“Inoculate” Buyers Against Disappointment

Virtually all companies consider apologies, discounts, and other forms of “recovery” to be the only way to maintain customer satisfaction in the face of service breakdowns. But researchers in Germany and England discovered a very different approach: Administering a psychological vaccination. The research team sent customers of a European airline carefully worded e-mails prior to their flights. The first contained praise for the airline (its “commitment to service quality has earned it several awards”); the second offered a mild rebuttal to a possible complaint (“long waiting times at the baggage claim cannot be eliminated”). The intent of the one-two messaging campaign was to instill positive feelings about the airline and then induce customers to retain those feelings in the event of a glitch. Prior research has shown that when an established belief (a favorable view of genetically modified food, say) is mildly challenged (“Opponents of GM food make persuasive arguments about inadequate testing, but the risks are minimal”), people pause, review their initial impression, and then develop mental defenses that strengthen that impression. The challenge serves as an inoculation. Experimenting with a pool of 1,254 customers under two conditions—usual versus long waits at the baggage claim—the researchers found that after long waits, customers who had gotten the e-mails reported higher satisfaction than their fellow sufferers. This wasn’t the result of “expectation management,” the risky tactic of conditioning customers to hope for less—an approach that can lessen satisfaction even if nothing does go wrong. The evidence that the effect came from inoculation is that the e-mails did not diminish the satisfaction of customers who didn’t have to wait. The improvement was subtle but significant: Inoculated customers’ satisfaction averaged 3.80 on a seven-point scale, versus 3.45 for uninoculated customers’ satisfaction. The strategy is quick, easy, and inexpensive. The researchers recommend combining it with traditional recovery strategies for best results. They also point out that an inoculation’s effects can be enhanced if you tell customers that the service breakdown was caused by external forces, such as a vendor or a service partner. But beware: Blaming a partner can damage that relationship, causing you other problems in the long run. About the Research: “Don’t Try Harder: Using Customer Inoculation to Build Resistance Against Service Failures,” by Sven Mikolon, Benjamin Quaiser, and Jan Wieseke

“Inoculate” Buyers Against Disappointment

Partner Center