Reply, but do not respond: a justice-theory and signalling analysis of templated webcare in Indian banking

Webcare, the practice of replying to user-generated reviews, is promoted as a way to communicate responsiveness, restore justice perceptions and protect revenue. In Indian retail banking, mobile applications have become a primary venue for webcare; yet, the dyadic structure of review-and-reply exchanges has not been systematically examined, and the prevalence of verbatim templated replies has not been quantified. Drawing on service-recovery justice theory and signalling theory, this study analyses 12,790 review–reply pairs from eight Indian banking apps operated by seven scheduled commercial banks over eleven months. Verbatim templating is widespread: 61.9% of replies recur at least five times within a single app. Reply sentiment is positive in 78.8% of responses to negative reviews and largely decoupled from review valence (Spearman ρ = 0.35). Public-sector apps reply more slowly than private-sector apps (median 7.5 versus 0.3 h) and template more heavily. In a telling within-bank contrast, the State Bank of India operates YONO SBI at 91.5% templated and SBI YONO Lite at 19.7%, showing that webcare strategy is set at the app or team level rather than the bank level. The findings suggest that banking webcare in India is largely performative, a low-cost signal that may dilute rather than convey responsiveness.