Customer Service is one area of business that hasn't really become universally standardized like other areas such as quality or efficiency. It is unfortunate because anybody using a computer today is generally in a part of the world where the economy is or has rapidly shifted from an industrial base to one of a service based economy.

Excellent Customer Service requires a few basic things...

1.Effective Communication

2. Empowered Authority

3. Problem Feedback Chains

Effective Communication requires a sender, receiver, common language, and both parties working together to solve an issue. Without #2 the problem can' t be solved, and without #3 the problem will continue to occur. Building on the theme of communication oftentimes there is a language barrier between developer and end user of software. Until everybody on Earth is better educated in English, i.e. because it is the international business language, then this barrier will continue to exist. Speaking as an American, you may think I'm being arrogant pointing this out, however as Americans we need to do a better job of understanding that other English speaking areas of the world are not familar with our mannerisms and do not share our refinement of the language. Once basic communication is established however resolution can be as simple as outlining the problem, understanding it as the service rep, and then presenting the solution quickly and efficiently.

Empowered Authority is another major concern, alot of times customer service is utilized by a company to act more as a data collection tool for their defect identity system and as a shoulder to cry on than a service which actually provides fixes to problems. That is bullshit. Players and customers need to know that when they call customers service, those folks will be empowered with the authority to make their product work, or refund the money a customer has invested in attempting to get it to work.

Problem feedback chains are necessary to compile a database of problems, updated in real-time and accessible by everybody in a network, these feedback chains should allow those in customer service to quickly identify problems based on what other users exprience and then point the end user to a solution quickly.

Unfortunately MMOs like Age of Conan for example, don't have the first clue about how to do any of this. It is hard to spot a company like this immediately after launch of a product but generally an MMO that looses 50% of its population in the first 3 months is suffering from some CS deficiency as well as product deficiencies.

Originally posted by Ozmodan

I don't think you can point fingers at the free to play industry over the subscription industry in general.  I think some companies do CS better than others.   I have played f2p games with no problems with CS and subscription games with major issues.

For example, take NCSoft, they have always had major issues with their prior games with gold spammers and bots, so you would think that in Aion they would have instituted some control mechanisms to eliminate such with the development of that game.  When in fact, the game still suffers with major issues in this area and there is little recourse through CS at present.  Even with the game being out in Asia for some time.  I have had much better support from some f2p CS departments than I have with NCSoft.

I think a developers needs to spend significant time during the development process considering how to control the exploiters, spammers and bots in a game instead of relying on CS to do this function.  I think this is an inherent flaw in the development of many games.  They are too fixated on getting the game out to the public and then wonder why their CS department gets saddled with major complaints when released.

 

 How long is it since you played Aion?   Ever????   There are very few gold spammers these days and there are some periods of several hours when there have been none. FYI, I play Israphel and to a lesser extent, Siel  servers. It has been very ' in'  to jump NCSoft for issues like this. Often without a fair look at what is being done. Admitedly it was maddening for the first few weeks.

 Oh another fyi...just type /ignore spammername to clear them.  Clear your ignore list if you have managed to fill it  and pop the very few that may still survive. I can't imagine how many entries fill it but playing a min of 4 hours/day I have yet to fill mine.

 The real problem with gold spammers are the players who support them..imo these folks should be punished with 5 days for 1st offence and banned for 2nd.

 You have to understand the gold companies are pros to. They prepared for the game and it took...what?...about 3-4 weeks to virtualy eliminate them.  No, they will never be gone..its their biz and a profitable one at that.

 Linking a gold spam issue to 'all' NCSoft is, at best, a guess. I played Guild Wars for about 3 years and gold spammers were gone quickly.

fallen earth CS seams to be very active there is a GM online(visible) almost all the time and on prime time are 3 and sometimes 4 GM i dont know if they are efficient ( i dint have any problem) but the fact they are online and player can PM them is awesome

on the other hand i put darkfall CS that is like a ghost

 When contacting support through "tickets", you will usually get the same copy/paste responses blaming the user rather than admitting something on thier end. The people working for this service have next to no expirence when it comes to the game in question. I've sent numerous tickets for bugs and glitches to companies over the years, and they all seem to respond the same way, saying it is my connection, firewall, anit-virus, pc, even when the problem is obviously none of the above.

 This whole idea of "customer service" support in mmog's is basically non-existant to me, and has been for many years.

 By far the best customer service comes directly from the in-game/forum GM/Dev's. They are more involved in the game, and have much more experience in playing the game itself. Thus resulting in relatablity when encountering problems, and making it a lot easier for them to understand a situation.

 Most recently I expirenced this from the GM's at THQ*ICE Dragonica, they do a stand-up job considering how few they actually are. They're quick to respond, and have put many user-requested changes into motion, even with things such as current in-game events. Players were unhappy with certain specifications and/or limitations, so they would change it and shape them around what the players requested. (Example: in-game awards were to expire after an event period, but were changed to be permanent upon player responses.)

 So in the end "customer service" in an mmog can be great, it is just never found where it is expected and supposed to be.

Customer Service doesn't not equal PR or Community Management. CSRs do have more important and relevant tasks to take care of than answering gameplay related enquiries to customers, sometimes for a very good reason.

For instance take the following into account: In the case of stock corporations even the CS department might not be informed of certain decisions as this could mean an unfair advantage for someone on the stock market in case certain important information gets out, like servers being shut down soon. 


 

Bar none my best CS experiences came from my limited time in Vanguard.  It was the first time since my good-old-mmorpg-days that a service rep actually spawned into the world and assisted me with my problem face-to-face.  I'd have to say my worst experience was with WAR where I did a server transfer and my main character bugged and unable to log in.  I called service three times and each time they "escalated" my ticket and guess what -- that character is still unable to log in 5 months later.  What can you do? :)

I think the article lacks definition.

You are speaking of a company's customer service as a whole and not of the customer service department, right? This needs to be explained as the comments before mine prove its not clear.

If you are speaking of the Customer Service department, you fail at this article.

The example provided is out of Customer Service's control, but yet, your personal experience involves Customer Service. Are you talking about the Company's attitude or the department? You later focus on F2P vs P2P Customer Service departments.

The title of the article could swing either way, but I don't get the "sin" the dept is commiting.

Bring some focus to your article man. This is just annoying to read.

Originally posted by NightCloak

I think the article lacks definition.

You are speaking of a company's customer service as a whole and not of the customer service department, right? This needs to be explained as the comments before mine prove its not clear.

If you are speaking of the Customer Service department, you fail at this article.

The example provided is out of Customer Service's control, but yet, your personal experience involves Customer Service. Are you talking about the Company's attitude or the department? You later focus on F2P vs P2P Customer Service departments.

The title of the article could swing either way, but I don't get the "sin" the dept is commiting.

Bring some focus to your article man. This is just annoying to read.

 

Yeah I think you missed it.
 

The Sin is the lack of customer service as a whole.

He does compare and contrast F2P vs P2P but I think its valid in that there has been a lot of hype around the level of customer service that F2P games provide to payers vs. free riders.

It doesnt matter if the focus is the dept. or the company as a whole, the two are not independant entities EVER. If you are the WoW customer servie rep, you are Blizzard onn that call or email. You are representing the entire company to that customer.

Originally posted by Par`a`dox

Sounds like the writer is mistaken for what Customer Service actually *is* in the Game industry. 

The whole article is talking about the communication of the entire company, and is then calling out a small division of that company on it?   You're kidding right?

 

This article is not about customer service.  It is about the lack of communication between the developers and the players.  Customer service (Game Masters) in the game industry are people who help players who get stuck, answer questions, help players who experience a bug, are being harrassed, can't log in, or are affected by some other system error/malfunction.

You do realize he's pointing out a change that the *DEVELOPERS *  made in his article and then getting frustrated with Customer Service about something the developers did?.  You do know that Customer Service Reps are not devs right?  They have no input or say about game mechanics, changes to the game, what manuals go out or how the developers communicate to the players?  They have no control over anything else that comes out of the DEVELOPMENT department (including communication), because they are the CUSTOMER SERVICE department, not devs.

Now, nearly every time that I've gone to customer service regarding an issue, (even when the devs dropped the ball) I have had no problems with them, even when asking general knowledge questions. (Excluding the CSR's that don't know the game, of course.  There's no fix or excuse for that.  )

I can only imagine that the majority of people have a skewed and inaccuate view of what the game industry Customer Service is there for.  For instance, quest Y  states that you are going to get reward A when you complete it.  Now you complete it, and it give you Reward B.  Clearly that requires in game assistance from the company since the quest didn't do what it is intended to do. 

Sure if you have a question, I'm sure they'll do their best to help answer it (they always have for me), but from what  I've been told regarding how players communicate to customer service, it sounds like the bad communication deos not rest on the Company most of the time.  Instead it is a self entitled player, who doesn't know how the game is intended to work and makes demands; not asks; not "wants more info on the situation", and never, ever considers the possibility that the problem isnt the game, but rests between the keyboard and the chair.

Again, this article has nothing to do with Customer Service in the game industy, and is actually complaining about the other depatments in a game company.  Game industry customer service, is in-game help, and is not like the rest of the world's customer service.  They are not Devlopment, Community Relations, Marketing, or any other department you can think of, they're in game help, Game Masters.

Apparently you are missing a lot here and in CUSTOMER SERVICE.

Customer Service in any business whether it is gaming or not and whether it is in the game(Game Master) or at the office is Customer Service. IF you can not communicate and speak to a paying customer accordingly and with knowledge then it is poor customer service. PERIOD!

This article is not about anything but the lack of and asking others to post their experiences with CS.  Believe me when it comes to gaming there is a LACK of Customer Service. In game and out.

Anytime you have a problem and you make a call or summit a ticket and you get a evasive answer or an answer that is cloned then that is not good CS.

WoW for one is bad about tickets. You put one in and it may sit up there for days before getting answered. It can also disappear without you ever getting a responds at all. Then if you are lucky enough to be on and you reply within 10 secs. of the GM's respond then you get to hopefully get some kind of answer if not you get an in game mail saying they could not reach you and an e-mail with a clone letter that is sent for just about every problem.

Yes there are different areas of CS in gaming no one said there wasn't but a GM is just as much CS as when you call or e-mail the company itself. They may not have an answer nor a solution but the way they speak and deal with a player has just as much impact on the company/game as those in the office.

One of the reasons I like FE is their not only good but insanely excellent and effective customer service.

First the have gamemasters active in the general help channel at all times, you can /who to find GMs and contact them personally about issues and they are frank and open about possibilities and often come with advices on what you can do to help.

And if you have a problem they cannot help you with they give you instruction on how to contact the higher ups, what will happen and how long you can expect to wait before there is a reaction, which in my case was a way longer than it actually took to help me with my problem.

I have experienced good and bad customer service in many games, some were really bad like SWG, most were quite ok like in AoC, WaR and Lotro but never ever have I seen anything as good as in FE.

I think every new MMO company should take a look at how Icarus has organized their CS. Its lightyears ahead of any other game I have ever played and it all comes down to communication, communication and communication and it makes the player base forgive problems in the game which in the case of FE from time to time can be quite severe but people don't mind since they are treated like royalty by the GMs.

Originally posted by Dwarvish

Originally posted by Ozmodan

I don't think you can point fingers at the free to play industry over the subscription industry in general.  I think some companies do CS better than others.   I have played f2p games with no problems with CS and subscription games with major issues.

For example, take NCSoft, they have always had major issues with their prior games with gold spammers and bots, so you would think that in Aion they would have instituted some control mechanisms to eliminate such with the development of that game.  When in fact, the game still suffers with major issues in this area and there is little recourse through CS at present.  Even with the game being out in Asia for some time.  I have had much better support from some f2p CS departments than I have with NCSoft.

I think a developers needs to spend significant time during the development process considering how to control the exploiters, spammers and bots in a game instead of relying on CS to do this function.  I think this is an inherent flaw in the development of many games.  They are too fixated on getting the game out to the public and then wonder why their CS department gets saddled with major complaints when released.

 

 How long is it since you played Aion?   Ever????   There are very few gold spammers these days and there are some periods of several hours when there have been none. FYI, I play Israphel and to a lesser extent, Siel  servers. It has been very ' in'  to jump NCSoft for issues like this. Often without a fair look at what is being done. Admitedly it was maddening for the first few weeks.

 Oh another fyi...just type /ignore spammername to clear them.  Clear your ignore list if you have managed to fill it  and pop the very few that may still survive. I can't imagine how many entries fill it but playing a min of 4 hours/day I have yet to fill mine.

 The real problem with gold spammers are the players who support them..imo these folks should be punished with 5 days for 1st offence and banned for 2nd.

 You have to understand the gold companies are pros to. They prepared for the game and it took...what?...about 3-4 weeks to virtualy eliminate them.  No, they will never be gone..its their biz and a profitable one at that.

 Linking a gold spam issue to 'all' NCSoft is, at best, a guess. I played Guild Wars for about 3 years and gold spammers were gone quickly.

 

Really? Ozmodan, said gold spammers and BOTS.  I agree that the gold spam has been greatly reduced, but the bots on my server, Nezekan, are out of control.  You can't quest in some area's because they've taken all the mobs you need to complete your quest, Half of the bots kill steal, half don't, so when you tag the mob you've got a good chance of getting a bot on it too.  This sucks up your XP! Hard to ignore the bots when they're stealing your kills.  Do you even know what a bot looks like? I'm guessing not if you think they aren't an issue in this game.  I've /autoreporthunting many bots, and I still seem the same ones every day.  Anywhere there's Sprigg encampment, both sides of Alsig village, anywhere in Beluslan....Bots, Bots, Bots.  There are huge issues with bots. 

That being said, this isn't NC Soft's first rodeo.  Aion was out for a year in China and Korea before it launched in NA and EU.  They knew they were going to have issues with botting. That's why they used GameGuard in the betas.  GameGuard caused them many headaches, so instead of delaying the launch, they just dropped the program.  Instead of having protection for their customers they went with none.  By the way, GameGuard worked well with Vista 64 Ult, Vista 32 HP, and XP. My Razer / Belkin / Logitech hardware and software all worked fine.  I ran it on four differnt computers, having only to change my parameters in Norton.  Zero GG related crashes after I changed my firewall settings.

Also, have you actually spoken with a GM? Because I get one of two messages... "... it's after business hours..."  and, "the petition system is still in testing...." <--- This one takes the cake.  Did they not think they were going to have issues with people getting stuck or glitched? We're they really that short sighted, or arrogant to think that nobody would ever need to speak to a GM? I'm guessing some of the developers played other MMO's, didn't they think they needed a way to deal, in game. with their paying customers? One GM could go bot hunting and clean a server up.  There fairly easy to spot. That would be good customer service!

Originally posted by Dwarvish

Originally posted by Ozmodan

I don't think you can point fingers at the free to play industry over the subscription industry in general.  I think some companies do CS better than others.   I have played f2p games with no problems with CS and subscription games with major issues.

For example, take NCSoft, they have always had major issues with their prior games with gold spammers and bots, so you would think that in Aion they would have instituted some control mechanisms to eliminate such with the development of that game.  When in fact, the game still suffers with major issues in this area and there is little recourse through CS at present.  Even with the game being out in Asia for some time.  I have had much better support from some f2p CS departments than I have with NCSoft.

I think a developers needs to spend significant time during the development process considering how to control the exploiters, spammers and bots in a game instead of relying on CS to do this function.  I think this is an inherent flaw in the development of many games.  They are too fixated on getting the game out to the public and then wonder why their CS department gets saddled with major complaints when released.

 

 How long is it since you played Aion?   Ever????   There are very few gold spammers these days and there are some periods of several hours when there have been none. FYI, I play Israphel and to a lesser extent, Siel  servers. It has been very ' in'  to jump NCSoft for issues like this. Often without a fair look at what is being done. Admitedly it was maddening for the first few weeks.

 Oh another fyi...just type /ignore spammername to clear them.  Clear your ignore list if you have managed to fill it  and pop the very few that may still survive. I can't imagine how many entries fill it but playing a min of 4 hours/day I have yet to fill mine.

 The real problem with gold spammers are the players who support them..imo these folks should be punished with 5 days for 1st offence and banned for 2nd.

 You have to understand the gold companies are pros to. They prepared for the game and it took...what?...about 3-4 weeks to virtualy eliminate them.  No, they will never be gone..its their biz and a profitable one at that.

 Linking a gold spam issue to 'all' NCSoft is, at best, a guess. I played Guild Wars for about 3 years and gold spammers were gone quickly.

 

True the gold spammers are reduced somewhat lately, but the bots are everywhere.  All you have to do is look at the popular grind spots.   Citing one particular area they have improved does not let NCSoft off the hook.  And the customer support is still horrible.

A relatively recent example involves an F2P game that was updated with quite a significant change to its combat system. Curiously, there was no obvious reason for this. Apparently, it hadn't been the cause of any dissatisfaction beyond the normal levels of grumbling. So, as far as I could tell, it wasn't a fix designed and implemented to address the players' concerns. If so, it most likely means the impetus came from the development team.

In this particular instance, the publisher compounded its initial poor judgment by not communicating what I'd consider an adequate amount of information about the new combat system

Why don't you just say it was a P2P and its name was SWG:NGE

What well I havent had a snide dig in ages

Originally posted by Babylon9000

Originally posted by NightCloak

I think the article lacks definition.

You are speaking of a company's customer service as a whole and not of the customer service department, right? This needs to be explained as the comments before mine prove its not clear.

If you are speaking of the Customer Service department, you fail at this article.

The example provided is out of Customer Service's control, but yet, your personal experience involves Customer Service. Are you talking about the Company's attitude or the department? You later focus on F2P vs P2P Customer Service departments.

The title of the article could swing either way, but I don't get the "sin" the dept is commiting.

Bring some focus to your article man. This is just annoying to read.

 

Yeah I think you missed it.
 

 

The Sin is the lack of customer service as a whole.

 

He does compare and contrast F2P vs P2P but I think its valid in that there has been a lot of hype around the level of customer service that F2P games provide to payers vs. free riders.

 

It doesnt matter if the focus is the dept. or the company as a whole, the two are not independant entities EVER. If you are the WoW customer servie rep, you are Blizzard onn that call or email. You are representing the entire company to that customer.

That is still a lack of definition and focus in the article.

A lack of service as a whole is not the same sin as preferred treatment.

Yes, if you are a CSR for Blizzard, you are Blizzard on that call. But if Blizzard puts fourth a combat change and doesn't notify the customers, thats two types of customer service and this isn't recognized in the article. He titles the article "A Truly Annoying CS Sin" which implies one topic of discussion. There are clearly two. Then he mentions an annoying sin but never describes the sin itself since its divided into company wide interation with customers as a whole and a department interating on the individual basis.

Originally posted by NightCloak

Originally posted by Babylon9000

Originally posted by NightCloak

I think the article lacks definition.

You are speaking of a company's customer service as a whole and not of the customer service department, right? This needs to be explained as the comments before mine prove its not clear.

If you are speaking of the Customer Service department, you fail at this article.

The example provided is out of Customer Service's control, but yet, your personal experience involves Customer Service. Are you talking about the Company's attitude or the department? You later focus on F2P vs P2P Customer Service departments.

The title of the article could swing either way, but I don't get the "sin" the dept is commiting.

Bring some focus to your article man. This is just annoying to read.

 

Yeah I think you missed it.
 

 

The Sin is the lack of customer service as a whole.

 

He does compare and contrast F2P vs P2P but I think its valid in that there has been a lot of hype around the level of customer service that F2P games provide to payers vs. free riders.

 

It doesnt matter if the focus is the dept. or the company as a whole, the two are not independant entities EVER. If you are the WoW customer servie rep, you are Blizzard onn that call or email. You are representing the entire company to that customer.

 

That is still a lack of definition and focus in the article.

A lack of service as a whole is not the same sin as preferred treatment.

Yes, if you are a CSR for Blizzard, you are Blizzard on that call. But if Blizzard puts fourth a combat change and doesn't notify the customers, thats two types of customer service and this isn't recognized in the article. He titles the article "A Truly Annoying CS Sin" which implies one topic of discussion. There are clearly two. Then he mentions an annoying sin but never describes the sin itself since its divided into company wide interation with customers as a whole and a department interating on the individual basis.

Actually, it seemed pretty clear. He used CSRs as an example, and went on to extrapolate that communication in general is important, and that a lack of communication with your customer base, especially with a changing product, is a sin.

Customer Service is not the same as Customer Support.

Customer Support is there to help improve the game, and they do this through speaking with the players In-Game, so that they can send those issues directly to development or the bug team for fixing.  This way, those people that actually work on the game don't have to waste time trying to figure out what the player is saying and they don't have to filter through all the vulgarity and hate mail.  They can focus on fixing the game.

Customer Service implies that the focus is on satisfying the customers demands, and the game is second in line.

Both generally offer item restore, character restore and other misc issues, the difference is again, do we worry about game breaking issues first, or worry about that one pissed off player who was not paying attention and destroyed their weapon 3 months ago and are now threatening to quit if they don't get it back.

Service sounds nice, but doesn't necessarily guaruntee immediate service.

Support, well I generally don't expect a response with Support, but things are more likely to get fixed, which is how it should be.

Customer Support should not be dealing with player errors.  It's your fault, get over it.

PS.  Oh and yes, I would agree that if they make significant changes to the game and don't make the community aware before hand, that is a huge mistake, but you also shouldn't let the community force your hand.  Your the developer and you have access to more information than the general public, and hopefully an unbiased opinion.

Customer Service = CS  Customer Support=CS    Customer Satisfaction = CS  

There meaning are not completely alike but the end result is Customer Satisfaction.

Customer Support in the game is there to help with problems they can and if it is something they are unable to help with then they escalate it up. But at the same time in this area or any other if you handle the customer(player) poorly then your end result of Customer Satisfaction is going to fail. This does not mean give the customer what they ask for because that is just simply not possible every time. But deal with them in a polite manner and answer the questions that you can. They can not tell you how a quest or something is supposed to be done nor where to go for it. But even then there is a polite and nice way to say this.

Support in the game is to look at and take care of what is within their ability to do and report if it is a bug or possible game issue and do so in a polite manner.  Thus sometimes they are the first link in the chain of Customer Service. Because the ticket in the game is where it usually begins, usually not always. If you are in game though and xx does not do or give what it was supposed to the first step is the "mighty ticket".

The first mmo i ever played (not sure if its listed here) runescape had an excellent customer service responce in my experiance. At this point off my gaming years i was quite young so fell for a scam nearly straight away and messeged the customer services not expecting any responce for a few days but almost in a day it was there and it was useful :),

I had a bad experiance with WOW customer services where my acount had been hacked and the subscription reactivated without my permission it took numerous emails to even get a reply and many more to sort out the problem, though i heard there usaully very good so i might off just been a one off :)

First off, I cannot believe the amount of idiocy coming from the people who are in this thread splitting hairs about customer service.

If it deals with communicating with a customer through ANY form of interface it IS customer service. If it smells like a cat, mews like a cat, then who the hell cares what breed that cat is?

Gikku said it best; it all equals to customer satisfaction. If your company's public face fails to appease, and properly communicate with the customer then THAT company's customer service has failed. I do not care if it is PR (public relations), MR (media representatives), the advertising department, the grunts working in the trenches, or the CEO trying to salvage a so called stock option they all represent the company and ALL are equally held accountable.

Reiden, stop splitting hairs. It makes you look like you're trying to be the voice of corporate america's CS division.

Nightcloak, same goes for you, albeit to a less degree. The article does jump to certain tree limbs to emphasize points but the general scope of the article, reading comprehension helps, still comes through to the reader. If you look and read paragraph by paragraph, try reading the thing in reverse, and identify each point instead of going from top to bottom then throwing out a half cocked opinion in things would come out more cleanly.

After 8 years in two fields of CS (customer service, and customer support) I can tell you the customer doesn't give two s**ts about who does what at the company to whom they are giving their money. The company, thus the poor soull who just happened to cross paths with the customer are all fodder for hellfire and retribution they are about to reap at the poor product they received. One thing I have learned is that if a company takes all available measures to inform the customer ahead of time then there is no firm ground for them to stand on when it is clearly the customer's fault for not heading the warnings.

TLDR version:

Both parties; corporations and customers have to exercise responsibility. Neither side is a victim in any scenario.