Customer experiences and coping behaviors during crisis situations: The role of service adaptation and service transformation

Understanding how customers react to changes in service encounters during crisis situations, is extremely valuable for companies. Guided by the four fundamental premises of customer experience (Becker and Jaakkola, 2020) and drawing on the Touchpoints-Context-Qualities (TCQ)-framework (De Keyser et al., 2020) and Stimulus-Organism-Response (S-O-R) Theory (Mehrabian and Russell, 1974), this study aims to better understand (1) the customer experience during a crisis, and (2) how outside versus within firm-controlled touchpoints, (3) contextual factors (here, individual and firm/industry) and (4) a firm’s service adaptation (e.g., firms adapt to regulatory measures) and service transformation (e.g., firms transform their business by exploring new service delivery models) strategies shape customer experiences and coping behaviors. Using social media data (here, tweets) in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, our qualitative and quantitative findings reveal that (1) customers’ affective responses are not restricted to negative experience (here, fear, anger, sadness, and disgust), but also include positive experiences (here, joy, surprise, acceptance, and anticipation), (2) the government as third-party affects the customer experience, (3) service adaptions and service transformations evoke different affective responses, and (4) both positive and negative experiences influence customers’ coping behaviors, but positive experiences exert a greater influence on the inward coping behaviors (here, active coping, planning, and positive reinterpretation), while negative experiences exert a greater influence on the outward coping behaviors (here, seeking social support for instrumental reasons, and venting). Our findings have implications for managers and public policy makers that want to manage the customer experience during crisis situations.