There has been a interesting phenomenon occurring over the past few months relating to a poor United customer experience. This was not any customer however, it was David Carroll, lead singer of the Canadian band “Sons of Maxwell”. I will let David take up the story in his words from here:
“In the spring of 2008, Sons of Maxwell were traveling to Nebraska for a one-week tour and my Taylor guitar was witnessed being thrown by United Airlines baggage handlers in Chicago. I discovered later that the $3,500 guitar was severely damaged. They didn’t deny the experience occurred but for nine months the various people I communicated with put the responsibility for dealing with the damage on everyone other than themselves and finally said they would do nothing to compensate me for my loss. So I promised the last person to finally say “no” to compensation (Ms. Irlweg) that I would write and produce three songs about my experience with United Airlines and make videos for each to be viewed online by anyone in the world.”
Here is the 1st song, now with almost 5 million views…
Another strong message to the leadership about United’s need to fundamentally change its organizational culture, if it is to ever grow and profit in perhaps the toughest industry in the world it must develop a culture that focuses on delivering the greatest value at all times to its customers. This is an unfortunate example of again where they fall short……..
MarketCulture Blog - Using a Customer Culture for Competitive Advantage 