Visible Measures Blog

Many of us plan our ultimate revenge when fighting with customer service representatives. Up until recently, we could write a nasty letter, fire off an expletive-packed e-mail, post to one of countless online discussion boards, relate the negative experience to friends, or take it out on a luckless employee who probably had nothing to do with the problem in the first place.

Today, however, social media gives us new, and vastly more powerful, tools to share our displeasure... like, say, viral video. As has been recounted widely, Sons of Maxwell, a country music group, flew United Airlines last year as part of a tour and were, shall we say, dismayed to find their exceptionally expensive guitars damaged upon arrival. Dave Carroll, the lead singer of the group, battled with United Airlines for reimbursement but, despite countless phone calls and endless back-and-forth, United claimed no responsibility in the end and unceremoniously sent Sons of Maxwell on their way.

Out a few Taylor guitars and bitter from dealing with customer service reps for nine months, the group cleverly switched venues, changing the forum for the debate from the United customer service process -- where they were at a distinct disadvantage going up against a multi-national corporation -- to the world of viral video -- where their song-writing and musical chops had the ability to change the situation. See below for the result:  

United Breaks Guitars

What has the impact of this been? Well, since appearing less than 10 days ago, our Viral Reach Database has identified 30+ unique placements associated with video. These placements have collectively received more than 3.2 million views (!!) and a whopping 14,000+ comments. 

Some brief analysis of this sea of comments unsurprisingly reveals that "United" is by far the most-used term, with the vast majority of comments citing bad experiences, boycotts, and even other broken guitars. To their credit, United has called the video a "unique learning opportunity" for customer service and has requested to use the music video internally to help change the way they interact with customers. Indeed. 

Unless customer service starts getting better quickly, we can be sure to see more creative responses to similar frustrations. How would you respond in this situation? Let us know by leaving a comment below.

For more on viral video buzz, please follow @visiblemeasures and @mcutler on Twitter and subscribe to our blog.

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The data used in this post was collected from our Viral Reach Database, a constantly growing video repository of analytic data on 100+ million Internet videos from 150+ video-sharing destinations.