Timing of apology after service failure: the moderating role of future interaction expectation on customer satisfaction

When there is a service failure, it is often believed that employees should immediately apologize to customers before hearing their complaints. However, we argue that in certain situations, an employee can recover from a service failure more effectively if the employee apologizes after hearing customer complaints. A simple change in the sequential order of apologizing and listening to complaints can significantly impact customer satisfaction. We propose that customer satisfaction increases if an employee’s apology timing is matched with customers’ expectation to interact with the employee in the future. Across two studies, we consistently report that a responsive apology (i.e., listen-and-then-apologize) outperforms a preemptive apology (i.e., apologize-and-then-listen) when customers’ interaction expectation is high. In contrast, the effectiveness of the responsive apology is weaker and even reversed when their interaction expectation is low. We also examine a boundary condition and a potential process likely responsible for this apology time sequence effect.