When United Airlines broke Canadian musician Dave Carroll's guitar and failed to rectify the situation, he used viral means to get his own back.
The musician and his band, Sons of Maxwell, wrote a song about the incident and uploaded it to YouTube. The video was posted in 2009 and amassed 150 000 views within a day, while it has been watched more than 13 million times since then. Within just four days of the video being posted, United Airline's stock price fell 10%, costing stockholders about $180 million in value.
"This is a great example of how businesses always need to keep the customer in mind," said Michael Bornheim, an Oracle sales consultant, during a session at the South African Oracle User Group (SAOUG) conference, in Johannesburg, this week.
The viral response to Carroll's experience forced United to do something, noted Bornheim, adding that the airline bought the musician a new guitar and used the video as part of its international staff training programmes. 'If businesses don't look after their customers, they stand the chance of losing those customers forever. Customers are discerning individuals, so being able to understand their needs and fix their problems is essential."
When discussing United's musical instrument error, Bornheim stressed the importance of implementing an effective social media strategy as part of a business' customer experience efforts. "Social media really is starting to take hold. It is another channel in CRM, and younger generations are increasingly turning to social networks to praise or criticise brands, often with significant results."
SAOUG representative Chris Hardy agrees. "Businesses tend to be nervous about social media because it is difficult to measure the tangible elements of this investment. But businesses are realising they have no choice but to get involved in the social media side of CRM." Hardy noted that brands can use social networks to turn negative experiences into positive ones by quickly and effectively responding to consumers' concerns. "It just takes one bad experience to poison the well.
"CRM is about trying to get a 360-degree view of your customer. If you don't have easy access to previous customer complaints and have insights into their past experiences, you really are hamstringing yourself," said Hardy.
According to him, a multi-channel CRM strategy is important across all industries. "Everybody has a customer. It is important that the customer can communicate with the organisation in the manner they choose." He described not communicating with customers via their chosen channels as being akin to "forcing a child to eat broccoli".
"CRM is becoming more and more about the customer experience, particularly for Oracle," concluded Bornheim. "Good CRM goes beyond the technology. It is about the people and processes linking into the business' needs in order to efficiently service the needs of their customers that make it successful."
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