United Breaks Guitars – The Need for Reputation Management in Social Media
Whether your company participates in social media or not, it IS on social media. It is critical to know what is being discussed about your company online and on the major social networks. This allows you to mitigate damages, and perhaps even turn a negative customer experience into a positive outcome.
One of the most famous, or should I say infamous, examples of a company not addressing a customer issue and having that issue explode in the social media environment is “United Breaks Guitars”.
While Dave Carroll was flying from Nova Scotia to Nebraska he had his Taylor guitar ruined. After a protracted attempt to get United to pay for the damage, Carroll struck back. Here’s Carroll’s saga in his own words (from his personal website) (via Huffington Post.com):
“In the spring of 2008, Sons of Maxwell were traveling to Nebraska for a one-week tour and my Taylor guitar was witnessed being thrown by United Airlines baggage handlers in Chicago. I discovered later that the $3500 guitar was severely damaged. They didn’t deny the experience occurred but for nine months the various people I communicated with put the responsibility for dealing with the damage on everyone other than themselves and finally said they would do nothing to compensate me for my loss. So I promised the last person to finally say “no” to compensation (Ms. Irlweg) that I would write and produce three songs about my experience with United Airlines and make videos for each to be viewed online by anyone in the world.”
The videos that came out of this experience have views in the several millions (more than seven million as of today.) See for yourself:
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