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Week 3 Discussion

Read as below, Unhappy Customers, and answer the following questions:

– Happy customers make great brand evangelists. But have you ever thought of the unhappy ones, as an influencer marketing opportunity? In this video, we will dive into their importanceand the steps you may take to turn your customer service challenges into a marketing opportunities. In 2009, a singer-songwriter, Dave Carroll, was flying with United Airlines from Canada to Nebraska via Chicago. Upon landing in the layover city, he heard a passenger behind him scream.

“My God, they are throwing guitars out there.” Sure enough, his $3500 Taylor guitar was one of them. Upon arrival to his destination, he discovered that the guitar’s neck was broken off.Nine months of his back and forth with United, weren’t crowned with success. So the songwriter wrote a song, United Breaks Guitars. He also produced a brilliant music video to accompany it and uploaded it to YouTube. Within four days of the upload, Dave’s song was viewed by more than 1.5 million people.

It went viral and the viewer count tripled in the next three months. United’s efforts to make things right, came too late to stop the snowball effect. Now, many years later, the video’s viewership has crossed the 16 million viewers threshold. But there was something more than the number of views. According to the Times of the UK, within four days of the song going online, the gathering thunderclouds of bad PR caused United Airlines stock price to suffer a mid-flight stall and then plunge by 10%, costing shareholders $180 million.

Whether these numbers are right or not is irrelevant. In 2009, Time Magazine named Dave’s video one of the top viral videos of the year. CNBC featured him and his experience on their 2012 documentary, Customer Disservice. Later, Dave also published a book on the power of one’s voice in the age of social media and he is now a highly demanded keynote speaker on customer service. Had United handled things differently, things could have been turned to their benefit.

There was one company that turned Dave’s sad situation into a positive. Taylor Guitars, the company who made Dave’s beloved guitar, broken by the airline, gave him a new one. Not only that, they went further. They also created a video, one that expressed their concern,reminded of their guitar repair services and offering guidelines on how to travel with guitars.By now, that video was watched by nearly one million people, been liked close to 2000 times.

Scott Stratten of Unmarketing also once had an unpleasant experience with an airline. In contrast to Dave and his guitar, Delta Airlines reacted to Scott’s tweet within three minutes.They respectfully apologized, admitting their fault and won him back. He is a professional keynote speaker too, but instead of scolding the brand, he applauds them in his speeches by remembering how disarming was their timely and courteous reaction.

According to a research by VentureBeat Insight, in the US alone, present day connected consumers complain about brands 879 million times a year. And it all happens on social media. The staggering part though, is not the number of