PR Case Study

This is amazing situation! I had never heard about this until the other day and I love it! This is a video made by a consumer who had a personal issue with United Airlines and the company would not resolve the issue so he took matters into his own hands. This just shows how effective and powerful social media can be. Within one week of posting this video to YouTube, it had millions of hits and United lost $180 million dollars in stock within four days of the video being posted.

The situation was that Dave Carroll and a number of witnesses saw United employees mistreating passenger’s personal belongings and in turn breaking Dave Carroll’s guitar.  Dave immediately taking action by talking with three United customer service representatives once he arrived to his destination.  None of them took it with sincerity and they told him there was nothing they could do, that it was against their policy. After jumping through hoops for almost a year with United over replacing the damaged property Dave gave them one final chance to replace the Taylor guitar or he would write three songs about the situation. Personally I think United assumed that that would be the end of the situation. They underestimated the consumer due to the fact that he was just a single individual. Oh were they poorly mistaken!

I understand both sides of the situation. I myself work in customer service and I know how important it is to consistently follow the policies but I also know how ridiculous and silly they can be.  I feel that people should always live by the saying the customer is always right, even if you know the customer isn’t right.  It is always easier to make exceptions to the policies to make the customer happy, rather than following policies to upset a customer that can turn into multiple upset customers. As a customer it is always easier to talk to people about bad experiences versus good experiences.

Every way that United handled this situation was inappropriate. From the way they handled passenger’s luggage, the way the customer service representatives responded to Dave’s issue, and how long it took to finally offer to replace the guitar. The company should have showed more compassion and consideration to the situation. The name customer service says it all; the goal is to make the customer as happy as possible. If you can’t help fix the problem respectfully you better find a new line of work.

When your employees are mistreating customer’s personal belongings and it results in damage, your company is at fault.  It should be the company’s responsibility to go out of the way to correct the error. It just seems that United at the time was too focused on their rules, regulations, and the bottom line of the company. They weren’t giving the proper attention to their customers and the products and services they provide.

I believe Dave Carroll handled this situation perfectly! As an unsatisfied consumer he reported the issue and it wasn’t reciprocated how it should have been. He was very persistent with the issue as he should have been. Luckily for all silenced consumers he followed through and posted the song. Dave used social media and a medium he was most comfortable with singing and song writing to get his message across.  After that the power of social media and customer service changed forever. Thanks to Dave’s song his goal of sharing his personal situation with United has been told to millions of people around the world.

It has to be a little depressing for United knowing that replacing a $3,500 guitar could have saved them $180 million in stock and a lot of bad publicity! Instead they lost a lot of money and probably customers as well. On the plus side they did help jump start Dave Carroll’s career. I am just glad that I wasn't in charge of issue or crisis management for United during this time. Although I would like to think I could have just simply solved the problem by  replacing the guitar.