Leveraging technology to diminish hostility in service recovery

Since the most common causes for dissatisfaction in service recovery comes from service providers´ hostility, we propose technology to be an efficient way to diminish hostility in service recovery. Unlike most researches to find the solution from the perspective of emotional labor, we discuss technology´s benefits to emotional uncertainty. On the theoretical background of affective expectation model, C-O-P triangles, and emotional perspectives, we define the problem in service recovery and propose technology to be the solution. Our contribution is to integrate the existing literature of service recovery in aspect of customer compliant, service hostility, and technology adoption, and find the interdependence between technology-based and human encounter strategies in service recovery. Besides, our findings have interesting implications for design of service recovery systems.