DASI

A few weeks ago we spoke about the United Breaks Guitars video that turned a disgruntled consumer, Dave Carroll into a one man PR disaster for United Airlines. Since then Dave has produced a second video, complete with a cast of 100 volunteers, all of whom were happy to give their time and expertise in the name of brand bashing. It’s the stuff to give even the most battle hardened of communications officers nightmares, and this next example isn’t exactly going to send them drifting off into a official company-line based slumber either..
This time the company involved is holiday giant Thomson and the consumer is a chap named Andy Sharman.

It’s a familiar pattern; consumer feels they have received very poor service, consumer complains, company does not respond satisfactorily, consumer decides to do something about it. The difference in this story was that Andy knows his stuff digitally, and as a result his damning blog post was particularly search friendly, so much so that it starting beating Thomson on related terms. If you typed in “Thomson” and “Tunisia” into Google, instead of the well honed ad copy Thomson no doubt pay good money for, the top result was Andy’s and over 10,000 people read what he had to say.

Unsurprisingly, at this point, the customer service department that had been apparently so slow to respond previously suddenly jumped into action and settled Andy’s claim, (although if you read his subsequent posts he clearly didn’t feel overly satisfied.) but it was too little, too late, the damage had been done. Thomson have now retaken top spot in the search rankings, but below that is a plethora of coverage all relating to this story and dominating the top ten results. Given the highly competitive nature of the holiday market, the effect of this type of coverage must be particularly painful.

It would be fascinating to know the effect something of this nature has on the bottom line for the company involved. Of course, it’s impossible to know how many people decided against Thomson after reading the review, and the company would never disclose figures, but you can guarantee it’s considerably more than the amount in dispute initially. This example, along with all the others, should be drilled into any customer service team on the potential implications of not dealing with complaints properly.

The key to solving them isn’t in the reaction- Thomson did settle the complaint, and they’ve been and left comments directly on the blog itself admitting their faults, but by then the power of Google had taken hold and once that happens the momentum is virtually impossible to halt. No, the key is to do the upmost to prevent them in the first place. In a society where one man’s opinion can have so much gravitas, there must surely have never been a greater importance in investing in customer services.
So while it’s a battle fought online, it’s a very real world problem that goes to the heart of a business, and another great example of the respect digital needs in the boardroom.

The cheeky looking chap in this video is Dave Carroll, who has managed to show once again the power of the consumer in today’s user generated world. Dave is musician of (by his own admission) fairly limited success but this month he’s been seen over 2.5 million times on You Tube, all because he decided to take out his frustration at what he saw as poor customer service in the form of a song.

His guitar was smashed by baggage handlers last year, by operators working for United Airlines. Dave claimed for the damage but United were less than helpful, something I imagine they now regret, as his song ‘United break guitars’ has become a worldwide sensation in a matter of days and is now firmly in the mainstream media, even making it onto that most treasured of US TV shows, Oprah. Unless United now manage to do something of EA Games/Tiger Woods type miracle response, (Click here if you’ve not seen that example) they’re going to have to sit and watch as their brand takes a trashing around the world, even if it is in a nice, jovial country style.

To me, this is another top example of the internet showing how the balance of power has shifted back towards the consumer- ‘disappointed of Tunbridge Wells’ can now take on the big boys and win. It’s also a fantastic example of how, no matter what your brand offers, the internet can seriously affect it whether you like it or not. The tools freely exist to champion and trash people, products, in fact anything- look at Susan Boyle for God’s sake, she’s even known as SuBo now, so if you’ve not at least considered how you’re going to react if you’re the centre of the next story, you’re potentially in for a steep learning curve.