The STORY Business – Case Study Overview “United Breaks Guitars”

Hi and welcome to a special video here at the story business you know we’re always talking about how storytelling is a really powerful communication tool for businesses however it’s equally as powerful when used by consumers or customers of that business so to talk about that we’re going to take a look back at a famous incident that happened.

In the year 2009 a customer of an airline was unsatisfied by the service and he made a tremendously powerful use of storytelling in order to well we can say rectify the situation the person we’re talking about is Dave Carol dave is a musician he’s also a volunteer fireman he’s from Nova Scotia in Canada from the city of Halifax and.

He had a very unusual situation happened to him when he was travelling on an airline to one of his shows from Dave’s point of view the airline was rather unfair with him in terms of customer experience or customer service so rather than just be unsatisfied with this lack of customer service or the poor customer experience Dave decided to tell a story.

In the best way that he knew how to do that so rather than tell you exactly what the story is about I’m gonna let him do that because he does it really really well what I will tell you are the key points of storytelling that Dave uses in order to communicate his message to his audience okay now Dave clearly establishes who.

The protagonist of the story is he clearly establishes who the antagonist of the story is okay and obviously the necessary elements of storytelling he clearly establishes what the conflict of the story is right but he also does something far more important than that because we could easily put those three elements into a story and well they.

Would be okay we would have some kind of a story but he really takes us on a journey right so he takes us through different instances of the story we can see where he began what he had to go through and how the situation finally ended okay but the part of the story that I will tell you is the fact that he decided to use social media to.

Communicate his story and this was a really wise decision in fact it alerted companies to the need of using social media for customer service for customer experience because it is such an important place to be and it kind of gave them the idea that if you’re not going to be telling your story then your customers will be doing it for you in.

Fact after the tremendous viral success of this video on YouTube a few years ago the airline immediately started to take action and to say that they were going to take steps and do this and do that and do the other but really by then it was too late the damage was done and it was so powerful that they actually their price on the stock.

Market right that the stock value of the company went down to the tune of a few hundred million dollars right had they perhaps listened to this unsatisfied customer in a timely manner this probably would never have happened what would what is also probably likely here is that Dave’s experience probably resonated with the experience of other.

Unhappy customers of other companies not just Airlines but you know think about internet service providers cell phone you know mobile phone carriers and and other public utility type companies and massive companies that deal with hundreds of thousands maybe millions of customers a day where the probability of getting something.

Wrong of screwing up and having unhappy people is really really a high one so well I’m not gonna tell you anything more about it I’m just gonna invite you to watch the video I think it makes for a really valid discussion on the power of social media as a channel but also of storytelling as a communication format rather than just you know stating the.

Facts and saying that you’re unhappy with it so I’m gonna leave you with the song and video from Dave Carol called United breaks guitars