While the story you are about to read is very tragic and my heart goes out to the family for what they have had to endure, it is another example of how Social Media has evolved in our society. Matt Fisher recently wrote a blog article titled “My Sister Paid Progressive Insurance to Defend Her Killer In Court”. On June 19, 2010, Katie Fisher was driving in Baltimore when her car was struck by another car and she was killed. The other driver had run a red light and hit her car as she crossed the intersection on the green light.
The driver was under-insured, but Nationwide Insurance settled for the maximum amount of their client’s policy. Ms. Fisher was insured by Progressive and had additional coverage to protect her against uninsured/under insured motorists. Due to the outstanding bills such as student loans, the additional monies were needed to settle Ms. Fisher’s obligation. In Mr. Fisher’s article he goes on to outline that Progressive refused to honor their insurance policy and that due to legal restrictions in Maryland, his parent’s only recourse was to sue the driver for negligence. From there they could try to leverage that verdict to have Progressive honor their policy.
Needless to say, Progressive finally settled the lawsuit, but not after a tremendous amount of frustration and pain for the Fisher family and the driver of the other car, who has to live with the outcome of the accident every day. The problem here is that Progressive only settled when their reputation was being challenged via Social Media outlets. The blog article went viral and Progressive was flooded with complaints on their Facebook page. Had this recourse not been available to Mr. Fisher, one would wonder if Progressive would have ever settled.
This is the third article that has touched on the power of Social Media as it relates to companies (Amazon and Apple Make Changes Amid Recent Hacking and Where Will We Draw the Line With Social Media? ). Companies can pretend that their on-line reputation has little to do with their business (especially in the case of progressive who floods the air waves with commercials), but ultimately, stories that touch the heart or enrage our morality will make or break a company. Companies need to be aware of what is being said about them on line, they need to have a better understanding of what issues could become volatile and manage these issues accordingly. When you think about it, all Progressive had to do was the right thing and this would have been a positive story rather than a negative campaign.
I do not think it is hard for a company to manage their on line reputation if you are doing the right thing for your customers, and if you are not doing the right thing, you will probably get stung by the Social Media Buzz.
Frank Toscano is a 15+ year specialist in cloud based services focusing on Product Management, Marketing and Security within the Cloud. He has worked for EasyLink Services and Premiere Global Services in a global role providing hosted services to Fortune 1000 clients. He is currently seeking employment with a cloud based provider in a senior level Product/Marketing role.
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