Beyond “I am sorry”: Investigating the impacts of apology type and language style on customer forgiveness in service recovery

Research on the effects of different apology types in service recovery is crucial yet underexplored. Drawing upon costly signaling theory and language expectancy theory, this study employs an experimental approach to examine the effectiveness of apology types (responsibility-oriented vs. sympathy-oriented) and the moderating role of language styles (literal vs. figurative) in influencing customer forgiveness. The findings reveal that responsibility-oriented apologies are more effective in fostering decisional forgiveness, with figurative language enhancing emotional forgiveness in this context. Furthermore, the study identifies a serial mediation where perceived sincerity fosters emotional forgiveness, leading to decisional forgiveness. This study extends the existing literature by systematically exploring how different apology strategies impact forgiveness in customer service settings and highlights the importance of training employees in the use of apologies and language styles. This study also emphasizes the importance of internal marketing efforts aimed at training employees’ capabilities in identifying and handling complaints.