A Longitudinal Study of Complaining Customers' Evaluations of Multiple Service Failures and Recovery Efforts

The authors report a repeated measures field study that captures complaining customers' perceptions of their overall satisfaction with the firm, likelihood of word-of-mouth recommendations, and repurchase intent during a 20-month span that includes two service failures and recovery attempts. The findings suggest that though satisfactory recoveries can produce a “recovery paradox” after one failure, they do not trigger such paradoxical increases after two failures. Furthermore, “double deviations” can occur following two consecutive unsatisfactory recoveries or following an unsatisfactory recovery in response to a second failure. The findings indicate that customers reporting an unsatisfactory recovery followed…