Is the Service Recovery Paradox true for B2B relationships?

Is the Service Recovery Paradox true for B2B relationships?

The Service Recovery Paradox (SRP)

A couple of years ago, I wrote a blog called The Service Recovery Paradox – Fact or Myth?  Today I’m looking more specifically at whether the Service Recovery Paradox is true for business-to-business (B2B) relationships.

But first, a quick recap on the basics of SRP. 

The Service Recovery Paradox is a concept that was first introduced by service management guru Christopher Hart in the Harvard Business Review way back in 1990. Here’s what he said more than 30 years ago:

“A good recovery following a service failure can turn angry, frustrated customers into loyal ones. It can, in fact, create more goodwill than if things had gone smoothly in the first place.”

Sounds great. But is it true? Or, as some other academics have asked more bluntly, is it a more of a smouldering myth than a justifiable theory?

Like most things in life, the answer is nuanced.

The evidence – and there really is little of it out there as I discussed in that blog – suggests that in most circumstances the Service Recovery Paradox is simply not true.

“A good recovery following a service failure can turn angry, frustrated customers into loyal ones. It can, in fact, create more goodwill than if things had gone smoothly in the first place.”

When a company does a really good job at fixing the service issue, Satisfaction can go back up to – and even beyond – pre-failure levels. But here’s the rub. Even though Satisfaction recovers, Loyalty does not. So, to summarise that earlier blog, the Service Recovery Paradox (SRP) is indeed a smouldering myth, at least in the consumer world.

The basic message in that blog was to get the basics right, rather than trying to recover a bad situation. Do things right, and do them right first time.  Reliable and consistent service delivery is the cornerstone of long-lasting client relationships. And it doesn’t cost anything to ensure consistency of service delivery because Quality is Free.

But what about the B2B world?


Is the Service Recovery Paradox true for B2B relationships?

All the case studies mentioned in that previous research were from the consumer world. Do the same conclusions hold true for B2B companies? Is the Service Recovery Paradox true for B2B relationships? I was curious to find out.

It turns out that there is even less written about B2B service failures than consumer service disasters. That said, three Swiss consultants – Denis Hübner, Stephan Wagner and Stefan Kurpjuweit – did examine B2B service failure and subsequent recovery in the logistics industry. They interviewed senior managers and front line workers in 25 different companies across three continents and came up with some interesting conclusions.


The Service Recovery Paradox in B2B Situations: A Smouldering Myth

In summary, they did find some evidence to support a positive aftermath after a service failure. However, they could only find evidence for the SRP in nine of the 25 cases that they investigated. That means that in nearly two thirds of cases, there was zero evidence of any recovery after a service failure.

And here’s a more interesting finding. In those nine cases, the discussion is around satisfaction. There is no mention of increased loyalty in any of the cases. Yes, in nine cases and under quite specific circumstances, satisfaction did recover to pre-failure levels. But there is no discussion about increased purchases or purchasing intentions. Nothing about deeper relationships or increased levels of trust.

In other words, loyalty appears to be remain compromised even when B2B service providers implement an excellent service recovery.

This suggests that the SRP truly is a “smouldering myth” in both the B2B world as well as the consumer world.

Now let’s look at some of the nuances in their research, because there are some good messages for B2B leaders to take on board.

“Overall, we observed the service recovery paradox (SRP) or service failures resulting in increased customer satisfaction in nine of the 25 cases”


B2B: Critical external failures are easier to recover from

The analysis of those nine cases where satisfaction improved after a successful service recovery led Hübner and his colleagues to a couple of key conclusions:

  • Service failures must exceed a “zone of indifference” before SRP is seen. The reason is simple. It often takes a truly critical service failure to draw sufficient attention – and a corresponding response – from senior management.
  • External failures are easier to recover from than internal failures. Customers are tolerant of events such as events that they perceive as force majeure. For example: a volcano eruption in Iceland or a nation-wide transportation strike. Customers are far less tolerant of perceived internal failures that the service provider should have been able to anticipate and plan for.

The corollary is also true. If the service failure is low-impact and part of an ongoing systemic problem, it’s almost impossible to recover from, because it rarely gets taken seriously by leadership teams.

B2B: An immediate response coupled with longer term action are ‘must haves’

Even when the service failure is seen to be in the “that was massive and nobody could have predicted it” category, a lot of hard work is required to rebuild satisfaction level afterwards. A few points are worth noting:

  • Compensation is of limited value. Much more important than compensating direct losses is the avoidance of expensive downstream consequences: delayed deliveries, lost production, and so on.
  • Apologies are also of limited value. For the same reason, formal apologies provide less value than a significant and fundamental change in behaviour in the aftermath of a service failure.
  • Response speed is critical. In fact, speed of response is possibly the B2B service provider’s only truly effective weapon. If it can be deployed, it can go a long way to defusing the situation.
  • Prevention is better than cure. In the longer term, even speed of response is of little value if the underlying issues are not resolved. The service provider must implement action plans that ensure the failure won’t re-occur. That means carrying out root cause analysis rather than simply treating the symptoms. ‘Action’ may mean significant investments in technology and re-engineering of processes. It is also likely to include “softer” interventions such as empowered operating-level employees, and improved communication.

B2B Bottom Line – Get it Right First Time

When you read Hübner’s article in detail, it’s hard to come to any other conclusion than the only successful way of ensuring loyal customers is to prevent service failures from happening in the first place. That’s the same conclusion as in my earlier blog.

Easier said than done.

That means going back to the old principles of Total Quality Management (TQM) and “getting it right first time”. Remember that it’s easier and cheaper to build quality in at the start than it is to firefight when things go wrong.

Apologies are not sufficient (but they do matter)

A final thought: even when B2B service providers do everything to prevent service failures, they still happen. When they do, act quickly and learn how to say sorry, even if an apology on its own has limited value. 

Contact us if you want to find out what your clients think of your service. And if you’re not sure how to say sorry, our friends in Corporate Visions may be able to help!

Service Recovery Paradox – Fact or Myth?

This blog is about a well-known business concept called the Service Recovery Paradox (SRP).

What’s SRP? It’s a pretty simple theory. A good recovery following a service failure can turn angry, frustrated customers into loyal ones. Service managers have known about this paradox for years.

The concept was first discussed in a popular Harvard Business Review article as far back as 1990. The authors – Christopher Hart, James Heskett and Earl Sasser – are all extremely well-respected academics and business practitioners.

But are they right? Let’s take a closer look.

The Profitable Art of Service Recovery

Service Recovery at Slack

Why don’t we start with an example.

Ever heard of the American tech company Slack? Several years ago, Slack had a major service failure:

Tuesday, November 23, 2015 started out like any other day at work for James Crenson. Coffee, check email, prep documents for weekly meeting, solicit input from co-workers on slack. Um, Slack?

Outage

At 8:50am, popular workplace messaging service Slack suffered a massive outage, leaving over a million users around the world unable to send or receive messages and files for almost three hours in the middle of the workday. Angry users took to twitter and other social messaging sites to complain about the inconvenience. The situation had the potential to explode, but Slack was ready.

The team messaging tool had a solid plan in place for mass outages. A well-coordinated group effort handled support issues including a comprehensive social media blitz to contain the negative customer experience (CX). Over the few hours that the service was down, the official @SlackHQ account tweeted over 2,300 times with humorous, thoughtful, and most importantly, personalized – responses to customers complaining about the service outage.

Response

Not only did the all-out response wow users, but @SlackHQ gained over 3,300 followers – 7x more than average – on a day that could have gone down as the worst in company history. Slack was able to quickly contain the damage, took complete responsibility, kept its customers well informed and handled a stressful situation with humor and efficiency.

Throughout this process, Slack deepened the trust of existing customers by demonstrating that the company was prepared in times of crisis. Its expert handling of a negative situation enhanced its relationships with existing customers, boosted the brand’s reputation and even served as a springboard for an expanded customer base.

This is an exceptional demonstration of the value of the phenomena known as the “service recovery paradox.”

The graphic below explains the Service Recovery Paradox.

Loyalty generally increases over time when service is delivered consistently well. It falls rapidly if there is a service failure but loyalty increases again when service is restored and the service recovery is handled well. In fact, loyalty becomes greater than if no failure had occurred in the first place. That’s the paradox.
Service Recovery Paradox

Fact or Myth?

The Service Recovery Paradox is generally accepted as fact. But where is the evidence for it?

Some years ago, Celso Matos decided to find out. He and a couple of colleagues from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil conducted a ‘meta-analysis’ of all academic articles that discussed SRP. In total, they found 24 documented examples of recoveries following service failures. 19 of the 24 examined the impact of service recovery on satisfaction; 12 examined the impact on repurchase intentions; six looked at word of mouth (advocacy).

Their results were very interesting and not encouraging for companies with a poor service ethos.

Matos concluded that “satisfaction increases after a high service-recovery effort” but that “repurchase intentions are not increased by a high service-recovery performance.”

Service Recovery does NOT lead to greater loyalty

Matos and his colleagues explain that “customers are willing to make a positive evaluation of a firm providing a high recovery effort, but they are not likely to repatronize this firm”. They go on try to explain why this might be the case.

One explanation is that satisfied customers are not necessarily loyal. We know this from our own analysis at Deep-Insight. Another explanation is that people will give you a lot of credit for pulling out all the stops to recover a bad situation after a bad service failure. However, they will still doubt your ability to ensure no similar service failures occurs again. That’s pretty important when your 12-month or 10-year contract is coming up for renewal. They might give you good customer satisfaction (CSat) scores, but will they sign up for another contract?

In general, satisfaction levels do recover if a Service Improvement Plan (SIP) is put in place but loyalty does not. This does not mean the Slack example discussed above is not true. It just means that you need to go to extraordinary lengths to win back the trust and loyalty of clients when they experience a service failure.

The Relationship between Service and Trust

Some years ago I wrote a blog called Trusted Relationships = Consistently Good Service. It was based on our analysis of tens of thousands of customer feedback results from Deep-Insight’s database gathered over a period of 15 years. The analysis showed that of all the elements in our Customer Relationship Quality (CRQ™) methodology, Service Performance was most strongly correlated with Trust.

It stands to reason, if you think about it. What happens when you deliver a consistently good service to a client? Their levels of trust in you and commitment to your company increase. Fail to deliver the service consistently, and their trust erodes quickly. Consistently fail to deliver, and both trust and commitment levels can disappear completely. Trust and commitment also take a very long time to rebuild.

‘Quality is Free’ so make sure to get it ‘Right First Time’

There’s a really important lesson here. Service failures are the sworn enemies of long-term profitable relationships. That’s why it’s worth investing time and effort to minimise the chances of a service failure ever happening in the first place. You may never succeed completely but it will be worth the investment. In fact, it won’t cost you anything.

This is where the old Total Quality Management (TQM) principles come into play. In 1979, Philip Crosby wrote a seminar book called Quality Is Free. His basis message was that it costs absolutely nothing to build quality into products and services. If anything, you’ll make money by reducing the cost of re-work and failed business relationships.

Quality really is free, so if you’re in the service business, make sure to get it right first time.

If you operate in the B2B world, ask yourself the question: “Is CSat the right thing to be measuring in the first place?” Maybe you should be measuring something different.

UPDATE: 27 APRIL 2023

We have just written a follow-on article on the Service Recovery Paradox in B2B companies. Click here to read.