United Airlines is one of the latest corporations to be schooled in resolving a customer complaint before it is exposed publically. Musician Dave Carroll's guitar was damaged when he checked it on a flight. After months of trying to resolve the issue with United, Dave took his case to the court of social media in song.
The challenge for the corporation is knowing when a customer complaint is going to become a PR nightmare. In Dave's case he informed United that "going social" was his next step. But how does the corporation know when a customer is actually prepared and capable of going social? While Dave seems to have a legitimate gripe, not every dissatisfied customer has reasonable expectations. Playing the customer service game in the age of social is a bit like Russian Roulette.
Now, United is contacting Dave to make an attempt to resolve the issue. His music will likely get more exposure than if United had settled in the first place. A win-win for Dave.
- Richard Liechty
Fantastic. This is how brands are being defined by fans and detractors. Does United have a jingle? They do now.
And this is moving fast. It's already 4th on the Google SERP for "United" in Canada.
- Craig Ritchie
Awesome. As I was sitting in a return line last night, I was just talking about how social media could be a great way to improve customer service. If customers filmed their interaction with store clerks at big brands that have horrible customer service, one of two things could happen: 1) those brands might get better about training their staff in the public treatment of customers, or 2) cameras would be banned in those stores. With cell phones putting cameras into people's hands, I'm surprised more people haven't exposed bad service online!
- Stephanie Jorgl
Strategists & Planners
Comments (2)
This will please all of us that have had our baggage damaged or lost and felt powerless afterwords.
I like the fact that he told united he would go social with his story. Very constructive, he gave them a chance.
Moving beyond this example, the social media court is an interesting concept. I'm ambivalent about it. In society, are people entitled to bypass the 'legal' way to get justice without creating anarchy as more and more complaint will flow to the social court?
Posted on July 9, 2009 14:12
Update: Twitter has grabbed on to this, and "United" became a trending topic for a while.
The video's at 1.35M views in 4 days.
Also, on Google US, the video shows up third after United's web site and the United Airlines Mileage Plus program. (Not to mention it also shows up fourth, fifth and seventh.)
Posted on July 10, 2009 06:43