When Number 26 on Forbes’ list of Most Influential Women in Media has a bad experience with your product, you have a problem. When she shares that bad experience with her Twitter followers — all 1,145,058 of them — you have a pretty big one. Maytag now faces a customer-service-meets-social-media crisis of the magnitude of the United Airlines busted baggage jingle or Domino’s Pizza viral video, thanks to one unhappy, high-profile customer.

Heather Armstrong, a.k.a Dooce, is the most popular mommy blogger ever — arguably the most popular personal blogger, period. She chronicles life as a stay-at-home mom in colorful language, sharing detailed accounts of everything from post-partum depression to her relationship with her Mormon family to natural childbirth. It’s hard to find numbers on her site traffic, but her posts draw anywhere from 300 to 1,000 comments, and advertisers on her blog include several blue chip companies. And her Twitter following is just as big.

When she was unhappy with the way Maytag responded (or failed to respond) to her almost brand-new, $1300 broken washing machine, she took it up with the same vivid gusto as any other topic.

It’s caused a big stir in the social media space, because when “Dooce” issues the call “DO NOT BUY MAYTAG,” it’s the Web 2.0 equivalent of a boycott. Her readers and followers have been supportive and amused, while others have called her a bully who’s been irresponsible with her media power. Either way, following #maytag makes for a pretty fiery read.

Maytag has put a toe in the social media water with a couple of Twitter feeds, neither of which is particularly active. But the company now finds itself thrust into the space — with zero control over the dialogue. Without an established social media forum to speak from, Maytag is at the mercy of Dooce, her supporters and her detractors to convey how Maytag may or may not be addressing the situation. Maytag has issued no official statement yet, but Dooce’s tweets on the subject indicate they are working quickly to resolve the issue to her satisfaction.

However Dooce and Maytag settle the issue of the broken $1300 washing machine, it’s yet another cautionary tale for brands that a meaningful social media presence is an essential element of public relations.

A few years ago, I had what has, luckily, been my only largely negative experience with an airline. I swore off the company and wrote a complaint letter, but when I received a free trip voucher along with an apology note, the airline quickly regained my business. I got what I was ultimately looking for—acknowledgement of the mistake and some decent customer service.

Unfortunately for United Airlines, a single unaddressed customer complaint turned into a full-blown social media crisis. When Dave Carroll’s numerous phone calls and e-mails to the company yielded no response, he took his grievance to a different outlet where he knew he would be heard—YouTube.

Carroll, who claims the airline broke his $3,500 guitar on a flight last year, joined forces with his band, Sons of Maxwell, and created a music video chronicling his complaint and the lack of customer service. The video grabbed the attention of not only United Airlines, but 2.5 million others, with 20,000 ratings and over 13,000 comments.

With platforms like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, it is now more imperative than ever that companies listen to their customers. As United Airlines has undoubtedly learned, if you won’t listen, customers can find a much bigger audience who will.

Although the Manhattan weather was grey and drizzly, bright discussion abounded late last month inside the Hyatt Grand Hotel, where I got the chance to attend the 2009 Forrester Customer Experience Forum.

I’ve whittled a week of great insights down to a few top takeaways about the state of customer experience today.

• The pendulum is swinging. The correlation between customer satisfaction and loyalty has always been high, but has increased in recent months. Studies show that consumers crave human connection now more than ever. Companies who treat their customers like just a number may not realize that it is reflected, somewhat ironically, in their numbers. Bruce Tempkin, Vice President at Forrester, shared this slide, which shows the jaw-dropping revenue potential that modest customer experience improvements could bring to a $10 billion company.*

• You do know who I am, right? Smart companies realize that consolidated customer interaction data across all touch-points (phone number, e-mail address, physical address) is necessary to provide convenience and personalization that tomorrow’s customers will expect.
• Heed the voice of the consumer. Companies who think they already know what their customers need are often sorely mistaken. And there is a growing variety of ways to uncover your customer’s unmet needs. Popular “listening posts” include call center data, sales reps, user surveys, usability tests, and error reports, but monitoring the social web introduces new listening opportunities. David Cush, CEO of Virgin America reported that customers who tweet from the air about bad experiences are often met at the gate by representatives empowered to resolve the situation. Follow @VirginAmerica to see Virgin’s Twitter account in action.
• Authenticity precedes love. Just like in the dating world, pretending to be who you think your prospect wants you to be is a big, fat turnoff. Only through identifying exactly who your organization actually is and being true to that identity can your company create authentic connections, which are rare and highly desired by the consumer.
• What’s rewarded is accomplished. Achieving a better customer experience requires a clear shared vision and accountability throughout the organization. Hiring mechanisms that help the company identify the most passionate, engaged employees is one part of achieving this. Setting project metrics and employee goals around customer experience are also great ways to cultivate internal ownership. T. Michael Roberts successfully lobbied to get new deliverables into required project documentation at JP Morgan so that the customer experience is better protected as new initiatives roll out. He also requires his employees to put in time monthly to listen to customer service calls. After all, he says, every service call reflects an unmet customer need.

A big thanks Forrester for an insightful week in NY.

See pictures from the event on Flickr.

*Prediction based on data from the North American Technographics® Customer Experience Online Survey conducted in Q4 2008.