Promoting responsible service policy: The impact of complaint invitation on perceived service recovery performance

Abstract

Given that developing effective, accountable and transparent institutions are the targets of sustainable development goals (SDGs), a shift toward more responsible actions are required for service providers. The present study attempts to establish the role of complaint invitation as the service providers' responsibilities on the advancement of customer complaint handling performance. A scenario-based experiment was carried out in a retail banking service setting. Two types of the service providers' response to service failure (invited complaint vs. customer-self complaint) are compared in terms of customer perceived justice and satisfaction of service recovery. Results from multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) suggest that inviting customer to complain can result in higher perceived justice and satisfaction than when the complaint is raised by the customer. Furthermore, invited complaint has a greater impact on perceived interactional justice and satisfaction for customers with low coping potential. This study suggests that understanding the role of service provider's accountability, service managers can more effectively develop and execute customer complaint management policy which contributes to business sustainability.