United Breaks Guitars1. Evaluate United's response to Dave Carroll's Video. Six Dimension of the Genre Model Why- to answer the questions and to counter the negative publicity spread by Carroll’s video What- talked about the improvement in service and baggage handling Who- general public, people who were present online Where- twitter, YouTube, emails When- sometimes immediate and sometimes late response to the tweets How- used formal language to console the rage of the people July 7- immediate call to Carroll after a united employee noted the tweet from one of Carroll’s friend but Carroll wasn’t found. They tweeted about this incident and accepted the fault July 7, 2.31 pm- they again responded to the tweets by public with the same statement as above July 8, 3.39 pm –replied to Ryan Moore and emphasised on the claim within 24 hours policy July 8, 5.02 pm- tried to accept the failure in delivery and appreciated the video as an improvement in service July 10, 10.13 am- reported about the 3K donation as was told by Carroll July 14, 11.24 am- went back on emphasising on 24 hours policy July 14, 6.45 pm- apologised again for the mishandling Sep 14- face to face meeting with Carroll and tour of O’Hare baggage-handling Positives Accepting the mistake & apologizing for the failure in delivery Took the video in positive manner and assured of using it for service training Offered compensation to Carroll Donated the amount to music school as requested by Carroll Immediate action to the tweet at the earlier stage Selective response to the tweets by the media personnel Did not get into argument with all the people into twitter Assured time to time to the people about the improvement in service Negatives Claimed it as on odd experience-99.95 % accuracy Sticking and promoting the 24 hours policy sent a negative attitude of the company Should have not repeated the same message again & again as this sends a signal that they are not doing anything 2. Why was this video seen by so many people so quickly? The campaign was very well handled by Carroll & his friends. The reasons of success are Simultaneous & effective use of social media by them which includes twitter, Digg & other social sites which have the voting option Tweet to the persons who had the similar experience spread a sort of buzz effect Immediate pickup by the websites like Consumerist.com, Los Angeles travel section etc. who deal with customer satisfaction & travel respectively The reporting of the video by these sites further brought the video in limelight and hits continued Reporting of the incident by the mainstream media further brought the matter in general public’s eyes Bob Taylor also leveraged upon the opportunity and supported the campaign Did the airline handle the incident well? • • • Issued a sincere apology, sprinkled in some humour, and even came out and said that they wanted to use this video for Training Purposes United was selective in the type of media they used to respond to the incident While they answered journalist queries, they did not address it on its website or on its You tube channel Next day another video was updated on YouTube with Carroll acknowledging the apology but only 200,000 people viewed it which was actually only 5% of the people watching the other one Should have issued their own humorous You Tube response The airline’s belated decision to donate $3,000 to the lonious Monk Institute of Jazz as a gesture of goodwill(Carroll said he was beyond the point of accepting money) did nothing to contain the damage • • 3. In general, how should corporations prepare for the challenge posed by user-generated videos and other material disseminated over social-media? To tackle such a problem the company should have a dedicated person/team who reports such an incident and the matter to be addressed immediately but after planning and strategizing Mere apologizing would not satisfy the people who are talking about the service failure, the company should take some tangible actions like change in the training procedures or action plan in this case The tangible action should be promoted as an answer to the mass who are spreading negative publicity Learning from the mistake and fixing it will help the corporation Assuring the customer of not repeating the mistake Provide compensation to the affected person