When Sons of Maxwell lead singer David Carroll watched his guitar being thrown from a United plane over a year ago, he probably never imagined he would become a YouTube sensation because of the experience. And United probably never envisioned how a YouTube video called "United Breaks Guitars" about a customer's negative experience could have such a major effect on the airline.
The story begins in March 2008 when Carroll and his Canadian band members left their home of Halifax to tour Nebraska. When the plane landed and the baggage handlers started unloading the luggage, Carroll heard a woman scream, "They're throwing guitars out there." Much to Carroll's dismay, he looked and saw his band's guitars getting airtime.
He immediately talked to a flight attendant and the ground crew, but nobody wanted to take responsibility for his broken guitar. "Everyone said, 'Sorry,' but no one wanted to do anything," he says.
After nine months of calling United's customer service and getting nowhere, he finally reached a person in November who said she was unwilling to do anything—that her hands were tied by United's policies. Because Carroll didn't report the incident within 24 hours (he was busy touring), the airline said it couldn't replace the guitar. And United couldn't process the claim for $1,200 (the cost to fix the guitar) because his request had already been rejected (United didn't respond to 1to1 Magazine's request for an interview)
Carroll urged the customer service agent to escalate his request or else he vowed to write three songs, post them on YouTube, and get one million hits in a year. His request was ignored.
He kept his promise and last July he launched the first of the trilogy—a humorous take on the guitar-throwing incident, where he strums the guitar and sings a parody about his experience and his band members don sombreros and sing backup. Behind him, his town's local firefighters, dressed as the baggage handlers, toss guitars outside of an airplane. The video, called "United Breaks Guitars" received one million hits within five days. By the seventh day that total climbed to two million views, and to four million a couple of weeks later. Today the hits stand at six million. In addition, a search for "United Breaks Guitars" in Google turns up 19 million results. "[The video] resonates with everyone across the world," Carroll says.
After the second day that the video was posted United contacted Carroll and offered compensation, but the YouTube star wasn't about to stop the campaign that he promised. Rob Bradford, the head of customer solutions at United, set up a conference call with Carroll where he offered vouchers and promised $1,200 in compensation. "I didn't feel it was right, so I suggested they give it to a frustrated customer like myself," he said. United ultimately donated the money to the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz in Boston.
In August Carroll launched the second video, which this time featured a German oompah band and got 500,000 hits. Immediately afterward three United vice presidents met with Carroll. This time they spoke about the airline's challenges and gave Carroll ideas to incorporate in the third song parody, which he said features a bluegrass theme. He plans to upload that video in December.
Carroll himself never fancied himself a consumer advocate, but he said he experienced so much frustration that he felt compelled to do something about it. He advises companies not to get paralyzed by their own policies and empower customer service reps to bend the rules a bit when it comes to satisfying customers.
Ian Jacobs, senior analyst, customer Interaction at Ovum, says while adhering to company policies does not start, nor end, in the call center, the call center can be emblematic of the problem. According to Jacobs, in their efforts to drive consistency in the customer experience, and to drive down the skills requirements for customer service staff, many companies' call centers use guided scripts for agents and evaluate those agents partially on adherence to those scripts. "In other words, the best agent in that scenario is one that does not deviate from corporate policy at all," he says. "This leads to consistently robotic experiences for customers and turns call center agents into modern-age assembly line workers"
As for the power of social media, the BBC reported that United's stock dropped 10 percent within two weeks of the video appearing on YouTube—a loss equivalent to $180 million.
Jason Mittelstaedt, CMO of RightNow Technologies, the customer experience software company that hired Carroll to share his story at its customer conference last week, says that United's experience serves as an example of how ignoring customers in social communities can negatively impact the customer experience. "People are forgiving. They don't expect a brand to be perfect. They expect a brand to be there," Mittelstaedt says.
Carroll couldn't agree more. "'Statistically insignificant' is a phrase I've heard many times pertaining to social media. If a company doesn't understand the power of social media, the statistic of 19 million proves that my story isn't statistically insignificant at all."
United, now understanding fully well the relevancy of social media in the realm of the customer experience, uses the video to train its baggage handlers. But United has a long journey ahead. Carroll opted to fly with United last week to the RightNow Summit because the airline was the only carrier that offered a direct flight into Denver from Halifax. Not to Carroll's surprise, United lost his bag. The press got wind of it, and the media frenzy started all over again.