Perceived Justice and Email Service Recovery

Abstract

This study adds to the limited research of email service recovery. It is perhaps the first non-US study of email service recovery as well as the first study to apply a theoretical perspective ¬– perceived justice – to email service recovery. The results of three annual studies using Australian data resemble US results and support extending perceived justice to service recovery via email. The distributive elements of replying and offering compensation, the procedural element of answering completely and the interactional element of thanking the customer showed significant positive relationships with customer satisfaction, positive word-of-mouth and repurchase intent. Perhaps most importantly for practitioners, the results of a stepwise regression showed that incorporating the simple phrase "thank-you" in the email reply was a strong predictor of successful email service recovery. Finally, this study found that response time might be less critical than previously thought.