(AP Photo/Mel Evans, File)
On Monday, United Airlines experienced a customer service incident that went viral. The problem began when a flight from Chicago to Louisville was fully booked and four United employees needed to get to Louisville as they were scheduled to be on another flight the next morning. After the plane was boarded, the crew realized they needed four passengers to disembark and take a later flight to accommodate the employees who were on their way to work. United offered compensation to anyone willing to give up their seat. Nobody accepted the offer, so the gate agent picked four passengers, supposedly at random, to remove from the flight. Three people got off the plane peacefully; however, one passenger said he was a doctor and had to get home to take care of patients and refused to give up his seat.
That is when the chaos began. United employees boarded the plane with airport security from the Chicago Department of Aviation Security, pulled the passenger out of his seat and dragged him across the floor of the plane. Some passengers were screaming, while others were recording the entire fiasco with their smart phones. And, you can guess what happened next.
Passengers posted their videos on various social channels and the incident went “viral.”
There are many people who will say that United Airlines was wrong, that it broke rules, abused the customer, etc., etc. I would never condone such behavior, but I’ll leave it to lawyers, judges and juries to determine if there was any wrongdoing that justifies a criminal or civil suit.
The days that followed saw apologies from United CEO Oscar Munoz, numerous articles written, predictions posted, and thousands of comments from people sharing their opinions. The stock price of United dropped as much as $900 million just a few days after the incident, although some of that loss has come back.
My opinion is that the public, while they may not forgive United so quickly, will move on and begin to forget about this incident as soon as something more interesting, or at least new, comes along. This will be a blip in United’s history. The stock price will come back. Business will return to normal, but what we learned will hopefully be remembered for a long time.
And, the lesson is that a customer, or in this case a passenger, with a cell phone is like a small-scale media outlet that can broadcast anything that seems interesting (or newsworthy) to friends, family members and followers. And, if it is interesting enough to those people, they will share it with their circles. And, the next thing you know, the video a customer shared with a few friends is seen by millions of people on different social channels.
YouTube, Facebook and other social media sites are simply channels of distribution for homemade videos that tell a story. Sometimes it’s funny or emotional. Or, it can be revealing, showing the side of a person they’d rather not show.
Years ago, I had a mild disagreement with a gate agent who gave away my seat. While I didn’t yell, it was obvious I was angry. Someone watching nearby made a comment to me as I walked away. This person had seen me speak at a convention that day. I was embarrassed. I had behaved in a way that was incongruent with my message earlier in the day. Lesson learned. You never know who will be watching you. Back then there weren’t video cameras embedded into mobile phones for people to capture the moment. But times have changed, and people and brands need to recognize that they may be watched and recorded.
There is an old saying about enjoying life, “Dance like nobody is watching.” Someone added to it by saying, “Live like someone is.” That’s about living within the boundaries of good taste and morals. A business operating in today’s “social” world might consider further modifying it to say:
“Dance like nobody’s watching. Treat the customer like somebody is.”
