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Complaint management and the role of the chief executive

Melissa Cunliffe and Robert Johnston (bob.johnston@wbs.ac.uk)

Service Business, 2008, vol. 2, issue 1, 47-63

Abstract: The aim of this paper is to encourage a new stream of research into complaints and the role of the chief executive officer (CEO). The objectives of this paper were firstly to assess the intensity of dissatisfaction driving customers to complain directly to the CEO and secondly to ascertain if the reasons for complaining to the CEO were different to those of complainants using ‘normal’ channels. A leading financial services company in the UK provided access to its complaint letters and its CEO. Based on analysis of a sample of 100 letters sent to the CEO and 100 standard complaint letters, it was found that customers complaining directly to the CEO have a significantly greater intensity of dissatisfaction. However, unexpectedly, despite the greater positional power of the CEO, the reasons for complaining to the CEO were little different to the reasons for using the ‘normal’ channels. Interestingly most of the complainants to the CEO had multiple reasons for complaint suggesting that complaints to the CEO are motivated by multiple underlying service failures. Copyright Springer-Verlag 2008

Keywords: Complaints; Service recovery; Complaint management; Chief executive; Financial services (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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DOI: 10.1007/s11628-006-0020-9

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