Experience Manifesto

United Breaks Guitars

I'm a little behind in writing about this, but it's a great example of how people can use social media to get their stories out. As of July 21st, 2009, this video had 3,547,771 views, but that's only part of the story. Doing a google search, I get 3,140,000 results. Bing comes up with even more results. Sadly, searching on a United response to United Breaks Guitars, doesn't really come up with much. In fact, the video response from Taylor Guitars (see below) actually comes up 1st in that search. And if you look at the videos or articles about this video, you'll see very little, maybe no, support for United. Not a lot of folks saying "Sorry they broke your guitar, but hey, they get a lot of luggage to the right place without damage." Nope, most people say "Yea, they screwed up and they should've done better." And those are the nice comments.

So now United is faced with a dilemma of how to respond. Of course, we all know that they're only trying to resolve the situation now because of all of the bad press they got. They lost my luggage for 4 days between LA and San Francisco and after fighting with them for over a week, I just gave up. Guess I should've learned to play the guitar! But since we know that fixing the problem wasn't their first reaction by a long-shot, we're not really going to think that they really want t help fix problems in the future.

The fix for United is a total overhaul of their customer experience training. And it has to start way up at the top. And the people up at the top need to really believe that creating the very best guest experience possible and taking customer complaints seriously is priority number 1. That's the problems brands have today. Put on a little band aid, fix it while people are watching and then get back to business as usual, and you'll see your business erode. We just don't have the time for bad experiences any more.

Taylor Guitars responds

Download Tripping Over Technology. You can read about my United experience from as few years back. It was probably 5 years before I flew United again and only because they were the airline partner for a client.

Smashed guitar, YouTube song — United is listening now - Travel - LATimes.com.

Radio Program with David Polinchock of New York :: Social Media Professor

I was very excited to be the guest on Trey Pennington's Social Media Professor radio show this morning. We talked a great deal about the importance of brand stories and how social media can really enhance an authentic dialogue with your audience. One key thought that we discussed was that:

Technology should enhance the experience, not replace it.

We also talked a lot about the importance of sharing your story internally and making sure that your team is all telling the same story. Trey made an excellent point about how having a great story is like having a compass that guides you through all of the decisions you make. Liked that thought a lot.

So, you can click on the link below to hear the entire interview, which runs about 25 minutes. I've also included two articles I wrote about storytelling that might also be of interest to you. Trey does a great show, so if you've never listened to it before, make sure you check out his program. He covers a lot of great information there.

Radio Program with David Polinchock of New York :: Social Media Professor.

Download Are You Telling a Great Story

Download Are you Just Hunting

Problems With BEL Web Site & E-mail

We seem to be having some technical difficulty with our hosting company that will not be resolved until Monday, so you will not be able to access the Brand Experience Lab web site or send mail to me there. In the meantime, please e-mail me at [email protected] if you need me and I'll get back to you there. Have a Happy 4th of July weekend!