Response efficiency versus response customization: An examination of firms’ responses to platform-empowered group complaints

The rise of group complaints on digital platforms, where consumers can publicly voice collective concerns, presents significant challenges for firms’ service recovery operations. Prior research assessing service operations on digital platforms has focused primarily on individual complaints, and less is known about how firms respond to platform-empowered (PE) group complaints. We examine this question through the lens of a trade-off between response efficiency and response customization and argue that this trade-off evolves as group complaints develop over time. Based on a large-scale dataset from Tousu, a leading complaint platform in China, we find that group complaints paradoxically increase response time and decrease empathy and explanation in firms’ responses. Further analyses indicate that these effects depend on dynamic group size and dynamic need diversity. When dynamic need diversity is low, larger groups are associated with more standardized, efficiency-oriented responses, whereas when dynamic need diversity is high, larger groups are associated with slower but more customized responses. These findings extend research on service operations by showing how PE group complaints reshape firms’ complaint handling. Our study also provides operational guidance for managing group complaints more effectively.