Liberty Insurance AMA

LuckyLloyd

I would never expect interesting content from a company "AMA".

Special Circumstances

Senor Fancy Pants wrote: »

In my opinion, the decision to use the "AMA" Forum for an obvious marketing ploy was poppycock and took away from the entertaining and genuine AMA threads. It was disrespectful to think that the community would respond positively to such an overt attempt to drum up business for Liberty Insurance under the guise of an innocent "AMA" for younger drivers.

QFT.

Complete poppycock.

Canned responses to cherrypicked "safe" questions - and even then any queries on the blatant inconsistencies between Liberty's parallel universe and ours were discouraged.

Pathetic.

LoLth

I think any AMA with a company is going to have limitations. Any company representative, posting in public on behalf of the company has an obligation to not open the company up to legal action or to damage its reputation. Thats fair enough and is a common social media policy across many organisations. Some go further and say that any employees of the company cannot post anything bad about their employer from their own personal accounts and others go even further and police employee behaviour in general on social media.

So, now an employee of Liberty Insurance is participating in an AMA. Of course he cant answer questions on quote specifics - if it disagrees with what was provided by the company elsewhere it could leave the company liable for wrongly charging.

He also cannot comment on hypothetical situation as these may be based on claims under consideration and may negatively impact the decision process.

He cannot comment on company views on the differences between regions (do you park your car in Killinarden or in Shrewsbury road?) because this might give rise to claims of the company being discriminatory.

He cannot clarify back-end procedures to any great degree because these may give away competitive advantage that gives the company its ability to make profit (which is the entire purpose of a company after all. they have shareholders that expect a return on their investment)

He CAN answer questions that are on the list of "safe" and "approved" topics.

These questions would probably be fine in a general setting but in an AMA the audience generally demands more clarity and makes inquiries that require more detail in the answers.

So yes, Liberty Insurance AMA would have been useful to the casual browser with a vague curiosity about their upcoming insurance quote but I think they were suprised, and unprepared, for the degree of scrutiny they came under.

Were they protected? No. I dont think so. Dav posted that they obviously could not answer everything that was being asked and asked posters to stop pressing them. I think that's fair enough. Continuing to press only aggravates those not getting answers and takes away from the actual answers that were being provided.

Did they cherrypick the questions they wanted to answer? I think so. I think they had to and I understand why this is so even if I don't like it.

I think any AMA from a company in future needs to have a list of topics that cannot be answered or at the least should acknowledge that a question has been asked that cannot be addressed. To ignore a question completely - if it has been asked in a reasonable manner - is against the spirit of AMA.

As has been said already, lessons were learned in this that will need to be considered if this type of sponsored AMA is to take place again. Companies need to be aware that an AMA is not an advertising platform, its putting themselves up for intelligent questions from people who quite possibly dont actually like them or their product or their entire industry.

Users need to be aware that AMA is also not a platform to publicly crucify those they have an issue with.

Trojan

I think the only person who can do a completely no-holds barred AMA for a company is the owner for a small business, and maybe the CEO of a larger one - if they have the political power within the company (e.g. Branson, Musk, Zuckerburg, etc).

However, I think the onus is on anyone who steps up in a spokesperson role, including for AMA's, to be prepared to answer every question they get in a reasonable fashion. Sometimes that answer will be a logical presentation of the reasons why they can't answer the question in full, and I'm fine with that, if they present it well.

I think the biggest issue here is that the Liberty rep didn't have a few years of battle-hardened online discussion experience and know how to deal with those difficult questions.

Special Circumstances

Trojan wrote: »

I think the only person who can do a completely no-holds barred AMA for a company is the owner for a small business, and maybe the CEO of a larger one - if they have the political power within the company (e.g. Branson, Musk, Zuckerburg, etc).

An anonymous experienced poster could give their knowledge of the industry. But yeah, any verified rep of a company is bound to be on some script or other.

Trojan wrote: »

However, I think the onus is on anyone who steps up in a spokesperson role, including for AMA's, to be prepared to answer every question they get in a reasonable fashion. Sometimes that answer will be a logical presentation of the reasons why they can't answer the question in full, and I'm fine with that, if they present it well.

To be honest, I would have been happy with 25% of them answered in a way that stood up to some scrutiny in the real world and weren't instantly shown to be false by multiple posters.

Trojan wrote: »

I think the biggest issue here is that the Liberty rep didn't have a few years of battle-hardened online discussion experience and know how to deal with those difficult questions.

Poor guy drew the wrong straw that's for sure.
Being put in front of people and not being allowed say that €3k insurance for "a 40year old engineer with perfect driving record in a 07 1.4 focus" is anything other than complete horse manure... that's called being thrown under a bus by your manager.

Cookie_Monster

LuckyLloyd wrote: »

I would never expect interesting content from a company "AMA".

This really, doesn't matter what company it is it will inevitably be too restricted to be an AMA and in future there shouldn't be this type of thread in the forum.

You already see this in spades on the talk to forums, questions simply don't get answered as the staff are just too restricted in what they are allowed to say

LuckyLloyd

Cookie_Monster wrote: »

This really, doesn't matter what company it is it will inevitably be too restricted to be an AMA and in future there shouldn't be this type of thread in the forum.

You already see this in spades on the talk to forums, questions simply don't get answered as the staff are just too restricted in what they are allowed to say

Right. Discussion sites are great and interesting places when people speak their mind; lend freely of their expertise and aren't afraid to engage in robust conversation. Company reps acting in an official capacity are the antithesis of what good discussion board content is about. Threads like this are sorry moments for the site imo.

eman66

LuckyLloyd wrote: »

Right. Discussion sites are great and interesting places when people speak their mind; lend freely of their expertise and aren't afraid to engage in robust conversation. Company reps acting in an official capacity are the antithesis of what good discussion board content is about. Threads like this are sorry moments for the site imo.

A commercial bias or purpose has no place in an AMA. Not saying it's a good or bad thing but Boards have chosen to commercialise the site. It does appear to be an extremely difficult thing to do, to be successful commercially without wrecking the community foundations on which the site was built. Until that problem is solved more situations like the Liberty AMA will arise (and have risen).

blackwhite

Boards.ie: Niamh wrote: »

I know you aren't being serious but for anyone in any doubt we are a) not a part of Distilled Media any more (check out their website if you don't believe me) and b) very definitely NOT in the business of selling any emails or personal information. We take user privacy very seriously.

Sorry for going a bit off-topic on the thread, but isn't boards still under the same ownership as Distilled Media Group? Just the legal structures have changed and boards no longer sits under DMG? Legally distinct, but still under common control and ownership

Otherwise why are the various DMG sites all still listed across the bottom over each page on here?

Boards.ie: Niamh

blackwhite wrote: »

Sorry for going a bit off-topic on the thread, but isn't boards still under the same ownership as Distilled Media Group? Just the legal structures have changed and boards no longer sits under DMG? Legally distinct, but still under common control and ownership

Otherwise why are the various DMG sites all still listed across the bottom over each page on here?

You are correct, the site owners haven't changed but we are no longer part of Distilled Media.

mahamageehad

My problem with the AMA is that is wasn't differentiated (on mobile at least) as being sponsored. I've seen sponsored threads in The Ladies Lounge for example and it was clearly different. Why wasn't (sponsored) or Liberty in the title? I felt cheated after clicking through, I also thought it would be someone anonymous or retired.

Boards.ie: Niamh

mahamageehad wrote: »

My problem with the AMA is that is wasn't differentiated (on mobile at least) as being sponsored. I've seen sponsored threads in The Ladies Lounge for example and it was clearly different. Why wasn't (sponsored) or Liberty in the title? I felt cheated after clicking through, I also thought it would be someone anonymous or retired.

Thanks for the feedback. It wasn't really the same as a sponsored thread which usually have a distinct company message/promotion, however retrospectively I can see why that might have been how it appeared to users and will take the feedback on board

mahamageehad

Boards.ie: Niamh wrote: »

Thanks for the feedback. It wasn't really the same as a sponsored thread which usually have a distinct company message/promotion, however retrospectively I can see why that might have been how it appeared to users and will take the feedback on board

Thanks Niamh, appreciate the response. I think marking it out as a sponsored thread would be a great way to sell them in future without pis$ing the users off. That way you could also clearly state the constraints in the OP without too much hassle. At the end of the day that thread or any sponsored AMA would inevitably have a distinct company message/promotion (in this case why young drivers should go with Liberty.)