Title: Service recovery strategies using social media sites

Authors: Ying Fan; Run H. Niu

Addresses: College of Business and Administration, University of Colorado Colorado Springs, 1420 Austin Bluffs Pkwy., Colorado Springs, CO 80918, USA ' Business Department, Webster University, 470 East Lockwood Avenue, St. Louis, Missouri 63119, USA

Abstract: This study investigates a service organisation's service recovery strategies using social media sites. Based on 347 mini-cases from the Twitter accounts of a sample of major airlines, we conducted qualitative analysis using grounded theory approach. We analysed the relationships between the three elements of service recovery including customers' motivations to complain, service failure types and agent responses. This study offers service providers practical implications to design their recovery strategies. Identification of customers' motivations to complain supports the role of social media sites as a complementary service recovery channel and more importantly, as the final defence of an organisation's service recovery system. The investigation on the relationship between customers' motivations to complain and service failure types indicates that customers utilise social media sites no differently when different failure types occur. However, different failure types do trigger different sets of agent responses. Further, social media agents respond differently according to customers' motivations to complain.

Keywords: service recovery strategy; social media sites; service operations; qualitative analysis.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSOM.2017.087853

International Journal of Services and Operations Management, 2017 Vol.28 No.4, pp.540 - 563

Received: 10 Nov 2015
Accepted: 23 Apr 2016

Published online: 06 Nov 2017 *

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