"Sorry" or "Thank you"?

"Business leaders worldwide report that consumers’ expectations of service quality are higher than ever. It is therefore not surprising that consumers’ interactions with service providers are often rife with service failures, or negative service encounters that do not live up to their expectations.
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Meanwhile, service failures engender formidable consequences to businesses, such as considerable financial loss and negative word of mouth (WOM). For example, U.S. companies lost $1.6 trillion in 2016 from customer switching caused by poor service, and 44% of unsatisfied customers vented their frustrations on social channels.
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Given the prevalence and dire consequences of service failures, identifying effective recovery methods that are cost efficient and easy to implement is critical to restore consumer satisfaction and increase retention.
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Specifically, while apology (e.g., “Sorry for the wait”) acknowledges the service failure through the admission of service providers’ fault and accountability, appreciation (e.g., “Thank you for your wait”) acknowledges the service failure by honoring consumers as a benefactor and highlighting their merits and contributions. Drawing from research on consumer self-view, we expect that this shift of focus in the service provider – consumer interaction (from “sorry” to “thank you”) can significantly increase consumer self-esteem. As a result, appreciation should be superior to apology in boosting consumer postrecovery satisfaction.
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Our findings have substantial implications for service providers regarding how to effectively recover service failures. As an initial step after service failures, service providers need to decide what to say to consumers to redress the failure and restore satisfaction. Despite abundant guidance on whether and when to redress a service failure, researchers have offered little advice on what service providers should say, except for recommending that they apologize for the service failure. Our work suggests that rather than saying “sorry,” service providers should say “thank you,” which is often more effective in enhancing consumer satisfaction. In addition, our studies identify the effectiveness of various symbolic recovery strategies for service failures and thus contribute to better managing business operations.
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Moreover, this research emphasizes that what service providers ultimately say (“thank you” or “sorry”) should be tailored to certain situational (i.e., timing of the recovery, severity of failure, and presence of utilitarian recovery) and individual (e.g., consumers’ trait narcissism) factors. For example, our results suggest that service providers could monitor the service delivery and redress potential failures in advance. Furthermore, we show that when the service failure is severe, utilitarian recovery or material compensation is a prerequisite for the superior effect of appreciation. We also alert service providers to the importance of consumers’ personality traits, especially their level of narcissism. Our research suggests that service providers should use appreciation in their service recovery for consumers with a higher narcissistic tendency (e.g., those who use social networks more, are younger) but should be aware that appreciation is not necessarily better than apology for those low in narcissism."

Excerpts from "When and Why Saying “Thank You” Is Better Than Saying “Sorry” in Redressing Service Failures: The Role of Self-Esteem" de Yanfen You, Xiaojing Yang , Lili Wang, and Xiaoyan Deng, published by Journal of Marketing.