June 2, 2011
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Company Culture
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As unpleasant as they may be, customer complaints help reveal blind spots in a business. With more vehicles than ever for people to air out their grievances, it's crucial that businesses do four things: Educate employees about how to react to complaints, respond in a timely manner, always be professional, and when appropriate, use some creativity and humor. To illustrate these, we looked back at four highly-publicized tales of poor customer service.
United Airlines
After musician Dave Carroll saw how United Airlines baggage handlers damaged his custom-made guitar from his airplane window, his band wrote a four-minute song about the incident and posted it on YouTube.
Within 48 hours, it had more than 24,000 views. This was all after Carroll had made countless calls to United representatives and spent $1,200 in repairs.
After the YouTube video was such a hit, the airline quickly contacted the musician.
“This has struck a chord with us, and we’ve contacted him directly to make it right,” Robin Urbanski, a spokeswoman for United said at the time.
The incident reportedly cost United Airlines $180 million (10 percent of share value) in 2009.
Verizon Wireless
After Cynthia Lacy's father died on December of 2009, she contacted Verizon to cancel his account. The cell phone company refused to cancel the account without his PIN number. The company continued to charge her until March of 2010, even after she sent it his death certificate.
"Well, there's nothing else I can do for you," the representative said before laughing and hanging up the phone.
It wasn't until Lacy contacted the media that Verizon decided to refund her for the months she was charged.
Southwest Airlines
Kevin Smith had just boarded a Southwest flight when he was told he was "too fat to fly." The Southwest captain had considered him a "safety risk."
Smith, a film director, tweeted the whole incident, which was picked up by large national media outlets, including USA Today and ABC.
His first tweet read: "Dear @SouthwestAir I know I'm fat, but was [the] captain [...] really justified in throwing me off a flight for which I was already seated?"
Southwest immediately issued apologies on its website and through Twitter: ”First and foremost, to Mr. Smith: we would like to echo our Tweets and again offer our heartfelt apologies to you. We are sincerely sorry for your travel experience on Southwest Airlines.”
Toyota
When Toyota's U.S. head of sales Jim Lentz appeared on the Feb. 1, 2010 morning news to discuss the company's retail crisis, he was criticized for being a week too late.
By then, 2.3 million vehicles in the U.S. had already been recalled due to a pedal defect linked to acceleration, and Toyota's president had already issued a 75-second apology.
By the end of the month, Lentz admitted that it had taken Toyota "too long" to respond.
The recall cost Toyota $21 billion in market value.
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