Customer service 2.0: New technology, same basic tenets

 

Although it has never been in a company's best interest to have an unhappy customer, the arrival of social media websites like Facebook and Twitter have made it much harder for businesses to ignore any weaknesses in customer service. After all, the cost of poor service – once measured in the loss of single consumers – can now have an immediate and far-reaching impact.

 

For example, millions of people around the world are now familiar with the story of Canadian singer Dave Carroll, who composed United Breaks Guitars after his acoustic guitar was damaged at Chicago's O'Hare airport. Normally, when airlines damage or lose their passenger's luggage, they might end up paying out compensation in the region of a few hundred pounds. However, in the social media firestorm that followed this incident (Carroll's song became an instant hit on YouTube, with nearly four million views in its first 10 days online), United Airlines lost 10% of its share value, a massive $180 million.

 

The problem here is that United Airlines didn't just make a mistake with Carroll, but with millions of other people at the same time. Ordinary, mild-mannered citizens who may have been quietly dissatisfied with United Airlines suddenly had a public forum to vent their frustrations. In this way, social media web sites allow everyday consumers to speak publicly about something that is very important to them, and the effect can be wildly empowering. For any company that is unlucky enough to find themselves in this particular line of fire, the effect can be similar to a class-action law suit, where the voices of many provide much more power than the voice of one person alone.

 

 

Before the widespread popularity of social media websites, dissatisfied customers might have contacted consumer-focused television shows (like Watchdog in the UK) for help, but they now have easy access to a wide variety of options for airing their grievances, all of which give them a loud voice on a global scale. In fact, to say that the social media revolution has given customers a louder voice is an understatement: it's more like word-of-mouth on steroids.