United Breaks Guitars: The interview from JD Lasica on Vimeo.
Musician Dave Carroll’s advice to companies: Respect your customers
Asmart company these days understands that everybody has a voice. So the best way to avoid a public relations nightmare is to give great customer service right out of the gate. “It’s a bad day when a customer’s upset,” says Dave Carroll, creator of the viral three-part musical trilogy United Breaks Guitars.
The incident has gone down as perhaps the ultimate self-inflicted customer relations screw-up by a major corporation in the social media era of empowered customers. The original video has been seen 8.8 million times since it went live a year ago and is the 12th most-watched video in the history of YouTube.
— Dave Carroll
“Companies providing poor customer service can’t ride out the situation as in the past,” Carroll says. United ran Carroll through the bureaucratic ringer for 9 months before giving him a definitive answer about his compensation claim: No.
“I was almost out of options but I wasn’t because social media allowed me to express myself in a creative way,” he says.
Watch, download or embed the interview on Vimeo
Watch or embed the video on YouTube
In the interview, Carroll discusses his take on the idea of “a market of one” — the notion that today there are no statistically insignificant parts of the marketplace. “The market of one is everybody,” he says. Incorporating good customer service should be part of a holistic approach to a company’s business processes — not because it’s right but because it makes sense from a competitive business standpoint.
As for Carroll, his viral hits on YouTube have helped juice his career as an independent musician and, now, a public speaker. CD sales are “through the roof,” he says, and he’s fielding offers to play gigs and to write songs. (The trilogy has taken on a life of its own: see Taylor Guitars’ video response and UBG Song #3.)
All in all, great fun — and definitive proof of how social media has shifted the balance of power toward customers and away from arrogant multinational corporations. (For another example, see Greenpeace’s takedown of Nestle this past spring.)
JD Lasica, founder of Inside Social Media, is also a fiction author and the co-founder of the cruise discovery engine Cruiseable. See his About page, contact JD or follow him on Twitter.
I love the Dave Carroll story. It truly is a David and Goliath story. Prior to social media, I'm sure United got away with a ton of incidents like this. But now they can't. And no business can. Not only do you have to watch out for customers, but you have to watch out for employees, especially disgruntled employees or ones who leave your business exposing your not-so-savory business practices.
I was actually just interviewed by Al Jazeera English on the Dave Carroll story. Check out the story here: http://www.sparkminute.com/2010/06/04/reprising-u…
There's no better way to show our dissatisfaction when you are being wronged by a company. As entrepreneur and a blogger for small businesses, I'd encourage everyone to treat their customers with “kids gloves”. You don't what happened to United Air happens to you… customers mean money… no customers means your busted… broke… out of business.
Delroy A. Whyte-Hall http://whytehallcommunications.webs.com http://whytehallcommunications.wordpress.com
All of the above is true. However, we have to be careful that social media doesn't become the first port of call. It's often not easy to approach the higher ranks when not happy – social media cannot become a platform to humiliate and bully, as it will in fact, not only hurt individuals, but the credibility and great work that can be done via social media.
Great story above though.
We moved ISPs, and so the original comments didn't transfer. Here's the comment from
Delroy A. Whyte-Hall:
There's no better way to show our dissatisfaction when you are being wronged by a company. As an entrepreneur and a blogger for small businesses, I'd encourage everyone to treat their customers with kid gloves.
You don't what happened to United Airlines to happen to you. Customers mean money‚ no customers means you're busted, broke‚ and out of business.
David Spark posted this comment:
I love the Dave Carroll story. It truly is a David and Goliath story. Prior to social media, I'm sure United got away with a ton of incidents like this. But now they can't. And no business can. Not only do you have to watch out for customers, but you have to watch out for employees, especially disgruntled employees or ones who leave your business exposing your not-so-savory business practices.
I was actually just interviewed by Al Jazeera English on the Dave Carroll story. Check out the story here: http://www.sparkminute.com/2010/06/04/reprising-u…
@dspark