service industry case study analysis on famous "united breaks guitar"

1. UNITED BREAKS GUITAR
Presentation By Sujaya M.S

2. “Its been said a customer with positive
experience tells to 4 people whereas
customer with a bad experience say it to 14
but in my case its 100 million people”- Dave
Carroll

3. •United breaks guitar a music video of Dave Carroll
released on June 8 ,2009 a response to united airlines for
mishandling and damaging his Taylor guitar worth $3500
and not providing compensation
•This case study can be marked as the importance of
customer service and service recovery being the crunch
of marketing rather than any other marketing and PR
events
•United breaks guitar is referred as the complaint
anthem
•15 month seeking compensation for his guitar Dave
Carroll , ended up with immense popularity
,opportunities from all around the world

4. UNITED AIRLINES
•A US Based international airlines with about 3300
flights a day
•Due deregulation in the industry , fare slashing a need
to cut down operational costs arrived
Which marked:-
•Layoffs
•Renegotiation of salaries
•Outsourcing maintenance
•20% cut down on work force
•United concentrated more on the deregulation that
falling service quality and customer satisfaction was
not taken into account
•This mislead in strategy was a boomerang with the
video united breaks guitar and a massive outbreak of
customers all around the globe turning against on the
airlines

5. •video opens with actors playing united
staff throwing guitar , breaking it giving a
negative touch to the roles
•The staff represents the united airlines in
whole and their lack of customer service
• The video had a catchy background
music , and a funny touch to scenes
•Portraying a serious matter in a funny
and entertaining way attained more
views
VIDEO SYNOPSIS
•Dave Carroll acted his own role, His
entire journey of service recovery
and disappointment was shown in
best way possible
•The video had about 24000 view,
461 comments all in support of Dave
Carroll

6. Gap
analysis
v
Customer gap- expected service and
perceived service
Service delivery gap-mismatch
between service specification
and actual service delivery
Listening gap – lack of upward
communication, no service recovery
Service design and standards gap-
poor systematic service design

7. •Rerouting to various call centre when asked
for service recovery by Carroll caused the
issue to come out as big
•At beginning when the customer satisfaction
index was going down the conformance gap
was properly dealt
•A wholesome of cash and effort had to be
put into to gain customer loyalty back after
this incident
?where united failed
• The failure of united airlines
was at inadequate service
recovery, upward communication
issue
•Failure to retain the customers
and their loyalty

8. Thank you