Hospitality Management 22 (2003) 135–145 The impact of selected customer characteristics and response time on E-complaint satisfaction and return intent Anna S. Mattila*, Daniel J. Mount School of HRRM, Penn State University, 224 Mateer Building, University Park, PA 16802, USA Abstract Customer service centers have become an important element in the complaint-handling process. In response to the changing needs of the Cyber customer, many hospitality companies have put the power to complain in the hands of their customers via e-mail complaints. The primary purpose of this study was to examine the impact of customers’ technology readiness or enthusiasm and response time on satisfaction with the complaint handling process and return intent. The data collection involved re-contacting hotel guests (n ¼ 446) who had lodged a complaint with the sponsoring hotel company via e-mail. Our findings indicate that satisfaction with the problem handling and repurchase intentions are directly related to the time taken to respond. Moreover, technology enthusiasts were more demanding of an immediate response than their counterparts, who tend to be less responsive to advances in information technology. Implications to electronic complaint management systems are briefly discussed. r 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Customer service centers; Electronic complaints; Service recovery; Technology readiness; Customer satisfaction 1. Introduction With a quarter of a billion Internet users worldwide (Keavney and Parthasarathy, 2001), an increasing number of hotel companies are using information technology to handle customer complaints. Hilton’s 35-member Guest Assistance Team, for instance, handles e-mail complaints for all domestic Hilton properties ARTICLE IN PRESS *Corresponding author. Tel.: +1-814-863-5757; fax: +1-814-863-4257. E-mail addresses: asm6@psu.edu (A.S. Mattila), dmount@psu.edu (D.J. Mount). 0278-4319/03/$ - see front matter r 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/S0278-4319(03)00014-8