United Breaks Guitars – Dave Carroll's social media payback for horrid service

Did you see the United Breaks Guitars video, which has now been seen by more than 5 million Youtube viewers?  It's a damning expose about United's horrid handling of  Dave Carroll's Taylor guitar-- and he used social media to slam back. Most successfully.

The video puts a glaring spotlight on how the quality of a company's service offerings will be transparent -- for bad and good. If a company doesn't provide the transparency, customers will.

And it also doesn't matter whether a company is participating in social media. Customers are.

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How social media helps customer service - Up close examples

I just bought a new cell phone – starting with an AT&T Pantech Matrix Pro before switching to an iPhone.  My goal, beyond making phone calls, was to download emails from multiple email accounts, send text messages, and Twitter.

Guess what?  I experienced configuration problems.  No surprise there, what with a new phone and all. Besides, that’s what tech support is for.

In trying to solve my problems, though, I experienced an up close and personal view in how three companies – AT&T, Pantech, and Rackspace Email – use Twitter’s social media channel to their benefit...or in the case of one company, to its detriment.

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