'United Breaks Guitars' Made Dave Carroll a Customer Service Celebrity

After reading Lauren's post about bad customer service, it has reminded me of the "United Breaks Guitar" story from 2009, which is perhaps one of the better examples of how social media has shifted the power to the consumer; all from a viral protest video that highlighted the mishandling of a situation by the lack of customer relationship management (CRM) from a company.

Dave Carroll of Halifax band Sons of Maxwell posted a lighthearted revenge song on YouTube aobut United Airlines's clumsy baggage handlers breaking his guitar ($3,500 custom Taylor acousitc guitar packed in a padded double case) during a flight. His video was posted on YouTube and received more than 600,000 hits after the first day.

At first, United repeatedly declined to reimburse him for the damage after getting emails, letters, and personal visits from Carroll at the airline counters. After the launch of the video, United Airlines issued a statment which read,

"This has struck a chord with us. We are in conversations with one another to make what happened right, and while we mutually agree that this should have been fixed much sooner, Dave Carroll’s excellent video provides United with a unique learning opportunity that we would like to use for training purposes to ensure all customers receive better service from us,"

"They're talking about changing the culture of customer service. This could end up making a real difference," Carroll said. The connection with people through the power of social media has not only helped make his case heard, but have touched a nerve with others whom have had a bad airline or customer service experience.

There were rumours that this incident caused United Airline's stock prices to drop by 10% and costing shareholders $180 million. But there is no way of confirming or measuring that from a video that has definitely caused the airline damage to their brand reputation with bad PR like this.

Since the video has boosted Carroll's career as a musician with featured spots on newscasts around the world, from CNN to the BBC, Carroll had been doing doing speaking tours on customer service. Now, he's trying to share his formula for success with other consumers on a website named Gripevine.com launched in February of 2012.

Quoted Description on Gripevine.com:

The site, acts as a megaphone for aggrieved consumers who otherwise feel ignored when companies do them wrong. Annoyed consumers post their gripes on the site.  An automated system informs the targeted company that a gripe exists and offers them a chance to solve the problem. If that doesn't work, Gripevine offers consumers a tool that "amplifies" the gripe, making it easy for social network friends to "support" the grievance by sharing it with their friends, who can then share it and their friends, and so on. "The more times your gripe is viewed and the more people you share it with, the more the company will be motivated to work with you to resolve your issue," says Gripevine on its instruction page. Gripevine users will also earn "credibility points," which will help companies learn if the griper is just a serial complainer or a genuinely aggrieved customer with a beef.

Carroll is not providing the service out of the goodness of his heart -- companies will have to pay a fee to get access to a "dashboard" that makes dealing with gripes easy. Carroll is hoping that companies view the fee as a small price to pay to stem a looming social media train wreck. So far, 4,000 consumers have signed up and a dozen companies have claimed their Gripevine pages, which Carroll said will be free for the first six months. The website is also in talks with several Fortune 1000 firms, he said.


Sources:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/technology/songwriter-overwhelmed-with-success-of-united-breaks-guitars/article1213060/
http://www.cbc.ca/news/arts/music/story/2009/07/08/united-breaks-guitars.html
http://redtape.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/02/15/10417594-angry-consumer-united-breaks-guitars-viral-hero-launches-gripevinecom