theory underpins most Service-Failure research?

Expectation Disconfirmation Theory (Oliver, 1997).

What is meant by Service Recovery?

Actions a firm takes to redress grievances or loss caused by a service failure.

Define a Brand Transgression.

A violation of implicit or explicit rules guiding the consumer–brand relationship (often symbolic in nature).

Brand-transgression literature is rooted in which broader theory?

Interpersonal Relationship Theory.

Give a recent example of a symbolic Brand Transgression mentioned in class.

Burger King’s “women belong in the kitchen” tweet (2021) or H&M’s “coolest monkey in the jungle” hoodie image.

Define a Product-Harm Crisis.

An event in which products are found defective and dangerous to at least part of their customer base.

What is a Recall in the context of Product-Harm Crises?

A recovery strategy in which a firm asks customers to return a defective product for replacement, repair, or reimbursement.

Roughly what share of consumers experienced a dissatisfactory product/service in the past year?

More than 80% (class poll).

On average, how many contacts do customers make to resolve a complaint?

Nearly three (Customer Rage Study, 2020).

What percentage of U.S. consumers will switch companies because of poor service?

58% (Microsoft, 2020).

Dissatisfied complainants tell how many times more people than satisfied complainants?

About twice as many (Customer Rage Study, 2020).

Name the three attribution dimensions in Weiner’s (1985) model.

Causal Locus, Stability, and Controllability.

External attribution for a failure typically triggers which emotion?

Anger.

Internal (self-focused) attribution for a failure usually results in which emotion?

Guilt.

What are Reparatory Behaviors?

Actions aimed at reducing one’s negative emotions (e.g., negative word-of-mouth).

What is Exit (Avoidance) Behavior?

The customer disengages from the brand, stopping usage or purchases.

List the three Justice dimensions guiding effective recovery.

Distributive Justice, Interactional Justice, and Procedural Justice.

What is Distributive Justice in recovery?

Fairness of the tangible outcome a customer receives (e.g., refund, replacement).

Define Interactional Justice.

Fairness of interpersonal treatment during the recovery (courtesy, empathy, respect).

Define Procedural Justice.

Fairness of the process used to resolve the problem (speed, flexibility, customer participation).

What is Resource-Based Matching (Roschk & Gelbrich, 2014)?

Aligning the recovery resource offered with the type of resource the customer lost.

Give two examples of compensation strategies (Distributive Justice).

Immediate monetary compensation and new/exchanged goods.

Give two examples of favorable employee behaviors (Interactional Justice).

Empathy and willingness to listen.

How should firms reply to a disappointed vs. angry complaint online?

Use empathy for disappointed complaints; provide explanations for angry complaints (Herhausen et al., 2019).

When can saying “Thank you” outperform saying “Sorry” in recovery messages?

When appreciation raises the customer’s self-esteem, leading to higher post-recovery satisfaction (You et al., 2020).

Is denial an available firm response to failure?

Yes, but it can backfire if evidence contradicts the denial.

What is a Double Deviation?

A failure followed by a failed recovery, leading to anger and retaliatory behaviors.

Define the Service Recovery Paradox (SRP).

Post-failure satisfaction exceeds pre-failure satisfaction because of an excellent recovery.

SRP meta-analysis: which outcome shows a significant SRP effect?

Customer satisfaction; effects on repurchase intent, WOM, and image are not significant (de Matos et al., 2007).

How can brand ethics mitigate negative reactions?

CSR and perceived warmth reduce negativity even after a transgression (Klein & Dawar, 2004).

What is the Greenguard Effect?

Consumers react less negatively to failures of green products than to conventional ones (Tezer, Philp & Suri, 2023).

How does Brand Warmth influence feedback vs. complaints?

Higher warmth increases feedback reports and decreases complaint tone (Astvansh, Suri & Damavandi, 2024).

Why should firms encourage complaints?

Complainers can be highly loyal and adopt new products faster (Larivière & Van den Poel, 2005).

What is the Zone of Tolerance?

The range of service performance a customer considers satisfactory (Zeithaml et al., 1993).

Service below the Zone of Tolerance causes what?

Customer dissatisfaction; above the zone causes customer delight.

What is Fishbone (Cause-and-Effect) Analysis?

A diagrammatic method for identifying root causes of failure by listing them along a 'spine.'

Name the five broad categories often used in Fishbone Analysis.

Equipment, Material, Personnel, Procedure, and Other.

How do consumers react to algorithm vs. human failures?

They exhibit less negative reactions when an algorithm (vs. a human) is at fault (Srinivasan et al., 2021).

Differentiate Problem-Solving, Reparatory, and Retaliatory behaviors.

Problem-Solving: aim to fix the issue (complaints); Reparatory: reduce emotions (NWOM); Retaliatory: seek revenge.

In a service blueprint, what are Support Processes?

Back-stage activities and systems that enable front-stage service delivery (e.g., ML algorithm, database).

Why might randomly bumping a passenger via algorithm help airlines?

Attributing the decision to an algorithm can reduce perceived human bias and consumer backlash.