Purpose This study aims to propose that providers should tailor recovery responses to consumers’ emotional states to improve evaluations and behavioral intentions. Design/methodology/approach A multi-study approach comprising field and lab data was used. The field study, conducted on the Boston public transport network during a weather crisis, sought to determine how a provider should deliver their recovery response to match the consumer’s affective state. In the lab studies, the importance of tailoring a recovery message to the consumer’s state is experimentally demonstrated while controlling for factors such as consumer brand involvement. Findings This study finds that an emotion-focused recovery emphasizing empathy should be given to those in an avoidance affective state (i.e. focused on the avoidance of negative outcomes) such as worry. A problem-focused recovery, in which the focus is on the process that led to the failure and the steps that will be taken to correct it, should be provided to those in an approach state (i.e. concerned with advancement and accomplishment) such as anger. This study also finds this effect is more salient under low involvement conditions. Research limitations/implications Future research should examine how nonverbal behavior during recovery can be tailored to a consumer’s state. Practical implications Service providers are encouraged to tailor recovery messages to consumers’ affective states. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to examine matching recovery messages to affective states, an important contribution as service failures can elicit a wide variety of affective states that influence how consumers react to recovery messages.

Existing literature offers multiple suggestions for how to recover from service failures, though without explicitly addressing customers’ negative, high arousal states, evoked by the failure. The few studies that address ways to improve negative emotions after failures focus on face-to-face interactions only. Because most customers today prefer social media complaining, firms must learn how to effectively deescalate negative, high arousal emotions through text-based exchanges to achieve successful service recoveries. With three field studies using natural language processing tools, and three preregistered controlled experiments, the current research identifies ways to mitigate negative arousal in text-based social media complaining, specifically, active listening and empathy. In detail, increasing active listening and empathy in the firm response evokes gratitude among customers in high arousal states, even if the actual failure is not (yet) recovered. These findings provide a new theoretical perspective on the role of customer arousal in service failures and recoveries, as well as managerially relevant implications for dealing with public social media complaints.

Given that accurate trait judgments are related to myriad positive characteristics and outcomes, this chapter focuses on approaches for improving trait judgment accuracy. The chapter outlines potential trait judgment training approaches aligned with the realistic accuracy model (RAM) and presents available evidence from previous training research in other domains of person perception and basic personality research. In addition, the chapter examines how characteristics of the trait, target, and judge can potentially impact training effectiveness. More research is needed to develop effective, generalizable, and impactful training interventions for personality and trait judgment accuracy.

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