The case this week depicts some embarrassing customer interactions for United and Comcast (and a few more) with employees providing poor service, in the case of United breaking a guitar and Comcast serviceman falling asleep on the job. While these individual interactions may represent a minute fraction of the overall workforce, the power of the web to amplify them (viral videos) makes it harder for an organization to control it's "message" or "image" when irate customers go online to complain. Though it's hard to believe that the single event "lost" $180M from United value. The airline sector is a volatile sector having 10% swings on other days as well as the fact that the stock rebounded from it's drop fairly quickly. Still, there is a risk to corporate value, just a bit harder to quantify.
It's true that with any new technology it changes the dynamics between customer <> company interactions. In particular with something so broad as the web, companies can deliver more relevant information across a wide swath of it's customer-base very quickly. Plane schedules, work outages, disruptions - the web enables the company to communicate these more effectively. At the same time, embarrassing situations can cause havok. The number of images / movies / embarrassments is only bound to increase. How a company manages these situations should be incorporated in its' social network strategy (and if it doesnt have a strategy formulated it should create one SOON) At a minimum the strategy should include:
1. Monitoring of social media (twitter, FB, google alerts, others)
2. A central response team (it may not always be best for all employees to have own twitter account)
3. A learning component (like United using the song in it's training videos)
4. The realization that mistakes will happen, embarrassing situations will occur. It's best to embrace the technology rather than resist it.
5. A good legal team to ensure that the company isn't hoaxed by false videos / rumors , etc.
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