How to Reduce Customer Anger After a Service Failure
How to Reduce Customer Anger After a Service Failure
The worst customer experiences are not always the ones that begin with a mistake. They are the ones where the mistake is followed by a failed recovery.
A delayed flight can be frustrating. A billing issue can be annoying. A broken product can usually be replaced. But when customers feel dismissed, ignored, or poorly handled after the fact, something changes. The experience stops feeling transactional and starts to feel personal.
That shift matters more than many companies realize.
In “The attenuation effects of time and ‘sensemaking’ surveys on customer revenge,” researchers researchers Yany Grégoire, Mansur Khamitov, François Carrillat and Mina Rohani explore what happens after severe service failures and why traditional recovery approaches often fall short. Their research, published in the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, examines how companies can reduce customer anger, betrayal, and revenge after a service breakdown.
One of the most important findings in the research is this: Time alone does not fix it.
In several studies, customers who were simply left alone to “cool off” showed no meaningful reduction in anger or perceived betrayal over time. In some cases, their desire to get even actually increased.
About the Research
The Attenuation Effects of Time and ‘Sensemaking’ Surveys on Customer Revenge
Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science (JAMS), 2025
Authors:
Yany Grégoire
Mansur Khamitov
François Carrillat
Mina Rohani
Grégoire, Y., Khamitov, M., Carrillat, F.A. et al. The attenuation effects of time and “sensemaking” surveys on customer revenge. J. of the Acad. Mark. Sci. 53, 172–196 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11747-024-01046-5
That finding runs counter to the assumption many organizations operate under. Companies often believe negative emotions naturally fade because maintaining that level of anger is psychologically exhausting. So they resolve the issue, send a survey, and move on.
But unresolved experiences do not simply disappear. Customers replay them. They rethink them. They revisit what should have happened and who was responsible. And without some form of active processing, those emotions can harden rather than soften. The researchers argue that companies need to rethink the role surveys play in the recovery process.
Most surveys today are designed for measurement. They collect ratings, track satisfaction, and feed dashboards. But the research suggests surveys can do something much more important when designed differently: they can help customers process the experience itself.
The researchers describe this as “sensemaking.”
At its core, sensemaking is about helping customers work through both sides of the experience: what happened and how it felt. That distinction is critical.
Many organizations focus heavily on facts. They ask customers to describe the issue, explain the timeline, or rate the resolution. But focusing only on the factual side of the experience does not resolve the emotional side of it. At the same time, focusing only on emotion without helping customers process the event cognitively can leave them stuck in frustration without a framework for understanding what happened.
The research found that the most effective surveys prompted customers to engage with both. That means moving beyond generic questions like “How did we do?” or “Rate your experience from 1–5.” Instead, companies should ask reflective questions such as:
What felt unfair about the experience?
What did you expect to happen instead?
What frustrated you the most?
How do you feel about the experience now?
Have those feelings changed over time?
Those questions do more than collect information. They guide customers through a process of reflection and reinterpretation.
Importantly, the study also found this should not happen only once.
One of the strongest findings from the research is that the “healing” effect develops over time through repeated touchpoints. Customers who completed a series of structured surveys showed lower levels of anger, betrayal, and revenge than customers who completed only a single survey.
That has practical implications for marketers and customer experience teams. Instead of relying on one post-interaction survey, companies may want to think about recovery as a sequence:
An initial outreach shortly after the event
A follow-up after some time has passed
Another opportunity for reflection later in the process
The timing matters too. The researchers found that spacing interactions out was important because customers needed time between touchpoints to process the experience. The most interesting part of the research may be what happens psychologically during that process. As customers engage with these structured reflections over time, they begin to believe the company is genuinely trying to understand them, not simply close the issue or extract data. The researchers refer to this as the development of “benevolent trust.”
And that trust becomes the bridge between the original failure and emotional recovery.
This also helps explain one of the study’s more surprising findings: loyal customers can actually be harder to win back. Customers with weaker relationships to a brand often moved on more quickly because they were less emotionally invested in the relationship to begin with. Loyal customers, however, experienced the failure as a deeper violation. The stronger the relationship beforehand, the more personal the breakdown could feel.
For marketers, the takeaway is not simply “send more surveys.” It is to rethink what surveys are for. A standard feedback survey asks customers to evaluate an experience. A sensemaking survey helps customers work through one.
That is a fundamentally different goal. For decades, service recovery has largely focused on compensation, resolution, and operational fixes. Those things still matter. But this research suggests they may not be enough on their own.
Customers do not just need problems solved. Sometimes, they need help making sense of what happened.
From the Authors
What marketing challenge(s) does your article address?
The article addresses a core marketing challenge: how firms can effectively reduce customers’ anger, betrayal, and desire for revenge after severe service failures, especially double deviations. It challenges the common managerial assumption that negative emotions naturally fade with time, showing instead that time alone is insufficient. The authors demonstrate that repeated sensemaking surveys—those prompting customers to reflect on both cognitions and emotions—significantly accelerate the reduction of revenge-related responses compared to waiting alone. They also identify when this strategy works best, noting that customers with weaker pre-failure relationships benefit more from these prompts. Overall, the article provides marketers with actionable guidance on using structured followup surveys not just for data collection but as a tool to help customers process failures and restore trust.
What is a sensemaking survey or prompt?
A sensemaking survey or prompt is a structured set of questions designed to help customers reflect on both the thoughts and emotions they experienced during a negative service event. Rather than simply collecting feedback, these surveys guide customers through a process of reinterpreting what happened, clarifying why it occurred, and expressing how they feel about it. By encouraging this cognitive and emotional reprocessing over multiple survey waves, firms help customers make better sense of the failure, which reduces anger, betrayal, and the desire for revenge. In this way, sensemaking surveys act as psychological interventions that support customers in moving toward emotional resolution after a service breakdown.
Can you provide examples of companies/organizations/industries that will benefit from your findings?
Many service intensive industries stand to benefit from the article’s findings, including airlines, telecommunications providers, banks, hospitality brands, and ecommerce platforms—sectors where service failures and poor recoveries frequently trigger strong customer anger and revenge. For example, an airline such as Air Canada could use a structured series of sensemaking surveys after major disruptions to help customers process both the cognitive and emotional aspects of the failure. By prompting this reflection over time, the airline would likely see reduced anger, betrayal, and revenge motivations, leading to fewer escalated complaints, less reputational damage, and improved customer retention.
What are the managerial implications of this research?
This research offers several important managerial implications for organizations dealing with severe service failures. A central insight is that managers cannot assume that customer anger, betrayal, or desire for revenge will naturally fade with time. The findings show that time alone is insufficient to reduce these intense negative reactions. Instead, firms must actively support customers in processing the failure by prompting sensemaking—a reflective process in which customers revisit both the cognitive and emotional aspects of the incident. Repeated surveys that ask about fairness, blame, emotions, and evolving perceptions help customers reappraise the situation more constructively. As a result, these surveys accelerate the reduction of revenge-related responses and increase benevolent trusting beliefs toward the firm. Managers should also recognize that this strategy is particularly effective for customers with weaker prefailure relationships, who are more open to reinterpreting the event. Overall, the research reframes surveys as not merely measurement tools but as interventions that help customers self-heal and move toward reconciliation.
To implement these recommendations, firms can begin by replacing single postincident surveys with a structured series of followup surveys delivered over several weeks. Each survey should intentionally include both cognitive and emotional prompts, encouraging customers to reflect on how their thoughts and feelings have evolved. These surveys should be framed as opportunities for customers to express themselves, rather than as routine data-collection exercises. Communicating benevolent intent is also essential; messages accompanying the surveys should emphasize that the firm genuinely wants to understand the customer’s experience and support them through the process. Managers can further enhance effectiveness by segmenting customers based on their prefailure relationship quality, prioritizing repeated surveys for newer or less-engaged customers who benefit most from sensemaking prompts. Finally, firms should integrate insights from these surveys into their recovery strategies, using the longitudinal data to identify customers whose anger is not diminishing and intervening proactively when needed. Training frontline teams to understand the value of sensemaking ensures that the organization views emotional processing as a core part of service recovery rather than an afterthought.
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