How an open and encouraging approach to customer complaints can reduce churn - An experimental study focused on customer interactions in SaaS companies followed a service failure

Sammanfattning: Purpose: This thesis mainly aims to investigate how an open and encouraging approach to customer complaints can affect churn in software as a service companies. This by examining how the approach affects the presentation of complaints, dissatisfaction, negative word-of-mouth and customers repurchase intention followed by a service failure. Methodology: The thesis applies a quantitative approach consisting of an experiment with a control and experimental group. The experiment was conducted with 95 respondents who were given a fictitious scenario and stimuli depending on group affiliation. Data collected have been further analyzed with an Independent-sample T-test to measure whether the stimulus generates significant differences. Theoretical perspectives: The theoretical frame of reference is based on the concepts of complaining behavior, dissatisfaction, negative word-of-mouth and repurchase intention. Result: An open and encouraging approach to customer complaints did not generate significant differences in complaint behavior. However, the results showed that the approach significantly reduced dissatisfaction and the tendency to engage in negative word-of-mouth, while at the same time significantly increasing the repurchase intention. Conclusion: The thesis shows that an open and encouraging approach to customer complaints can create conditions for reducing churn by getting more customers to stay after a service failure.