Originally posted by Flummoxed

another slightly more sane way of breaking into games is the QA (Quality Assurance) aka Test dept.

• Same low pay,
• same long hours,
• same mind numbing / soul crushing work,
• same controlled substance abuse during lunch,
• same learning the business and interacting with all departments in the company,
• same leg up into art / music / programming / producer depts,

BUT

no customers to deal with.

I totally agree with that.

My CS experiences, when dealing with an American CS, has been pretty decent.  However, I cannot stand the majority of CS that is farmed out to india.  I have to admit I have cussed out my fair share of barely english speaking CSR's that are serving a predominantly english market....it makes no sense to me.  I know it's cheap labor and all that, but it provides horrid customer service.

fastest way to piss off a pissed off gamer is to hand him off to a CSR that doesn't understand what his problem is due to a language barrier.

I just wish that the csr's werent handicapped by the developers so much in what they are able to do for the customers. (yes Im looking at you Turbine)  My cs experience usually ends in one of the following 2 statements...1) im sorry, we are not able to reproduce items ingame and therefore cannot grant you the quest reward....2) Im sorry, this quest/bug is a known issue on our forums and the quest/action will have to be repeated at a later date.  I did CS for an airline for years so I know how fustrating the experience can be but at least I got to offer a real explanation than a canned response.

On a side note I thougth it was interesting to know that you can go from csr to the developemnt team in a gaming studio.  In most organizations those sides are kept extremely seperate.  CSR's can only get promoted up the csr chain...marketing up the marketing chain..field services up the field service chain etc....  Most companies in other professions dotn want to incur that training cost to switch ladders unless absolutely necessary....why promote a csr to developer and then hire a new csr and have to train 2 people instead of keeping your csr and just hiring someone new for development.

---

Originally posted by goingwylde

On a side note I thougth it was interesting to know that you can go from csr to the developemnt team in a gaming studio.  In most organizations those sides are kept extremely seperate.  CSR's can only get promoted up the csr chain...marketing up the marketing chain..field services up the field service chain etc....  Most companies in other professions dotn want to incur that training cost to switch ladders unless absolutely necessary....why promote a csr to developer and then hire a new csr and have to train 2 people instead of keeping your csr and just hiring someone new for development.

---

The company I work for has recently made it a condition of employment that anyone employed as a dev is to spend at least 3 months on CS to get a good working knowledge of the product in the first place. This has even been extended to one of the devs that was already here coming down to the pit to get said experience.

How can you expect to get the best from your devs if they've never used the product before they start 'developing' it?

I live it on a daily basis, for a business ISP in the UK. I could really do with a change of pace and break into MMO CSR'ing though (was a volunteer CSR for EVE a few years back but run out of free time to do the requisite hours)

Originally posted by Seen_Justice

Originally posted by Flummoxed

another slightly more sane way of breaking into games is the QA (Quality Assurance) aka Test dept.

• Same low pay,
• same long hours,
• same mind numbing / soul crushing work,
• same controlled substance abuse during lunch,
• same learning the business and interacting with all departments in the company,
• same leg up into art / music / programming / producer depts,

BUT

no customers to deal with.

 

I totally agree with that.

Me three - but some studios have caught on to this dodge, and QA is considered a promotion from CS.

Sorry to kill the buzz.

Thanks for the kind words, guys. Credit goes to some old friends from the pits I've known who proofed this baby for me.

I spent 2.5 years as a CSR for Comcast, 2 as a dispatcher (also a "pit" job), 1.5 in Activations for a now-defunct cellphone company, and my last 2 as a CSR in a call center for software support for pharmaceutical sales reps.

Every blessed word of this article has been 300% true. Thank you Sanya.

Two things she mentioned that I'd like to elaborate on here that might help you interact with customer service ANYWHERE if you have to call them.

1) The CSR does not live to make your life unhappy. They do not have a magic button that can fix your issue, but choose NOT to press it because making you suffer is Standard Operating Procefure. As a CSR, there's nothing I want more than getting you off my phone happy. I stop getting yelled at for something that's not my fault, and you stop calling in yelling at people for something that isn't their fault. I gain nothing by making you unhappy. So trust me, if there was anything I could do to make things better, I would. Sometimes there's rules you can't break. However, I'll be willing to try and bend them a little, if you're polite and understanding. I don't expect you to be super-nice, or happy. Just observe the basic common rules of decent humane treatment that should be standard in interacting with other people.

2) If the person on the other end og the line doesn't sound super-enthused, here's why. He got up 6 hours before you did. Ate a crappy breakfast of pop-tarts and coffee (if even that much), was in the office way before you were out of bed. His first call was someone screaming at him, offering personal abuse for something that was out of his control. As was the second. The third. So on. Oh, and you're number 84 of that line today. Or 85. He lost count. And he's had a full week of this, or has a full week of it to look forward to. Customer service is an unhappy job. You never talk to people who just called to say how great yuor software is or how much they like your support reps. You rarely get a sincere thank you, even when you busted your butt to fix a problem. The average turnover rate for most call centers is measured in weeks. Weeks! You're surrounded by other people encountering as much negativity as you, and the solidarity of a shared trauma is the only thing that binds them together. Oh, and despite you getting paid a pittance, there's always the possibility the CEOs could cut corners next week by outsourcing to India. Options for promotions tend to be few, and they tend to be like dangling bloody meat in shark-infested waters. So honestly, a thank you, or a genrally positive attitude goes a LONG way. 

 Hm, Im starting to note a pattern in Sanya's articles - seems like every job in a game company is damn difficult :) Cmon. I work at a credit card company and while im not exactly a CSR, I do answer several 24/7 phones, I also have to oversee risk charges and take responsible actions. And yet I wouldnt call my job hard, cause once you learn the basic rules and scenarios you have everything under control. Its almost the same with game support, if you are familiar with the game and if you have a basic understanding of some hardware/software issues. Actually in most cases you dont even need the last bit, cause the 'scenario' says you should trasnfer the ticket to the senior staff :P And unlike a real-world scenario, you can safely ignore a customer call or use 30 minutes to paste a scripted answer, the worst thing that can happen is to loose a frustrated customer. Now if I do the same, I can cause losses in thousands of $$$. 

One other thing Sanya, I find your articles too general. As a person who has worked in the field for years, you do not seem to provide any detailed information for the inner workings of the industry. More or less, the things you write about are known to every seazoned gamer. And you always seem to miss well known facts which put the game companies in a more inconvenient position. Like for example the fact that most companies run the CR department on a sceleton crew. 

Originally posted by vasilcho

 Hm, Im starting to note a pattern in Sanya's articles - seems like every job in a game company is damn difficult :) Cmon. I work at a credit card company and while im not exactly a CSR, I do answer several 24/7 phones, I also have to oversee risk charges and take responsible actions. And yet I wouldnt call my job hard, cause once you learn the basic rules and scenarios you have everything under control. Its almost the same with game support, if you are familiar with the game and if you have a basic understanding of some hardware/software issues. Actually in most cases you dont even need the last bit, cause the 'scenario' says you should trasnfer the ticket to the senior staff :P And unlike a real-world scenario, you can safely ignore a customer call or use 30 minutes to paste a scripted answer, the worst thing that can happen is to loose a frustrated customer. Now if I do the same, I can cause losses in thousands of $$$. 

Sanya wasn't saying other jobs aren't difficult. She was explaining what these positions entail for both those that are interested and those that feel game devs just sit around drinking and playing the latest console games all day.

I do have to hand it to you, though, that condescending section of inflated self-importance was pretty impressive. I mean, it takes a lot of guts to admit you're a phone jockey and then belittle someone else's career choice.

Good article. I think I would actually enjoy this job and be good at it. I'm a GM at a local pizzeria. Part of that is calming down, and taking care of customers that are dissatisified. Over the 10 years I've ran shifts, to assistant manager to GM I think I've developed a knack for taking care of customers who want to be satisified(which is 99.9% of all customers).

The only bad thing is that I don't want to be a developer or coder. I also don't want to take a huge pay cut, and never have a chance of making what I make now.

lol wow, i remember you...

o_O

Honestly, I feel for you guys, though I am no way in hell nearly as nice as any of you who work in the CSR department are.

I work at Starbucks. Most customers are pleasant people that I don't mind chatting with....however;

One day, I believe it was the 26th of December (boxing day in Canada), I had a customer come through drive-through. He got a drink, I gave him his change and apparently I was short 10 cents (both my supervisor and I knew it wasn't my mistake). I gave him the change anyway and then he proceeded to cuss at me and my supervisor. Both of us were pissed off but rather than just talking about it, I took a picture of his license plate. The next time he came though drive through, I asked him why he got a new car. =)

And, I still work at Starbucks.

Honestly, dealing with people online, there isn't really a way to get back a tthem but if you work at some other CSR place that involves face to face talking, screw them up outside of work. As long as the cops don't get involved; meh.

CS looks to be the exact same no matter where you are or what industry. I've been a tier II tech for @Home internet service and more recently a  telepphone then email CSR for Hilton Hotels Corporation's HHonors program. And it's true, the vast majority of interactions with customers leave you wanting to smash their skulls in with an Acme(tm) brick. Whenever I got a customer that didn't start the call/email off as if I personally did something to inconvenience them and I didn't have to wade through expletives, I did everything within my power to generate and amiable resolution. Course, if you came off like so many of the folks I've seen on these forums talking when they talk about their latest interaction with CS, well, you got a "So sorry, deal with it" -esque response from me. In my phone days you could just call back and get another agent. In my email days, lol, if you emailed back it came to me most likely and if it didn't, it'd go to someone who'd see my response and come over and ask me what did I want them to do. Guess where that got you.