Bad News Delivery is a Brand Moment
Bad News Delivery is a Brand Moment
A flight gets canceled.
A loan is denied.
A pre-ordered product has been sold to someone else.
A medical test comes back with concerning results.
From an operations perspective, these are problems to resolve.
From a customer’s perspective, they are something else entirely.
They threaten time.
They threaten money.
They threaten plans.
And in the moment that bad news is delivered, the brand is being defined.
That’s the core insight from Cécile Delcourt, Dwayne D. Gremler, and Dominique A. Greer’s article, “Breaking bad news: How frontline employees cope with bad news disclosure to customers,” from the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science (JAMS).
The authors define bad news disclosure as the revelation of unexpected, undesirable, and critical service-related information that threatens customer resources and disrupts plans. It’s not limited to service failures. It includes policy changes, unavailable resources, regulatory constraints, external events, and even customer-caused issues.
About the Research
Breaking bad news: How frontline employees cope with bad news disclosure to customers
Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science (JAMS), 2025
Authors:
Cécile Delcourt
Dwayne D. Gremler
Dominique A. Greer
Full Citation:
Delcourt, C., D. Gremler, D. & Greer, D.A. Breaking bad news: How frontline employees cope with bad news disclosure to customers. J. of the Acad. Mark. Sci. 53, 1282–1305 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11747-024-01079-w
In other words: bad news is routine in service contexts.
But how it is communicated determines whether the encounter becomes a relationship rupture or a trust-building moment. Handled poorly, it can spark anger, blame, and churn. Handled well, it can preserve trust and even strengthen the relationship. Handled well, it can mitigate emotional harm, preserve fairness perceptions, and protect long-term loyalty.
But here’s the issue: most organizations don’t design for these moments at all.
Despite the fact that employees reported delivering bad news daily — sometimes multiple times a day — only 7% of the 114 frontline employees interviewed had received any formal training or protocol for how to do it. Most were left to improvise.
And improvisation in emotionally charged moments is risky.
Because when bad news delivery goes wrong, the consequences don’t stay contained within that single interaction. They ripple outward — affecting the customer’s perception of fairness, the employee’s emotional well-being, and ultimately the brand itself.
This is where the research becomes especially important.
Why Bad News Delivery Is Not Just a People Problem
When bad news is handled poorly, customers don’t just hear disappointing information. They interpret the way it’s delivered.
What often follows is what the researchers describe as a negative spiral. For customers that shows up as:
A feeling of dismissal or blame
Escalated emotions — anger, frustration, helplessness
A shift in attitudes — perceptions of unfairness or distrust take hold
Complaints, negative word-of-mouth, switching
From a brand perspective, this shows up as:
Inconsistent customer experiences
Reputation damage
Lower retention and lifetime value
From an employee perspective, it shows up as:
Higher stress
Emotional exhaustion
Burnout in customer-facing roles
This is why bad news delivery isn’t just a “soft skill.” It’s not about hiring more empathetic people. It’s a service design decision.
The Practical Insight: Protocol Beats Improvisation
Employees who plan what to say, how to say it, and what options are available can reduce customer anger and their own stress.
In contrast, three patterns consistently escalated negative reactions:
Rushing (blunt delivery with no context)
Distancing (“That’s policy, not my problem”)
Minimal explanation (vague or overly technical language)
The fix isn’t scripting every conversation. It’s giving frontline employees a simple, repeatable protocol for bad news moments.
A Simple Protocol for Bad News Moments (With Examples)
The study identifies tactics that can reduce customer backlash. Here’s how they translate into a practical framework you can build into CX design, training, and playbooks:
1. Acknowledge the Impact
Explicitly name what the customer is losing (time, money, plans, expectations).
Why it works: Customers feel seen instead of dismissed.
Example:
“I know this disrupts your plans today, and that’s frustrating.”
2. Explain Clearly
Use clear, direct language. Avoid jargon or vague explanations.
Why it works: Reduces confusion and perceived unfairness.
Example:
“The part we need isn’t available today, so we can’t complete the repair.”
3. Offer Next Steps
When possible, provide options or alternatives—even limited ones.
Why it works: Restores a sense of control.
Example:
“We can reschedule for tomorrow morning, or I can connect you with another location that has availability.”
4. Show Empathy
Acknowledge emotion and normalize the reaction.
Why it works: Prevents escalation and “negative spirals.”
Example:
“I understand why you’re upset. Anyone would be in this situation.”
When organizations treat bad news delivery as part of service design—not a personality trait—they protect both customer trust and employee well-being. The research is clear: Planning and training for delivery beats improvisation.
From the Authors
What marketing challenge(s) does your article address?
Disclosing bad news to customers during service encounters is an unavoidable, demanding task that can generate significant stress for frontline employees (FLEs). We define bad news disclosure during service interactions as the act of revealing unexpected, undesirable, and critical service-related information to customers. Despite the pervasiveness of bad news disclosure in service contexts, prior research has not explicitly examined how FLEs prepare for or optimize the disclosure of bad news, whether to reduce their own work stress or to mitigate its negative impact on customers.
What companies/organizations/industries will benefit from your findings?
All service organizations are likely to benefit from improved FLE well-being if FLEs can best prepare for bad news disclosure. Our research suggests that bad news disclosure done well can have a positive impact on key marketing-related outcomes, such as customer satisfaction levels, customer loyalty, brand image, and operational efficiency. Bad news disclosure communication strategies can be effective for minimizing customer pain and maintaining the customer–organization relationship for industries as diverse as retail, hospitality, healthcare, financial services, entertainment, education, and professional services.
Using one of the entities listed above, illustrate precisely how and to what extent it may benefit.
A wide variety of information can represent bad news to customers. Managers and FLEs likely realize that organizational failures necessitate bad news disclosures, but diverse other factors—customer failures, new legal requirements, natural disasters—also can trigger customer perceptions of bad news and threats to their desired service outcome. By considering the different types of bad news we identify in our research, managers and FLEs might become more sensitive to such situations and better prepared for the resulting bad news disclosure.
How can the recommendations from your findings specifically be implemented?
Our research has direct and actionable implications for companies as they design cobotic teams and decide on the roles robots and humans will play in these service teams. The results highlight that it is important for firms to position service robots as a “tool” or as an “assistant” that serves in a support role relative to the human service employee. Similarly, our main implications are likely to also hold true for other types of technology, such as AI or algorithms.
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