Minneapolis Online Marketing Blog

Social Media Evens the Customer Service Playing Field

Posted July 10th, 2009 by Glenn Seaberg

Glenn Seaberg
Spyder Trap Online Marketing

I wonder how many Taylor guitars United Airlines would give to Dave Carroll now that his scathing music video blasting the airline has been viewed 1.4+ million times on YouTube (as of this writing). What’s more, I wonder the level of regret UA has now that the popularity of the playfully acidic video has hit traditional media including big city papers and the major cable news channels.

A nice Taylor costs about $2,500. If I was in charge of customer service at United, I think replacing the guitar broken by baggage handlers with a nice collection of about a dozen new Taylors would be a nice gesture today. I’m sure they could have gotten off much easier had they admitted their apparent mistake and just replaced Mr. Carroll’s Taylor.

Too late.

United Airlines might have been able to ignore the voice of a single unhappy customer in the past. But businesses had better wake up to the fact that the voice of that single customer can now reach millions of potential customers via YouTube, Twitter, FaceBook and other social media channels. And when traditional news media gets wind of that groundswell, look out.

So what can businesses do? Is it enough to just treat customers as if they matter? Or do all businesses need to engage in brand monitoring via social media? Will online brand monitoring ever become as important as market research Or is it already?

Tags: Facebook, Marketing Strategy, Social Media, Video Marketing, Viral Marketing, YouTube