Gaining customer engagement in social media recovery: the moderating roles of timeliness and personalization

Purpose This research investigates the role of customer forgiveness as the result of online service recovery transparency in predicting customer engagement. It also examines the moderating roles of timeliness and personalization in this proposed model. Design/methodology/approach An online survey study using retrospective experience sampling and a scenario-based experimental study were conducted to test the proposed hypotheses. Findings Customer forgiveness positively influences customer engagement and plays a mediating role in the relationship between service recovery transparency and customer engagement. Additionally, timeliness and personalization moderate the positive influence of service recovery transparency on customer forgiveness. The positive influence of service recovery transparency on customer forgiveness is more apparent when levels of timeliness and personalization decrease. Practical implications To retain focal customers' engagement after a service failure, firms must obtain their forgiveness. One of the firm's online complaint handling strategies to increase the forgiveness level of focal customers is to provide a high level of service recovery transparency (i.e. responding to their complaints in a public channel), especially when the firm is unable to respond to online complaints quickly or provide highly personalized responses. Originality/value This research provides new insights into the underlying mechanism of customer engagement by applying the concept of customer forgiveness. It also contributes to the social influence theory by applying the essence of the theory to explain how other customers' virtual presence during the online complaint handling influences the forgiveness of focal customers in order to gain their engagement. Additionally, it provides insight into the conditions under which the role of service recovery transparency can be very effective in dealing with online complaints.