Now more than ever business are relying on word-or-mouth to generate business. However, consumers are relying on WOM to spread the word about poor customer service practices. It has become too easy to sour the opinions of hundred with a simple 140 character tweet or, as United Airlines learned, a YouTube video.
A musician named Dave Carroll recently had difficulty with United Airlines. United apparently damaged his treasured Taylor guitar ($3500) during a flight. Dave spent over 9 months trying to get United to pay for damages caused by baggage handlers to his custom Taylor guitar. During his final exchange with the United Customer Relations Manager, he stated that he was left with no choice other than to create a music video for YouTube exposing their lack of cooperation. The Manager responded: “Good luck with that one, pal”.
So he posted a retaliatory video on YouTube. The video has since received over 5.5 million hits. United Airlines contacted the musician and attempted settlement in exchange for pulling the video… Naturally his response was: “Good luck with that one, pal”.
Taylor Guitars sent the musician 2 new custom guitars in appreciation for the product recognition from the video that has lead to a sharp increase in orders.
About the Author
Kristina Daniele is the Owner of and Lead Designer at BeautifullyArtful. Kristina Daniele is not usually in the forefront of the projects on which she works. She is kind of like Oz (without the really cool songs, costumes, enhanced voices, or dances and of course- she is real). She began blogging in 2003, but her experience in web design, online writing, and social networking began a lot earlier with a little creative writing personal website hosted on the now defunct Geocities...She's come a long way since then!