United Airlines broke Dave Carrol’s guitar. He spent over nine months trying to get the airline to take responsibility and pay for the damages; they refused. So he took to the interwebs and created this incredibly catchy and entertaining video “United Breaks Guitars” with his country music band Son of Maxwell.
The video currently has 12,559 comments, 5-stars by 19,750 ratings and 2.3+ million views.
When will companies learn that poor customer service + internet = horrible reputation destruction? It took the man more than a year to get completely rejected by United claims, write the blog post and create the video. Which means United had a year to make things right, they had a year to pay $1200 to fix the guitar that the airline workers broke, they had a year to make Dave Carrol a fan of United.
How hard is it to train your employees to be nice to your customers?
Why is it so difficult for companies to do right right thing?
According to United’s Twitter the airline contacted Dave, donated $3,000 to Thelonius Monk Institute of Jazz 4 Music Education 4 Kids and is working with Dave for some positive songs. Too late? What do you think?
My very Southern Grandma Norton once wisely told me that “the only thing a girl can own is her reputation.” True, but hardly applicable to just women these days. Brands need to step up and listen own their online reputation becuase there will always be someone out there calling you a douchebag or a slut.
81% of consumers read online reviews before purhcasing duringtheir holiday shopping according to MarketingCharts.com and Neilsen Online. While only a fraction of consumers will post reviews or submit complaints a whole lot more will read what those people are saying. If there are consistenly bad posts and no response from you, consumers will seriosuly consider buying from you.
Do you know what your consumers are saying about you? Are you checking review sites such as Yelp.com as well as the niche review sites (like DealerRater.com for local dealerships)? Do you have a Google alert set to your brand or industry? Do you regularly check to see if Facebook/MySpace groups have formed for or against your brand? Do you monitor Twitter, Brightkite, Friendfeed and Blogs to listen to what your consumers are saying about you, your competitors and your industry?
While social media is fun, display ads easy and search is cheap, online reputation management is a bit more time consuming and harder to grasp. Unfortunately, that leaves a lot of brands unwilling to take the lead and spend their time seeking out reviews and taking control.
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