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"The musician responsible for exposing 11 million YouTube viewers to the catchy tune \"United Breaks Guitars\" \u2014 contributing to a major drop in United's stock price \u2014 is something of an standard-bearer for the importance of good customer service.\nThe success of \"United Breaks Guitars\" has been almost as good for the musician, Dave Carroll, as it has been bad for United. He's launched a career as a globe-trotting speaker and starts every presentation with the question: \"who here has had a bad experience with an airline?\" A book he authored, United Breaks Guitars: the Power of One Voice in the Age of Social Media, will hit bookstores in May. \nNow Carroll is helping to launch a customer service platform called Gripevine.\nGripevine, which will come out of beta on Thursday, is a public platform for customer service. Users can post their \"gripes\" on specific company product pages and invite their social networks to contribute supporting clicks. \nThe startup uses automated channels to alert companies when they have Gripes against them and give them a chance to respond either privately or publicly. When they do respond, the customer rates his or her service to contribute to an index of customer service quality. The idea, from co-founders Richard Hue and Chris Caple, is that Gripevine a place where people are looking for responses from customer service representatives. It hopes to sell companies premium accounts to manage complaints.\nCarroll joined the startup after trying to build something similar on his own without the necessary technical skills. \n\"I got hundreds of requests from people asking me to write a song for them [after a bad customer service experience],\" he told Mashable. \"I can\u2019t write a song for everybody, but I want to help the world as much as I can.\"\nTechnically, Carroll's title at Gripevine is co-founder. But a form on his own website suggests he would more accurately be defined as a spokesperson: \"[if you] would like to discuss a partnership or client arrangement with me that focuses on a common mission to 'Improve the world, one experience at a time,' I would love to hear from you and about your company.\"\nCarroll is a perfect example of how YouTube isn't just fragmenting video entertainment, but also celebrity. Before YouTube, where could an early-stage customer service startup find someone recognized by a mainstream audience as a champion of customer service? And how could a musician with a complaint wind up as the face of a company? \nOther YouTube celebrities have found similar arrangements for their own niches. A startup political platform invited \"double rainbow guy\" Paul Vasquez to run for president on its platform. Antoine Dodson, featured in the most-viewed non-celebrity YouTube video of 2010, endorsed an app that detects sex offenders with momentum from \"Bed Intruder.\"\nAnd thanks to YouTube, more spokespeople are being made everyday.\nCarroll points out that Gripevine allows users to upload photos and YouTube videos with their complaints.\n\"So who knows,\" he says, \"maybe there\u2019s a new song coming out of Gripevine.\""^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2012/02/02/united-breaks-guitars-gripevine/>