Spinning a wheel: can games help win back unhappy customers?
Imagine a restaurant really messes up your order—but instead of a basic apology, you get to spin a wheel to see how you can be compensated for this poor service. Would playing this game help overcome your frustration and improve your experience at the restaurant, or would it just make things worse?
04/17/2025
4 min
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This is one of the questions that a team of researchers – from IÉSEG, the Universities of Birmingham, Aalborg and Edinburgh – sought to answer in a recent study on the use of game-playing activities to ‘recover’ unhappy customers. Their results highlight that games can be a powerful recovery tool but only when used strategically.
Previous studies have estimated that poor service can cost companies billions in lost revenues. Many companies invest heavily in this recovery process to help build their loyalty to the brand or company.
In this context, the research team wanted to investigate whether the use of game playing activities (now widely referred to as gamification) could potentially be used to appease and win back angry customers.
“Gamification has become increasingly widespread in different marketing and sales activities. We were curious to see whether it could also have potential applications in countering negative experiences,” explains Thomas LECLERCQ from IÉSEG, one of the authors of the study.
To find out more, the researchers carried out four customer experiments in a variety of real-life (retail – FMCG sector) and fictive settings (restaurant, gym and hotel).
In the retail experiment, researchers identified and reached out to a sample of over 200 customers that had experienced poor service (for example the wrong prices on items, or products that passed the expiry date). They offered them the choice of receiving a standard form of financial compensation or taking part in a game to see what type of compensation they would receive.
Those who preferred the more classic compensation were given a 5-Euro coupon while those who opted for the game were invited to spin a wheel on a tablet. They were told that they could win either a 20 Euro coupon, a 5 Euro coupon, or no coupon. The coupons were randomly distributed, and the wheel was programmed to yield an average compensation of 5 Euros.
Similar experiments – using both the wheel game and standard forms of compensation- were carried out in different fictive settings to test impact of different settings and factors whilst using gamification in the recovery process: the level of compensation proposed; the severity of poor service, and the time pressures facing customers.
“Overall, the results show that gamification has a positive impact on recovering customer satisfaction, but under three conditions. Customers need to feel: they are in control, they get fair compensation, and that they aren’t rushed,” explains Professor LECLERCQ.
Providing customers with a choice ensures that ‘complainers’ feel that they have control over the recovery process. In fact, in the field study, nearly half of the respondents chose gamified recovery, thus highlighting the appeal of gamified recovery.
When are games effective?
In addition, the use of games seems to be particularly effective when the poor service is considered to be minor (e.g., longer-than-expected waiting times, late response, employee inattentiveness). In contrast, following high-severity failures, this approach can have a negative effect (e.g., breach of customer privacy, safety issues, complete service breakdown), as it may give the impression that the company does not take the problem seriously.
Another important consideration for managers, therefore, is to assess whether customers are facing time pressure, as the use of games can be an effective tool when customers are not in a rush. Frontline employees would therefore need to play a key role by assessing the situation using verbal or visual cues before deciding whether to propose games to a customer.
Furthermore, the amount of compensation can also impact on the efficacy of gamification for recovering customers. Offering full compensation or overcompensation can elicit feelings that the customer has ‘won’ while offering partial compensation can backfire by instilling feelings of ’loss’.
The authors also highlight that their results also offer guidance regarding opportunities for the broader application of gamification. Notably they show that it appears to be valuable not only in hedonic contexts, (for example in cultural, touristic and leisure activities) where enjoyment is a key factor but is also in more utilitarian settings as shown by their study in the retail FMCG sector.
“The bottom line”, concludes Professor LECLERCQ, “is that gamification can be a powerful recovery tool—but only when used strategically.”
Nazifi, A., Roschk, H., Marder, B., & Leclercq, T. (2025). Spinning the Wheel: The Effectiveness of Gamification in Service Recovery. Journal of Service Research.
