The 'United Breaks Guitars' Guy Resolves Your Consumer Complaints

You probably don't know Dave Carroll, but you definitely know what happened to him. He's the guy who took a United Airlines flight from Halifax to Nebraska with a connection at Chicago's O'Hare Airport, only to sit on the tarmac there and watch the baggage crew fling his -- WAIT! I'll let him explain it ...














That video has over 1.5 million views on Youtube (1,556,231 to be exact) and counting. When the video first debuted in 2009, Carroll's plight was picked up by every major news outlet worldwide, from the big four of CBS, ABC, NBC and FOX to 24 hour news networks like CNN, MSNBC and FOX News.

"Sometimes things live on the internet and they get their 10 million hits, but it's only there," says Carroll. "United Breaks Guitars was happening at the same time and both sides, the traditional media side and the online viral component, were working to fan the flames of each other, so it became a worldwide traditional media story and a worldwide viral hit at the same time, which was intense."

The whole crazy story is chronicled in Carroll's new book, United Breaks Guitars: The Power of One Voice in the Age of Social Media along with the beginnings of his new company Gripevine. Gripevine is a website where people can post their customer complaints which are forwarded past frontline customer service reps to the executives who can do something about it. These executives then get an opportunity to phone the person back and resolve the gripe for them.
The Guitar Gripe

As for his own gripe, the band arrived in Nebraska too late to do anything about it, but at soundcheck the next day, they confirmed the the guitar was indeed broken. However, when they approached United Airlines on the way back, the woman at the desk said they'd have to complain where they checked-in, which was Halifax. Problem is, United doesn't have a presence in Halifax.

Air Canada is their Star Alliance partner and they referred Carroll to a 1-800 number, but when he called he was told he'd have to go back to the Air Canada desk at the airport. Then Air Canada said that they would open a claim, but said it would be automatically denied because Air Canada wouldn't pay for United's damage.

Sure enough, that and the fact that, he didn't file a claim within 24 hours, would be the biggest excuses he would hear. He ended up calling India and getting routed to Chicago. "Chicago said, 'Just bring the guitar in,' as if I live right in the neighbourhood," said Carroll. At this point, it was months later and the guitar had already been repaired, so they gave him the number to the head office in New York and the first thing out of New York's mouth was, "How did you get this number?"

All Carroll wanted was the $1,200 it took to repair his entirely written-off guitar: "I said, 'Just give me $1,200 in flight vouchers to pay for what I actually paid in cash." Eventually, it took the YouTube videos (three in total, chronicling the whole sad saga) and the media coverage to finally get an e-mail response from United Airlines that summarily rejected his solution and instead donated $3,000 to the Thelonious Monk Institute for Jazz over nine months later. Carroll had stumbled onto an entirely new concept in 2009: using social media, YouTube and the publicity that results to pressure a company into doing the right thing.

A Song for Service Solidarity

"I'm not going to say I was the first, but using music as a consumer advocacy tool wasn't doing a lot -- not successfully at all," says Carroll. "I just decided to turn my frustrations toward something I do well and I'm passionate about, which is writing songs. That's why I said right from the start that I'm going to do three because I thought I'd need three cracks to reach one million -- my goal. I wanted to stop wasting my time, so I said, 'I'm going to invest my time in writing three songs about this, so if no one ever watches them I will at least have three songs about the same thing without any song sounding the same. Everything changed and I stopped being upset about it."

He also started getting people writing to him and sharing their gripes and experiences with bad customer service. "I knew everyone had bad airline experiences, but I didn't know that by watching that video, you'd be entertained and you'd probably start a conversation with your friends about your bad customer service experiences and that's what I keep hearing all the time," says Carroll.

"I got 10,000 e-mails in two the first two weeks of 'United Breaks Guitars' going viral. Most of them were, 'Congratulations on the video and here's what happened to me.' It was a spark for a lot of consumers who finally felt vindicated."

Heard Through the Gripevine

He had managed to cut through the noise with his music and get his gripe resolved and he wanted to give the thousands he had heard from that same ability. A year and a half ago, he got that opportunity when Toronto entrepreneur Richard Hue phoned him with the framework for Gripevine.

"We believed in the same thing: I'm not out to bash a brand and bring it to its knees, just because I had a bad experience with them," says Carroll.

"Confrontation won't solve anything. It's the solutions that solve problems, never the confrontations. So, we both agreed that if you want to help consumers solve problems, you have to give companies incentive too, and that comes from a fair and open playing field that isn't just about bashing brands."

It starts with consumers "planting their gripe" on the site. They can take as long as they want to tell what happened to them and what they want as a solution. They can even upload a video. They are given options as far as what they can request, such as payment, credit, an apology, all of the above or they can come up with their own remedy.

Their proprietary response technology pushes the complaint past the regular customer service personnel to someone higher up in the company with decision-making power. Those people are then told that someone made a complaint about their company on Gripevine and then asked to respond either online or off-line. Companies can also use the dashboard on their Gripevine page to manage thousands of complaints without losing any in the shuffle. The system is free for consumers and by subscription for companies.

"We depend on businesses to embrace it and the reason they're going to is not because we're going to sell it to them. The selling is in the fact that people are complaining by the millions online and if companies want to be relevant, all the experts say that people like to be responded to in the same way that they reached out to you; so more often they don't want a phone call if they sent you a text."

Sure, some companies respond to their customers through their Facebook page, but Carroll points out you have to "Like" their company in order to communicate with them that way and often they delete the comments that paint them in a poor light. Twitter can be effective as well, but it's only 140 characters.

"This is a tool for companies and we're not saying, 'You better go here to resolve this complaint or you'll be sorry.' We're saying, 'You should go here because it will save you time, save you money and it will shave minutes off the amount of time you need to deal with customers."

On the customer side, Gripevine could work for those who don't know the customer service number for a particular company and can't find it on their website without searching high and low. Gripevine could serve as a one-stop shop in those cases. Plus, the company calls you, so being trapped on the phone can be someone else's plight.

The site has just left the beta phase and has about 7500 registered users (Of course, not all of them have lodged complaints, but Carroll is hoping they'll now know where to go when they have one) and over 100 Fourtune 1000 companies, such as Verizon and Coca-Cola, using the site.

"We're finding that 20% of the gripes are being resolved and for a new company with a new system that no one has really heard about, one in five is pretty good," says Carroll. "It probably would be one in 100 through traditional means."

Confident and Competent Complaining

Of course, for Carroll there is a right way and a wrong way to complain. His wife, who is a customer service manager herself, reminded him to never get mad at the front line customer service reps because they're just doing their job.

"Usually, it's just about the policy and never about the person," says Carroll. "They're only the bearers of bad news, so yelling at them is completely fruitless and will only make them hang up on you."

His advice is be clear, know what you want going into it, keep it short and be fair. "If your luggage is lost, don't ask the airline for $2 million in compensatory damages. It has got to be measurable," he says.

Fairness goes for the companies too, but also they need enough empathy to put themselves in the customer's shoes. "Most of all," he says. "Don't treat everybody with a complaint as though they're that tiny minority who are trying to rip you off."

When he's not crusading for the customer, Dave Carroll is still making music. His new album, 'Raincoat in Vegas' is available through iTunes and at www.davecarrollstore.com.