This study aims to propose a forgiveness process through authenticity rather than justice in service failure situations. Prior research on service recovery has discussed the relationships among justice, recovery satisfaction, and positive customer behavior, emphasizing that customers' perceived justice of recovery efforts is paramount for recovering from service failures. However, psychologists have suggested that when material or psychological harm is experienced in interpersonal relationships, what matters most for relationship restoration is not fair one-to-one interaction but rather authentic recovery efforts and the process through which the other party recognizes, understands, and forgives them. Perceived justice in the service recovery process concerns whether recovery efforts are fair or unfair, which differs from customer understanding of and forgiveness for the failure situation. Even if customers experience recovery satisfaction through perceptions of justice and form positive behavioral intentions, true relationship restoration may be difficult and the likelihood of eliciting sustained positive customer behavior from a long-term perspective is low if customer understanding and forgiveness for the service failure have not been achieved. Therefore, this study seeks to address the customer's service recovery process from a psychological rather than cognitive perspective, proposing a customer forgiveness process as this psychological dimension. Forgiveness generates changes in cognitive and behavioral systems, transforming negative thoughts, emotions, and behaviors into positive ones. This is because forgiveness, being a movement of the heart rather than of reason, not only reduces retaliatory behavior toward the other party but also influences benevolent relationships with the other party from a long-term perspective. The research results showed that authenticity of service recovery efforts influences customer empathy for the service failure, and this empathy in turn influences forgiveness. Furthermore, customer forgiveness was found to reduce retaliatory and avoidance behavior, thereby increasing revisit intention and decreasing negative word-of-mouth intention. Regarding the relationships between psychological process variables and recovery satisfaction, authenticity and customer empathy were found to influence recovery satisfaction, indicating that recovery satisfaction is affected not only by the cognitive element of justice but also by psychological elements. Additionally, in the relationships among recovery satisfaction, empathy, and forgiveness, the relative influence of empathy on forgiveness was found to be greater than that of recovery satisfaction, and regarding the relative influence of recovery satisfaction and forgiveness on behavior, forgiveness showed a greater relative influence on negative word-of-mouth intention. Thus, it was confirmed that forgiveness is a factor that can reduce negative word-of-mouth intention more than recovery satisfaction. These research findings suggest that in service recovery, not only recovery satisfaction through justice but also customer understanding and forgiveness through authenticity should be considered as important elements. That is, in service recovery, what matters is not how fair recovery efforts are but how much authenticity is embedded in those recovery efforts, and this can elicit customer empathy and lead to customer forgiveness for the failure. This points to the need for academic and practical consideration of authenticity rather than justice, as well as the forgiveness process, in future research related to service recovery.