Service failure and recovery encounters are often witnessed by other customers, but little is known about how these encounters impacts other customers. With an aim to bridge this gap, the purpose of the paper is to explore why and how service recovery directed at a focal customer impacts other customers who are present in the same service environment. Design/methodology/approach: The paper follows a qualitative research methodology. Purposive sampling was used to collect data from 30 customers through semi-structured face-to-face interviews. The data was analysed using thematic analysis