Suffering in Silence: Close Customers’ Reluctance to Complain Damages Service Relationships

Firms strive to create strong relationships between their service providers and customers (Yim, Tse, and Chan 2008). Indeed, strong customer relationships drive favorable word of mouth (Verhoef, Franses, and Hoekstra 2002), justify price premiums (Bolton 1998), and lower staff turnover (Sheth and Parvatiyar 1995), all of which leads to higher firm profits. Such relationships can be cultivated through close customer-service employee interactions, which help strengthen customer–firm linkages (Yim, Tse, and Chan 2008). Furthermore, the extant literature on customer service relationships touts the benefits of close customer-service employee relationships insofar as when something goes wrong, consumers are more forgiving if the service relationship is built on friendship rather than on an exchange relationship (Goodwin 1996). However, more recent research suggests that close relationships with customers may not always benefit the firm. In fact, when consumers have a ‘friendship’ with the firm, in some instances they have stronger negative reactions to a service failure (Wan, Hui, and Wyer 2011). Yet, the few papers that exist in this area largely focus on customers’ perceptions of a service failure as the outcome of interest rather than the consequences of these perceptions, for the firm. Wan, Hui, and Wyer (2011) aptly note that future research should consider, “Other reactions, such as complaining and switching service providers.” In this research, we build on prior findings and consider how providing feedback may impact consumers’ subsequent behavioral responses to the provider (i.e. perceptions of the provider, consumer loyalty) after a service failure or a delightful customer experience.