Broken guitars, dropped computers and customer experience

Customer care has long been a trending topic amongst bloggers, marketing gurus and sales professionals. Recently though, the wins and war stories of customer care have become more widespread and more personal. 

Take this home security cam video, for example. The FedEx driver was delivering, or tossing rather, one computer to a single home. Despite this being a personal experience, that video went viral - receiving over 20,000 views. (FedEx quickly put out a video with the vice president apologizing). 

Or, take the story of musician Dave Carroll, whose guitar was damaged on a United flight from Halifax to Omaha when the ground crew was tossing guitars on the tarmac during a layover in Chicago. One person’s personal experience, shared again via YouTube (now with nearly 12M views), is credited with influencing a 10% drop in United Airline's stock price, costing stockholders about $180 million in value. 

The lesson I see is that one consumer’s poor (or positive!) customer experience can influence an entire enterprise. The negative experiences are the ones that seem to go viral, but it is causing companies to put much more emphasis on customer care and customer experience. 

We recently conducted a survey, taking feedback from professionals in various industries, to find the top support priorities for 2012 – no surprise, a better customer experience ranked #1! To find out more, check out the video overview of the survey results or download a brief overview of solutions for global customer support.