I’ve seen several companies leveraging YouTube as a way to engage their customers and extend their brand. There’s Southwest Airlines, for example, whose YouTube Channel – NutsForSouthwest – shows just how nuts they are about their employees and their customers. This is indeed a great practice in using social media for customer service (because I’ll argue that promoting brand loyalty like this is a form of customer service).
But it’s not the only thing companies need to focus on! What about all the complaints lodged by consumers on YouTube? Just check out the search results I got for “horrible customer service”. There’s quite a few, and “horrible” is only one possible adjective you could search with! The old maxim that a happy customer will tell one person and an unhappy customer will tell ten friends . . . well, the internet just multiplies things. Unhappy customers aren’t just telling ten friends, they’re telling anyone who will listen. And the offending company had better be listening so they can do some damage control!
Here are a few examples of how YouTube has been used by consumers to express their unhappiness about the customer service – or lack thereof – they received:
United Airlines Breaks Guitars
Dave Carroll, the musician whose guitar was broken, explains the whole story on his website. He also includes United’s response. And to be fair to United, he’s made a statement video on YouTube as well:
Hilton Hell
This one’s a personal contribution from a lovely business trip I took with Cia Romano.
I think we still have yet to get a response to the video, but that’s up to the Hilton. However, Cia and I would both like to thank the staff of the Hilton Arlington, especially Henry the bellman, who did their best in trying to make do with the hotel they work in.
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Tags: customer service fail, customer service win, hilton, social media, southwest, united, youtube
