How to handle user-generated content

In general, how should organizations deal with issues posed by user-generated content and other information spread over social media?

With countless social networks, blogs, and forums available at the fingertips of any Internet user, information travels around the world in a matter of one click. These communication channels have woken up a lot of organizations and made them remember the main reason they are still in business: the customers. For years, customer satisfaction has seemed to be put on the back burner when organizations prioritize the focus of their strategy and operations. The 'United Breaks Guitars' case is a perfect example of how a company's lack of concern to address its customer's complaints can lead to millions of dollars in headaches and bad press.

As consumers, we are now in an age where services like Yelp, Trip Advisor, as well as social networks such as Twitter and Facebook, provide an opportunity to share our experiences (good, but mostly bad) with various organizations. This platform is also available for organizations to reach out to their customer base and provide information on new products and services, alert customers about upcoming promotions, and even get input from customers for new ideas and products. Organizations must realize we are in a service-driven economy and customers have too many options available to just assume they will come back regardless of satisfaction. It is very difficult to satisfy every customer each time they patronize an organization, but it is easy for a large company like United or Comcast to make things right when an issue arises. It is hard to imagine that such companies have a system in place that gives the run around to customers with a complaint or issue, such as Dave Carroll, but the reality is many companies have this maze type of system in place.

Organizations need to get back to the basic fundamentals of good business: customer satisfaction and retention. User-generated content should be used as a metric to determine how customers are reaching to various aspects of how an organization is performing. Issues should be addressed directly and quickly in order to ensure each transaction is met with complete satisfaction. I believe that user-generated content focused on organizational issues and complaints should be viewed as an opportunity to directly address issues and make changes in the operation of the organization rather than a problem that needs to be silenced as soon as possible. Just look at how this one issue created such a problem for United. Companies such as Zappos would never have to deal with an issue like this because they understand their role as a retail organization: make customers happy and make them want to come back. Before the video and story about the broken guitar went viral, did United make any genuine attempt to make this right? Nope. But why should they? It's just one person, just one guitar, just one customer...