Indore (Madhya Pradesh): A late online delivery, a missing item or a spoiled meal may seem like a routine customer-service complaint. But when customers feel they have been treated unfairly, the fallout can go far beyond a refund.
A study co-authored by Prof Deepa Halder of IIM Indore has found that serious service failures can trigger customer rage, weaken trust in brands and fuel negative word-of-mouth, turning an unhappy customer into a vocal critic.
Published in the Journal of Product & Brand Management, the study, titled The Dark Side of Customer Emotion and Engagement: An Antecedent–Consequence Model, examines how consumers react when their expectations from digital services are not met.
The researchers found that it is not merely the service failure that angers customers. What matters is whether they perceive the experience as unfair.
Customers assess whether the outcome was fair, whether the complaint-resolution process was reasonable and whether they were treated respectfully.
When these expectations are violated, the resulting sense of injustice can set off a chain reaction.
That reaction takes two forms — customer rage and negative customer engagement. Rage is an immediate, intense emotional response to a particularly bad experience, while negative engagement is more sustained, with customers continuing to think, feel and act negatively towards the brand.
Both can hurt businesses. The study found that perceived injustice directly damages brand trust and increases negative word-of-mouth.
Rage and negative engagement further amplify the damage, potentially prompting customers to avoid the brand and share their grievances with others.
To test their model, researchers used realistic e-service failure scenarios, including contaminated food delivered through a fictitious app called Deliverista.
A pilot study involved 176 participants, followed by two larger samples of 454 and 217 frequent e-service users.
The researchers also examined the role of self-esteem. Customers with higher self-esteem were more likely to translate rage and negative engagement into negative word-of-mouth.
Their trust in a brand also suffered more sharply when rage was involved. However, self-esteem did not significantly alter the link between negative customer engagement and brand trust.
The findings carry a warning for quick-commerce and other digital service companies: a refund may not be enough to repair a bad experience.
The researchers recommend proactive and transparent service recovery, including easy complaint-resolution systems, real-time support, clear refund or replacement procedures and empathetic communication.
Training customer-support teams through simulated service-failure situations could also help employees handle angry customers before situations escalate.
In a marketplace where complaints can spread across social media in seconds, the study's message is clear: when customers feel wronged, brands can pay a much bigger price than the cost of replacing an order.
