BOW+ARROW

The Art of the Online Complaint

July 1st, 2010
by Kevin Smith

If I were to imagine a group of people that work in customer service within the travel industry were to get together and talk about the “glory days”, my guess would be that they were referring to a time before social media factored into their jobs.

Not too long ago, travelers that wanted to complain about an airline or hotel would be sitting on hold for a long, long time, usually listening to very bad hold music with a recorded voice every now and again reminding them that their call is important…even if it’s really not.

Well the “glory days” are over and social media has made complaining about someone’s product or service not only much more of a creative exercise, but also much more effective.

Sure, there are many people that use tools like Twitter for run-of-the-mill complaints about fuzzy cable or delayed flights, and do so in a very similar way to how they would over the phone. However, many have proven that if you really want your complaint to mean something you have to put a little more thought into it.

For instance, musicians among us have probably heard that United Airlines breaks guitars. When Dave Carroll, a singer with the band Sons of Maxwell, had his $3,500 guitar broken by some uncaring baggage handlers at United Airlines, he complained in a way he knew best – musically – and on YouTube. His first United song has over 8.7 million views and United was forced to contact him directly and “make it right”, which they would not do when he first simply called them.

Another example comes from a man with a great name (if I do say so myself), director Kevin Smith. At the time of his, now-famous, incident with Southwest airlines when he was kicked off a plane for being “too wide” for one seat, Mr. Smith already had quite an online following with over 1.6 million twitter followers and a blog with a loyal readership. He immediately used both to get a public apology from Southwest and put many of Southwest’s policies into question – also very publicly.

But you don’t have to be famous or be a musician in order to have your complaint go viral. A Virgin Airlines passenger drafted what some claim is the ‘world’s best complaint letter’. The result of the letter – besides quite a bit of press – was a personal call from Sir Richard Branson thanking him for his “constructive if tongue-in-cheek” e-mail.

How many times has a CEO called you after a complaint – let alone a knight?

Becoming a more vocal traveler is becoming easier too. The travel market research firm PhocusWright claims that “social media use among travelers is growing faster than the travel industry itself as unique monthly visitors to social travel sites jumped 24% between the first have of 2008 and the last half of 2009”.

And it makes sense when you think about it in terms of ‘the strength of weak ties’ (PDF), a theory often cited when talking about networking or a job search. However, it’s just as applicable in the travel industry, now that social media has come into play.

Someone out there in the fringe of your social network has had an experience that you can gain from and that new information will be the determining factor in your decision process – whether it comes to you as a tweet, status comment or video. Have any doubts? Just ask any musician you know if they’ll be taking United the next time they fly.

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This post was featured as a social media dream segment of the July 1st edition of This Week In Social Media.

Kevin Smith is an Account Supervisor at PJA Advertising & Marketing. Follow him on Twitter: @Mr_KevinSmith

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