The impact of customer compassion on face-to-face and online complaints

Customer complaints play an important role in firm performance as
complaints enable service recovery and provide feedback for new
product development. This study is among the first to investigate the
impact of customer compassion on face-to-face complaints and
online review posting behaviors following a service failure. Using an
experimental design, either compassion or neutral emotion was
primed. In an ostensibly unrelated task, individuals read a service
failure scenario in the restaurant (Study 1) and hotel setting (Study 2).
In Study 1, results show that individuals primed with compassion (vs.
neutral emotion) were less likely to lodge a direct complaint. In Study
2, results show that participants were equally likely to post a negative
online review regardless of the emotion prime. Practitioners might
want to consider diversifying their customer complaint channels to
deter compassionate customers from turning to social media to voice
their dissatisfaction.