United Airlines Debacle Teaches Valuable Social Media Customer Care Lesson
By Shep Hyken/ Leadership/ Forbes/ forbes.com
"On Monday, United Airlines experienced a
customer service incident that went viral. The problem began when a flight from Chicago to Louisville was overbooked and four United employees needed to get to Louisville as they were scheduled to be on another flight the next morning. After the plane was boarded, the crew realized they needed four passengers to disembark and take a later flight to accommodate the employees who were on their way to work. As is typical for oversold flights, United offered compensation to anyone willing to give up their seat. Nobody accepted the offer, so the gate agent picked four passengers, supposedly at random, to remove from the flight. Three people got off the plane peacefully; however, one passenger said he was a doctor and had to get home to take care of patients and refused to give up his seat....
....My opinion is that the public, while they may not forgive United so quickly, will move on and begin to forget about this incident as soon as something more interesting, or at least new, comes along. This will be a blip in United’s history. The stock price will come back. Business will return to normal, but what we learned will hopefully be remembered for a long time.
And, the lesson is that a customer, or in this case a passenger, with a cell phone is like a small-scale media outlet that can broadcast anything that seems interesting (or newsworthy) to friends, family members and followers. And, if it is interesting enough to those people, they will share it with their circles. And, the next thing you know, the video a customer shared with a few friends is seen by millions of people on different social channels."
(AP Photo/Mel Evans, File)
Richard
