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

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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.

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44 Terms

1
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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.”

2
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Which three broad categories make up Negative Critical Incidents?

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

3
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Define a Service Failure.

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

4
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Which theory underpins most Service-Failure research?

Expectation Disconfirmation Theory (Oliver, 1997).

5
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What is meant by Service Recovery?

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

6
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Define a Brand Transgression.

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

7
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Brand-transgression literature is rooted in which broader theory?

Interpersonal Relationship Theory.

8
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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.

9
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Define a Product-Harm Crisis.

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

10
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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.

11
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Roughly what share of consumers experienced a dissatisfactory product/service in the past year?

More than 80% (class poll).

12
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On average, how many contacts do customers make to resolve a complaint?

Nearly three (Customer Rage Study, 2020).

13
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What percentage of U.S. consumers will switch companies because of poor service?

58% (Microsoft, 2020).

14
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Dissatisfied complainants tell how many times more people than satisfied complainants?

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

15
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Name the three attribution dimensions in Weiner’s (1985) model.

Causal Locus, Stability, and Controllability.

16
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External attribution for a failure typically triggers which emotion?

Anger.

17
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Internal (self-focused) attribution for a failure usually results in which emotion?

Guilt.

18
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What are Reparatory Behaviors?

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

19
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What is Exit (Avoidance) Behavior?

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

20
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List the three Justice dimensions guiding effective recovery.

Distributive Justice, Interactional Justice, and Procedural Justice.

21
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What is Distributive Justice in recovery?

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

22
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Define Interactional Justice.

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

23
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Define Procedural Justice.

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

24
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What is Resource-Based Matching (Roschk & Gelbrich, 2014)?

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

25
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Give two examples of compensation strategies (Distributive Justice).

Immediate monetary compensation and new/exchanged goods.

26
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Give two examples of favorable employee behaviors (Interactional Justice).

Empathy and willingness to listen.

27
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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).

28
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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).

29
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Is denial an available firm response to failure?

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

30
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What is a Double Deviation?

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

31
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Define the Service Recovery Paradox (SRP).

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

32
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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).

33
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How can brand ethics mitigate negative reactions?

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

34
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What is the Greenguard Effect?

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

35
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How does Brand Warmth influence feedback vs. complaints?

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

36
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Why should firms encourage complaints?

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

37
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What is the Zone of Tolerance?

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

38
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Service below the Zone of Tolerance causes what?

Customer dissatisfaction; above the zone causes customer delight.

39
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What is Fishbone (Cause-and-Effect) Analysis?

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

40
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Name the five broad categories often used in Fishbone Analysis.

Equipment, Material, Personnel, Procedure, and Other.

41
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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).

42
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Differentiate Problem-Solving, Reparatory, and Retaliatory behaviors.

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

43
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In a service blueprint, what are Support Processes?

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

44
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Why might randomly bumping a passenger via algorithm help airlines?

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