If you are satisfied tell your friends, if not tell us: the impact of soliciting feedback on customersU+2019 behavioral intentions

With challenges such as increased competition and cost reduction, managers have become more focused on process improvement. Process improvement is a strategic approach to improving products, services and processes. It goes beyond getting temporary recoveries, and seeks to make the service delivery efficient and effective truly understanding value and the root causes of defects or process failure. In this context, customer feedback can help to identify the weaknesses of the service rendered. Expressing process improvement strategically and thereby asking customers to make their complaints and suggestions may have a positive impact on behavioral intentions. Recent research has demonstrated that communicating about new process recoveries that were based on received complaints, increased customersU+2019 behavioral intentions towards the firm (Van Vaerenbergh et al., 2013). The focus of this research, however, is on the impact of soliciting customer feedback itself. More precisely, explicitly asking for all types of feedback in order to increase the overall quality of products/services and its delivery can be considered as a signal of customer care. This approach is different than Van Vaerenbergh et al. (2013) in the following ways: (i) it is a proactive way of asking for feedback, instead of a mere reaction to expressed complaints, (ii) it involves the solicitation for feedback, as contrasted with unsolicited complaints, and (iii) as such, it can involve other types of (minor) complaints or irritations that were not worth the effort to unsolicitedly complaining for (Van Looy et al., 2003) and non complaints such as ideas or suggestions for improvement. Accordingly, we extend service management knowledge by developing and testing hypotheses for the dynamics between this strategic communication and the loyalty intention of the customer, the positive word-of-mouth intention and the propensity of complaining.