When you have a run-in with a less than friendly customer service rep in a retail store or a bad experience at a restaurant, your first reaction might be to vent to some buddies of yours or even take to Twitter (News - Alert) to lambaste the company.
But for one rock star, his negative experience with United Airlines took him down a different path, as he decided to post a video of an original song he created on YouTube (News - Alert), chastising United Airlines for seeming to not care about customer engagement.
In a documentary that aired on CNBC earlier this month titled “Customer Dis (Service),” Halifax singer Dave Carroll lamented an experience he had with United Airlines recently in which the airline refused to fix a guitar of Carroll’s that it broke.
“I asked myself, ‘Why am I going through this system that’s designed to frustrate me and wear me down to the point where I don’t want to fight anymore and I’ll just go way?’” Carroll said. “Why don’t I look at this and hold them accountable to the rules I learned in kindergarten? If you break somebody’s thing you have to apologize and take responsibility for it.”
For Carroll, this meant letting the world know how quickly United Airlines soured its relationship with a customer. Accordingly, Carroll took to YouTube to post a video with an original song he crafted about his negative experience with the airline. The song quickly amassed over three million hits.
After that incident, United Airlines allegedly sent Carroll an apology and offered him free travel vouchers which he declined. The airline also said that it has changed its baggage policy and will be checking social media sites for customer dissatisfaction.
As stated in the CNBC documentary, social media have certainly molded the customer engagement process, as now companies need to be cognizant of the fact that if their customers are disgruntled, they can share that frustration with cyberspace in a matter of milliseconds.
“We are talking about a new kind of power that customers have not had before thanks to the Internet and thanks to social media because now anyone can self publish; that’s huge,” Ben Popken, managing editor consumerist.com, said in the documentary. “No longer are big companies the sole controllers of the means of communication and that alone has changed the whole game.”
Specifically, one individual posted a video on YouTube of his cable technician falling asleep on his couch while the technician was on hold with the cable company trying to figure out how to fix the TV. The rep was later fired.
Moreover, it went viral that a customer service rep wouldn’t let a man cancel his service for more than 20 minutes and the rep was subsequently faired.
“They can’t hide these mess-ups anymore and they are being held accountable,” Popken said.
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Carrie Schmelkin is a Web Editor for TMCnet. Previously, she worked as Assistant Editor at the New Canaan Advertiser, a 102-year-old weekly newspaper, covering news and enhancing the publication's social media initiatives. Carrie holds a bachelor's degree in journalism and a bachelor's degree in English from the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University. To read more of her articles, please visit her columnist page.Edited by Rich Steeves