Many of you may have heard this story, and over 500,000 have seen the video: a musician flew United, had his guitar wrecked in transit, and when he appealed for recompense, he got none.
So he wrote a song. And now is getting more than just an apology from United.
He's getting his 15 minutes of fame. Talk about turning lemons into vodka with lemonade.
And United, a dear old client of ours, is seemingly trying to do the same.
United's spokesperson is quoted on Chicagotribune.com as saying the video complaint 'struck a chord...', pun intended to be sure. They are promising to 'make things right' at long last.
And now customer relations is quoted as asking for the video to help improve customer service.
Empathy. And apology.
Sad that in this day and age it comes AFTER the negative publicity and not as a core value, but there seem to be many reasons why customer experience comes last in a popular drive to deliver such inexpensive product (think about it -- sometimes your cab fare to the airport is half the cost of your airline ticket.)
Anyway, a positive, creative solution to a problem. And kudos to United to not fighting it, but riding it.
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juliekoewler said...
ReplyDelete3MM views as of today my friend, 3MM. 23,000 ratings, and 15,000 comments. many of which share ua travel nightmares/customer service stories. the chicago trib article captures robin's cute quote. the 3MM hits on youtube does not. also on youtube - hundreds of thousands of hits to coverage from Fox, CNN, you name it. all told i'm certain coverage online covers north of 4MM. and, now david, the song writer/singer - has posted a video response acknowledging the coverage...and recognized ua. his recorded response is in two formats, each receiving 100,000+ hits....let the social economy drive.
July 15, 2009 7:35 PM
It was over 500K when we wrote the blog, but clearly that's how huge our readership is to jump the viewings to 3MM.
ReplyDeleteAlthough we watched it 100K times alone.
'Social economy' does a nice job of highlighting the good and the bad -- a scary world for any company that isn't about the overall customer experience.
It will make us all better -- though wait for the overload backlash....
Rob Albertson
Wow. This is a great example of how one bad experience can sour the bunch.
ReplyDelete