Out of the public eye: the art of redirection in webcare apologies

Purpose In response to the growing popularity of brands’ using social media as a customer service channel (webcare), this research examines how companies redirect consumers from the public social media feed to a private channel. The purpose of this paper is to understand how to redirect consumers using service failure apologies and to discuss personalization’s role in these service recoveries. Design/methodology/approach A text mining study reveals how companies use redirection on social media. Then, two experiments test the impact of redirection types and personalization on consumer perceptions and intentions. Findings Service representatives frequently require consumers to initiate the first message after redirecting them from the public social media feed (a consumer-responsible redirection). Personalizing webcare apologies increases repurchase intentions and relational advocacy regardless of the redirection strategy used. Consumers are more likely to publicly respond to companies that initiate the first message in a private channel (a company-responsible redirection). Practical implications Although most service providers require consumers to co-produce service recovery redirections (consumer-responsible redirection), this requirement may not be optimal. If a consumer-responsible redirection must be used, then personalization may improve consumers’ perceptions of webcare apology’s sincerity. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to test different types of redirections in webcare. The authors extend the literature on personalization and webcare apologies by examining how these webcare components operate with redirections. The need to prevent public complaints’ spiraling out of control contributes to this research’s timely value.