Customer participation is crucial for online service providers to gain and maintain competitive advantages through service recovery. Focusing on the interactive nature of customer participation, this study explored the relationships among employees' politeness strategies, customer membership, perceived co-recovery, and online post-recovery satisfaction. We found that perceived co-recovery was significant for online post-recovery satisfaction. Compared to non-members costumers, members' perceived co-recovery was more positive. Finally, member customers preferred employees to adopt positive politeness strategies, whereas non-member customers preferred negative ones. This study provides valuable suggestions for online service providers to improve online recovery performance.