Exploring Customers’ Experiences of Service Co-Recovery

Service recovery occurs when service exchange fails, often because resource integration has failed. In the co-recovery process, multiple actors (including the customer) interact to cocreate a favorable customer experience following failure. The aim of this paper is to extend an existing understanding of the activities and interactions that serve as resource integration drivers in customer co-recovery experiences. The article explores recovery situations in an interview-based empirical study. Based on the findings, the study develops an empirically derived model (5C), identifying and defining drivers of customer co-recovery and suggesting how firms should engage customers and other actors in the process. To heighten the practical implications, the study conceptualizes the customer recovery process by suggesting a “wheel of customer co-recovery” model.