Service recovery strategies using social media sites

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.