Moving Toward Collaborative Service Recovery A Multiactor Orientation

Abstract

Service recovery research has traditionally been firm-centric, focusing primarily on the time and effort expended by firms in addressing service failures. The subsequent shift to a customer-centric orientation addressed the customer’s role in recovery situations, and the recent dyadic orientation has explored the effectiveness of their joint efforts. However, earlier conceptualizations failed to take adequate account of the complexity of service recovery encounters in which multiple actors collaborate and integrate resources. This study explores how multiactor collaborations influence the customer’s experience of service recovery by adopting a multiactor orientation and by applying service-dominant logic. After reviewing the customer experience literature, a collaborative recovery experience framework is developed that emphasizes the joint efforts of multiple actors and customers to achieve a favorable recovery experience. In a contextualization, the usefulness of the new framework to explain customer experiences in collaborative service processes is shown. Finally, further research avenues are proposed.