United breaks guitars …

If you think not offering genuine customer service isn’t all that important then here’s 4.1 million reasons to think again.

More than four million people have been exposed to a colossal customer service failure on the part of United Airlines because of a specific incident where they demonstrated the very essence of lousy customer service.

In 2008, singer Dave Carroll and the Sons of Maxwell were flying to Nebraska on a one-week tour. While in Chicago, a passenger noted out the window that the ground crew were throwing guitars. As Carroll looked, it just so happened one of the guitars being thrown was his $3,500.00 Taylor guitar, damaged to the extent of $1,200.00 in repairs.

Carroll immediately pursued the issue with three different United employees, only to be responded to with indifference. After spending nearly a year pursuing the matter, Carroll has gotten nowhere in trying to get United to reimburse him for the cost to repair the damage United employees caused to his guitar.

So United got away with not having to pay?

On the contrary! They have paid significantly in bad press.

Carroll has written a song about the negative experience, which has now been viewed by more than 4.1 million people via YouTube, not to mention any of the audiences who hear the song performed live (see the video post below).

What could have been a situation that could have been resolved between Carroll and only a handful of United employees has now become a story of bad customer service known to millions.

One customer not treated properly affects your brand exponentially! That’s a simple but HUGE lesson business leaders need to get serious about.

To that end, let me encourage you to read “Raving Fans!” by Ken Blanchard. It’s an easy, quick read, but an awesome resource on the topic of developing truly great customer service.

For my Christian friends, there’s a great lesson here for us as well. We’ve often heard our lives touch many other lives in ways we don’t even know. But let me suggest that how we live our lives, and especially how we treat and interact with others, can be as exponential as throwing guitars … only far more significantly.

Scotty