I completely agree with you that organizations needn’t treat every YouTube threat as an all-hand-on-deck sort of situation. It would only take a few of those folks crying wolf before such threats would be ignored anyways.

I’m not sure i agree, though, with the idea that viral video-related threats are necessarily equal with normal ones (from a marketing/branding/public relations perspective). I think most people who deal with these threats would agree that customer-service-related complaints are not all created equal. There are at least two elements of each threat which, i think, differentiate them (new media or not): a) the person’s influence, and b) the extent through which they can use that influence in communication channels. For example, one client told a funny story about how a very well-known musician (influence) had visited her organization, and then later that evening ridiculed the organization’s customer service practices while giving a concert to many thousands of people (is present in a popular communication channel). I can tell you for sure that the organization was far more concerned about this musician’s complaint because of his meeting these two criteria.

If we use these two factors when comparing a viral video-related threat by a Dave Carroll to the normal “i’m going to tell all three of my friends” phone call threat from me, i am pretty sure one deserves more credence than the other, because a) Dave Carroll is influential enough to be flying around the country giving concerts [e.g., is influential], and b) he has the tools necessary to succeed in viral ways [a quick look at his YouTube page reveals that he is a pretty good musician who has made music videos before] (remember that this is only the functional consideration. ethically, if the company is in the wrong, they should fix the situation regardless of the customer’s influence). Further, doesn’t it feel like a new media-fluent workforce would be better able to make that judgment – and perhaps to find opportunities within the situation?

However, I think it’s a bit of a stretch to claim (or imply) that a threat to go create a viral video based on one’s poor customer service experiences is any more severe than the more run-of-the-mill threats that these customer service agents hear on a regular basis. While, as you said, music videos are more likely to “go viral,” and an accomplished musician has more of the required tools to create a successful viral video, most viral video attempts end in failure.

Take even the best i310 class videos–they don’t get more than a few thousand hits, though not for lack of thought and attention to detail. United can’t treat the threat of creating a retaliatory viral video as some sort of “oh no time to go into damage control mode” situation–most viral videos (like most threats to escalate customer service situations) will go nowhere.

In my opinion, in this case the customer service folks from the airlines only needed to possess a rudimentary awareness of new media (e.g. “this is a valid means of carrying out a retailliation against our company”), which I think is less of an awareness than you are suggesting. Of course, understanding new media on a deeper level doesn’t hurt, but it’s a stretch to say that if the customer service guy had taken i310 United’s stock wouldn’t have dropped

And there’s pretty much *no way* that United’s customer service department would ever be on top of new media to the point where they’d see any customer service THREAT as a potential customer service OPPORTUNITY. That would simply be too awesome for my brain to handle.