Since you start AMA with leader of support team Michiel_S I learned from you that more AMAs may follow if fun is proofed (?). @anon48893843 to be honest , how much fun do you expect personally ? I am not sure what comes out if fun is expected by this. But anyway if he wants it by his own free will and it is not only a company decision for him I will give of course a chance . And I would be really happy if just Michiel would get even a second chance for second AMA. However I have no hope to get through with my question if support questions are at first. Just because for the moment I am lucky not depend on FP support
This would be my proposal: Only those who just painfully need support should ask questions. Let’s see how fast 2 hours pass or time flies. I sacrifice my tries for free to other customers. Because my questions of course aim more to the root of the support problems I am sorry to decline from it . But I am a quiet and fair listener and really curious what happens.
One reason I am so quiet is that I am stunned that just technical representatives and other higher representatives are excluded right away from the start. The selection mentioned here are people from FP with direct or indirect contact to customers or suppliers. So we cannot learn directly much news about the product FP2 itself. Unusual for a revolutionary design after 6 months and so many enthusiastic experts in the audience due to technical design.
I cannot see any critical note from @fp1_wo_sw_updates . Maybe more enthusiasm or even fun was expected.
After 2 weeks and 14 answers here on this topic and me as the only contributor to fp1_wo_sw_updates wiki about it I cannot find many other contributors to your topic. Really, Douwe, I feel sorry about this good idea from FP. Even from the people with no critical notes here I see not much conrtibution. Maybe, like me, they don’t have (m)any questions for Michiel.
I have to say, this sounds rather disappointing to me, maybe because this is not what I understand as an AMA or what I expected.
I would have thought that the idea behind the AMA is to ask “experts” from Fairphone about background details or other, more general things that users are interested, in order to improve communication between the Fairphone team and the community; in order to have dialogue and to exchange information, thoughts, and ideas. So yes, I would have expected something different than talking about individual issues.
Answering questions to problems people have with their own devices rather sounds like the regular task for the support staff. Thus, given this statement, I am afraid this could just become two extra hours of regular duty for Michiel, in his evening time.
Hi anon9505190, I’m not sure where your idea of “exclusion” comes from. Someone has to start, they decided it would be Michiel. Seems reasonable to me, given how many people are concerned about the speed and reliability of the support team right now. For example, I would find it interesting to know if @fp1_wo_sw_updates’ calculation (in another thread, don’t remember where right now) of roughly 50,000 support tasks and 8000/week accomplished is roughly accurate. Or all those questions that keep coming up: how many phones are really DOA? How many are not DOA but have hardware problems? What are the most common hardware problems? How many phones are sent in for repair that could actually have been repaired by the users themselves? Lots of questions that I assume @anon48893843 might be able to shed some light on.
Maybe I missed something, but I don’t see @Douwe stating that other people will be “excluded” from future AMAs. In fact, they’re trying out a new concept and already saying that they might like to continue it if it goes well and is enjoyable for all. Perhaps “fun” is the wrong expectation, more like “helpful”, “informative”, “worthwhile”. And doing one person at a time (for 2 hours! That’s a lot for the person answering questions!) makes sense to me, everything else would be overwhelming. Limiting it to the person’s expertise: perfectly reasonable, what else should they talk about? Guesses about things they don’t really know? No, thank you. Finally, not collecting questions in the forum ahead of time means that even those who are maybe not comfortable posting in the forum could get a chance to ask a question.
I think this is a good idea, I think the parameters they’ve set are reasonable for the first time and I suspect the door isn’t closed on adjusting the form for the future if it turns out not to be conducive to what should be accomplished with an AMA.
I am sorry how you think that I would exclude s.th. for the future on FP’s behalf. Maybe you missed how I only answered that Douwe and/or FP never had the plan to do, is sorry giving room for expectations and couldnot recall about it. All in one post.
When I call this exclusion for the first AMA I am not sure why you think I can see into future AMAs. No, you are absolutely right, I am no future teller or even psychic. I am only realistic regarding Douwes present posts here and now.
Just to be clear: @emmy’s response is very accurate and she has phrased it better then I could
We did not have the plan to go so fundamental into issues this time. But we sure hope that the AMA as a tool turns out to be useful and we can continue with it. This could for sure mean that any other team member and even our CEO can do an AMA in the future.
For now I am happy to hear your ideas on how to make this first trial a success and look forward to your feedback afterwards on what we can improve for the next time.
I was just thinking about the AMA idea and recalled the Facebook chat @paulakreuzer and I did for T-Mobila Austria (Forum link). We were 2 “experts” and two women from the T-Mobile social media team, and it was hard to keep the overview and answer to all questions. And that’s with Facebook’s comment system being slightly better organized than Discourse’s (answers to a question appear directly below the question, no matter when they were asked).
So I have the feeling that Michiel will have a very hard time during the two hours. I’m suggesting a moderator, who deletes questions that don’t follow the rules (questions limit exceeded, has been asked before, etc -> rules would have to be agreed on first).
True. A tip from Meta.discourse.com is that the person replying (in this case @anon48893843) should always quote the question in the post with the answer.
Yes, I think I’ll be sitting next to Michiel to help him with this.
@Douwe: Could you please clarify the timezone? EST is often translated as Eastern Standard Time a timezone not so useful for a company from Europe (UTC-5). I think you mean “Central European Time”/Middle European Time … there is no official European Standard Time yet.
Please also add UTC for people from other countries. Thank you.
No worries, everyone knew what you meant. But computers as example will not if you try to add it as an appointment or try to schedule it from another country.
Hey everyone, fun to see I’m a topic of discussion here, haha!
Apologies for not joining in on this discussion earlier. But as most of you will know, our support team is a bit too busy these days
I’m looking forward to tonight, I definitely don’t see it as something which our management team ‘made me do’ or as overtime work! This is simply an idea from my beloved colleague Douwe and I’m always up for trying something new, especially as it (hopefully) will shed some light on what our team does on a daily basis.
So, what the exact perspective of tonights session will be we’ll just learn from the questions that come in. Hopefully I will be able to answer as many of your questions as possible, and if this becomes successful, more of my colleagues will be doing this as well.
Once again I’m under impressed. I don’t blame you guys personally, but for me Fairphone the company focuses way too much on not giving out information that could make the FP look bad.
Maybe this is needed to be able to produce a FP3 some time in the future, but I think a bit more openness about current issues will not hurt. I’m here to help, I’m not trying to trick you or to make you look bad.
I don’t get high on being super critical. I just don’t want to buy a second FP1 by purchasing a FP2. Currently, I just don’t trust you enough anymore.
Wow… That surely wasn’t the first reaction I expected
Michael really told all he knows and admitted what he didn’t know… It seems you think we are some strategic masterminds weighing every message. I assure you, we are not. We are limited by time and space and knowledge just as everyone else.
I currently do not know how he could have done better…
Could you be more specific?
I guess it depends a lot on what expectations you go in with. I figured that FP wasn’t going to be sending over an itemized list of statistics on their repair cases, but it was interesting for me to find out that a lot of phones are sent in due to water damage and that apparently the back cover with overlapping lip over the screen is still not enough from preventing people from “installing the spider app”. I was also glad to hear that FP makes case-by-case assessments on whether phones actually need to be sent in to them or if they can just send an updated module to the consumer, which means excessive transport is avoided. Finally, there were a couple of comments indicating that an FP3 is being developed and they are working on an updated camera module. Both of those things I had heard between the lines and as rumors, but not said quite so explicitly before from official FP employees.
Beyond that…it just seemed kind of nice to have a “date” at a particular time and all sit together and chat a bit. I can’t really imagine most larger companies doing this sort of open Q&A session and while I didn’t feel like I had a huge number of questions for @anon48893843 in particular, I just appreciate the fact that he (and @Douwe!) took the time to talk to us for a while. For all the things FP does well or doesn’t do well, I like that to me they are more a collection of individuals, many of whose names I even know, than an anonymous company. It feels like a much more personal relationship and given that they are still a COMPANY (even a social enterprise is a company!), I feel like they’re doing a pretty good job of sharing information.
Hi Douwe,
I am not so pessimistic like @fp1_wo_sw_updates . And I believe that Michiel really couldnot answer some specific answers e.g. to my question that I repeated as a follow up to @emmy 's first question. He simply doesnot know the answer about the first reason for in-warranty returns for the moment . I hope he now informs himself about it. The only reason he knew was the one he called cool-off for refunding. However we all know that many in-warranty returns of FP2 have had specific reasons that could be named in 1-2 words. I simply guess it is also the display e.g. by the terrific stripes all over the display. So I could have only asked 3rd time if the display was the main reason for in-warranty returns.
Also I guess how @Michiel was a bit nervous anyway. He has my understanding.
The answer that you cite is about a different question that is not the same question that you had. And you had a good question right as an opener. Thanks for it. Unfortunately it was left unanswered at AMA. It doesnot really help if we both are guessing more or less. Don’t get me wrong but I am still missing an authorized answer about the main reason of in-warranty returns. Only display/screen part also is also not very precise. Because so many displays are returned for those annoying stripes I would have only expected to know if the stripes have been the main reason or if another display issue was the main reason. Sorry if I misinterpreted your first question . But I didnot expect that you have been searching in others answers instead of getting a direct answer to your good question. That was why I asked again and again.
