What are the desired outcomes from a marketers perspective of a complaint management process?

The management of customer complaints deserves companies' as well as researchers' attention. A complaint represents a signal from a customer who is dissatisfied but wants to give the company a chance to keep him or her as a client. Complaints can damage a company's image, but when properly handled, they can lead to customer satisfaction and loyalty. Customers who complain provide the opportunity for the firm to repair the failure of services and rebuild the existing relationship (Tax et al., 1998). The firm can then re-engage the customer and retain him or her. It is in the interest of companies to develop effective complaint management processes, as part of relationship marketing programs aimed at improving customer satisfaction and confidence in the company.

Tax et al. (1998) define complaint handling as a sequence of events in which a process, beginning with the issuance of the complaint, generates a number of interactions through which a decision and an outcome occur. This process, more or less long and complex, can be defined to have one or more interactions with the customer. The nature of the interactions may differ. Multi-channel companies may use several channels to deal with customer complaints, involving direct contact with the company's staff or not. Some channels allow for human interaction, whether face-to-face or remotely, for example by telephone. The individual can interact directly with someone in the company. A personal link is established and a discussion takes place. Conversely, web-based channels do not allow this direct human interaction. The ability to interact with an individual is a key differentiating attribute between offline and online channels (Harris et al., 2013).

Some studies address complaint management in conventional channels, which involve direct human interaction (face-to-face or phone) (Sabadie et al., 2006; Orsingher et al., 2010; Lopes and Da Silva, 2015; Hazée et al., 2017; Jung and Soeck, 2017; Shooshtari et al., 2018, Shin et al., 2020). Other studies have looked at web-based complaint channels that do not offer direct human interaction (e-mail, online) (Lin et al., 2011; Gupta and Aggarwal, 2018; Sengupta et al., 2018; Sugathan et al., 2018; Javornik et al., 2020). These studies show that web-based channels are most effective in regaining customer satisfaction and positive behaviour towards the company when they exhibit human traits such as empathy in the form of apologies (Sengupta et al., 2018), a conversational tone (Dijkmans et al., 2015; Javornik et al., 2020) or affiliative humour (Shin et al., 2020). These results may suggest that direct, verbal human interaction does not bring any particular benefit to the recovery process. In this respect, online channels may be preferred because they are less expensive to implement and offer a high speed of response (Morgeson III et al., 2020). This raises the question of whether it is still relevant to maintain human interaction in complaint handling protocols. To our knowledge, this question has not been the subject of previous research. Despite the importance of research in the area of consumer-organisation relations, little is known about the degree of human interaction in the complaint process itself and its impact on consumer perceptions and satisfaction. Our study aims to fill this gap by comparing the impact of traditional channels (offering direct human interaction) and web-based channels (without human interaction) on consumer perceptions.

A strong theoretical foundation for the study of complaint management is the theory of justice (Orsingher et al., 2010). This theory is the basis of many recent studies on complaint management (Lopes and Da Silva, 2015; Lee et al., 2018; Sengupta et al., 2018; Sugathan et al., 2018; Javornik et al., 2020). Justice is the assessment of whether the response given by one party to another is appropriate or not, taking into account the harm caused. Perceived justice is a result of the recovery process as well as an antecedent of customer satisfaction (Simon et al., 2013). In this research, we adopt the perspective of justice theory to assess the impact of the presence or absence of human interaction in the complaint handling process on customers' satisfaction, on their perception of the company's relational investment and of justice. We build hypotheses from the literature, set up an experiment based on four complaint scenarios that cover online and offline complaint channels, and draw up results that enable us to formulate managerial recommendations aimed at optimising customer satisfaction in the handling of their complaints.

Human interaction in complaint handling, relational investment and satisfaction

Traditionally, services marketing research has focused on perceived service quality and customer satisfaction. Consumer satisfaction refers to an emotional, favourable, and subjective evaluation; it derives from the psychological state relating to customers’ purchasing behaviour (Oliver, 1981). From the 1990s onwards, more attention has been paid to perceived quality defects and dissatisfaction (Edvardsson, 1998; McCollough et al., 2000; Maxham, 2001) as well as to the consequences of service

Research design

The objective of this study is to evaluate the effect of human interactions in the complaint handling on the customer's perceived satisfaction with the company and with the recovery, as well as on relational investment.

To test the hypotheses, an experiment was set up. Four scenarios were written, in such a way as to involve direct human exchanges between the company and the client or not. The questionnaire was self-administered on line. Each respondent was assigned to a single scenario,

Impact of human interaction on customer satisfaction and perceived relational investment

To test hypotheses 1, 2 and 3, group comparison tests were carried out. The first group includes respondents with one or more direct human interactions (face to face and/or by phone) and the second group consists of respondents without direct human interaction (e-mail).

T-tests are carried out to test the significance of the differences between the two group means (Table 3).

The t-test carried out on satisfaction with recovery reveals significant differences between the groups (t = 2.890;

Role of human interaction in complaint handling on customer perceptions

The satisfaction with the company does not differ depending on whether or not there is human interaction in the complaint resolution process. Because he or she encountered a service failure, the customer suffered inconvenience and had to complain in order to obtain redress, which represents a cost that is not alleviated when the process includes human interaction: the type of protocol does not affect satisfaction with the company. We can assume that other factors influence more directly

Conclusion

This research contributes to the service recovery literature, highlighting the impact of the nature of complaint channels on customer satisfaction and perceptions. It reveals the importance of direct verbal human interactions in complaint handling. Compared to web-based channels, channels allowing for face to face or telephone exchanges with the company improve customer satisfaction with the recovery as well as customer perception of the firms’ relational investment. Complaint management

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