United Airlines Faces the Music

Can This Reputation Be Saved?

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by Katie Delahaye Paine

In this age of user-generated media, it's way too easy to point out the screw ups of a major brand in a fun and entertaining way. Which is exactly what happened with Dave Carroll, the Halifax, Canada, musician who had his guitar damaged by United Airlines, and wrote a song about it:

 

One might argue that if the song wasn't a catchy tune perhaps it might never have made the leap from Twitter to the top of the YouTube charts, but my hunch is that this story was going to make its way into mainstream media no matter what. So it's no surprise that all the major networks picked it up.

Let's face it, it's got all the makings of a great news item: A good tune, a cute singer, a big bad corporation, plus the social media angle. Once 1.4 million people had watched the video, it wasn't going away. What's fascinating is United's response. They want to use the video as a training tool!

I'll give them credit for trying to do the right thing -- albeit 9 months too late. But the real right thing would have been not to create a company culture in which baggage handlers assume that it's okay to toss guitars through the air.

Now I've been a long-time fan of United, and I still think their frequent flyer program is great. But if I were a musician, or anyone else with precious cargo, I'd think twice before I'd buy a ticket.

But Mr. Carroll has made an even bigger point, which I hope the airlines and all other consumer brands are listening to: It shouldn't take a Twitter/YouTube/blog campaign to get companies to do good customer service.

One of Mr. Carroll's gripes was that he spent dozens of hours on the phone to India trying to sort this out. What did that cost United? And wouldn't it have been a whole lot cheaper to solve the problem back in Chicago or Omaha? And even cheaper to inform the baggage handlers that guitars shouldn't be thrown?

Let's do the math:

Assume that United spends about $10 for each hour of Indian phone time. And $100 for every hour of time the PR team has spent dealing with media inquiries. And $500 for every hour of legal time they're no doubt spending trying to figure out whether they can be sued.

Indian Phone support: $100

United PR team time: $5000

United Legal Team: $10,000

Damage to United's reputation: Priceless