The Free Zone: A Truly Annoying CS Sin

I extremely rarely ever have a need for customer service but I do happen to have 1 situation (of a total maybe 3 I've ever had in any way with MMO customer service) that was good and 1 that was bad.

The good was when after becoming nostalgic for UO after a many year absence I e-mailed customer service and said basically "This is what I think my username was and this is what I think my e-mail was, I haven't played in years and was wondering if there was anyway that I could get the password for that account so I could start playing again" I got a response the next day that had the info and I signed up and logged in and was happy to see that my account still existed (although I think the characters were gone but I expected that), I did also get the in game rewards that veteran accounts get.

My bad experience was with Age of Conan prelaunch. I preordered it purely for the early access. However they were shady with the early access and only let in x amount of people who signed up for it the minutes after it opened before shutting it down. So obviously angered I wrote customer service about it since I felt mislead and that was my sole reason for preordering. There only response was along the lines of "Well you still get the in game item." So I canceled my preorder and never tried the game, I still won't go and try the game. I remember sending back a response of "If this is how you are already treating your customers then I'm sure this game will fail." Shocking that the game isn't doing well.

But with the majority of MMOs I've ever played I've never contancted customer service, and I do think people rely on it too much. People use customer service half the time when they think a quest is broken just because they can't figure out how it works. I've also never cared much about the information put out on patches and put out by the devs at all. I generally don't even visit the forums of the whatever game I happen to be playing. I think all that is overrated, and only necessary if something truly game changing is being done.

I can count the number of times I have had to contact customer service.

I found it is all in the CS rep that you get.  I can tell you that 8 out of ten times the experiance was pleasant all of those being in SOE games.

2 times in LOTRO and both times I got an idiot who had no clue of what they were doing, and had to have the situation elevated to this persons boss. Sad to say both times I had an issue it was with the same cs rep.  

Now this should not only apply to online games,  any of you have vonage??  yes try contacting them with a problem.  All I can say is omg. they balmed my rounter, my computer, my cable company and yes even the type of phone I had. Needless to say I don't use vonage any more.

I think that the smaller the company, the better the CS - if there is a CS to beginwith.

Simply put, they have less customer, less tickets and so have more time to answer them. Add to that the need to retain all and any customer precisely because they don't hve that many and the service is generally top notch.

In bigger companies, CS is the bottom of the food chain, a "cheap" way to get into the industry with a rather high turnover and not-always-well-trained persons.

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.

I've found the quality of CS to be directly related to how much the CS actually plays the MMO in question.

The only exception to this was Moonlight and her merry band of CS over in Vanguard: they were top-notch in every sense of the word, I do miss them greatly. During the days of shutting down RMTers, they were everywhere I ever needed them... indeed, on the Targonor server, Moonlight once hovered over one of my toons, watching the spam and nuking every goldseller that crossed my path for nearly four hours. (I seemed to be either the only one reporting them with both the report and petition functions, or had been spectacurally successful in drawing them out.)

That being said, CoX's (City of X's) CS are also top-notch from beta on to today: however, they seem to be a reflection of my first point. They play the game... it is reflective in how they respond to issues found in game. Kind of hard to explain it, but the grammar and vocabulary used often reflects how the in-world users of a game phrase and talk about issues. CS folks in other sites don't always do that...

...for example (SOE, unfortunately). Prior to Moonlight taking over SWG's support, back in the bad days when the NGE was new, I had a toon that fell through the geometery out on Mustafar. Needed a CS to unstick me; the one that showed up wanted to send me to Kashyyyk. At the time, if the CS had done so, I would have been marooned on the planet until I could catch a ride off of it (as I had no ship docked there, and that was a time prior to a ticket station being installed). After arguing for twenty minutes about weither or not Kashyyyk was on Mustafar, I was able to talk the CS person into simply sending me to Tyrena. He agreed... because he thought Tyrena (a city on Corellia) was a part of Kashyyyk. I never did figure out his obession with the Wookiee homeworld, but, I *did* get unstuck.

I still have a screenshot somewhere on CD of that... discussion.

Anyway, if you want good customer service, have a game they want to play. Then, let them play it... they will be much better and well-informed for that experience (as I believe Moonlight's crew always were, and I believe CoX's crew currently IS) whilst being on the "same wavelength" as the players when they have concerns.

I've played enough games (free and pay 2 play) to say the really great CS teams are few and far between. Currently though I'm playing Aion and so far they are all fairly responsive to complaints but could give more detailed info on the little fixes thus far. I just follow the NA team on twitter. They respond to tweets really quickly and give a lot of really great info there. Most players though don't use it.

Here iis a great example. I had been playing P2P Bounty Bay Online since it's open BETA. About a year later YUSHO opened a F2P server. I e-mailed the community service person asking if the P2P server was in jeopardy of being closed as many players had moved to the F2P server. I got an answer assuring me there were no plans to close the P2P server. You guessed it. A week after  I got the assuring e-mail the company announced the closing of the P2P server. I no longer play BBO.

CS, from what I saw and worked on that area (not games mind you), smaller companies have a better CS, why? normally you talk direct with the dude who can solve the problem, I remember one time I everytime I had a problem with my internet (it was my ISP on that time) I call the tec cellphone and I jsut say the problem I had, I stick with then a lot of time because they did what I asked when I needed so I don't find that big issue.

my biggest problem with games was with "Level up games", oh yes I put the name here because if possible kids don't ever play on this publisher, it started with the ragnarok I was playing it but CS it was always null people there sometimes looked like they don't even know they work place was a MMO publisher, they never could help. then you notice something back then some guilds are overpower in wars there and people asking how why and all then people started saying some GMs was giving items to these guilds, and worst of all they have pics to prove it, the levelup fired then(or that is what they say), but they never really have any CS, simple things could work, but anything more dificult you could just forget, and don't even let me start talking about the RFonline there...

also from what I see when they hire anyone for CS is always you can read? write? can talk? you are in, experience? don't need just come in, you played any of our games? no? a NVM, people I know who have any intelect to work who was in any kind of CS leaves AFTER 6 month on max because they find something better, they also never try to any real train the people for the CS, just toss then there.

then in some games the damn game is nothing that good but the CS is far better they games have more poeple playing both are now F2P, the second game was cabal (ya not that great) but it have more people there then any game in levelup, and they really work with CS, have GM here and there in game, they show they are working.

things I find a must if you want to make the CS better is put people who know the gamemake gms talk in forums and in game, gms posting and walking in game shows you have people there, one thing in support is if people can't see you, YOU ARE NOT WORKING, have a descent patch note (yes I read then its nice when they put valors there too), some people like to have test servers to test or even help with any huge change in game, really make a community, if people start to think the publisher or devs are only there for the players money know what? you don't get the money.

I have had excellent customer service with Blizzard (WoW).

When 3.2 came out suddenly I had an intermittant but persistent lag issue.  It resolved itself in a few days.  Then the next patch came out (3.2.2??) and the lag returned and persisted.  I could not really play any of my caster characters cause of the casting delay (I died a LOT) so put in a ticket.  After doing all the normal things one would look for for lag (expected) like tracert's and pings and checking all the stuff on my computer The GM (who gave me his email address so I could talk to him whenever I liked and who answered every email) told me It appeared that I had a strange lag problem that they were already looking into.  3 or four days later my lag was gone.  I answered GM's enquiry positively and said a silent "YaY".

Granted, I did not get an insta-fix. But the communication and troubleshooting instructions , and best of all the GM's belief that I really had a problem, made the whole expierienc a very positive one.  Sure there was communication time delay, but they never dropped the ball.  All in all I was very happy with their service.

I have had some good and bad CS experiences in both f2p and subscription.  I played EQ for 5 plus years and have to say my experience with them in the CS  area was extremely poor.

I played Archlord and overall enjoyed it then they put in a patch and going to their forums after not being able to log into to the game and getting errors msgs. in a different language. It seems that there were post upon post with the same problem and the solutions were not working. After over a month I gave up for some time even trying. Tried again at a later time and was able to log in. Then another patch and poof same issue with the same responds. I just uninstalled the game and said not worth it. Never did get a solid answer as to how to fix it or anything from the CS department. Then this year I saw where it was no longer available to the US. hmm I thought.

I have found in WoW the game I am currently playing as was the "solution" in EQ as well. Delete this file and that file and remove all add ons. Poof it should work. Then when it doesn't and you put in another ticket that you never talk to a GM but get a responds in the game mail and e-mail it is once again the same thing.  EQ was famous for blaming your router, your computer, your connections or a list to things that never seem to be their fault. WoW blames add-ons or file and loss. Could not be that they might have issues.  You learn a pattern and you see it says you did but it is not in your spell book ..the game ate it but it is files and add-ons.

My good experiences are few my bad are up there. I try not to deal with CS but sometimes you have too. They just plain seem to forget that the players are the reason the game is making money and without those players where would they be. Then you send a CS servey out and I am fairly sure they don't like my replies. I am more indepth with my reply than they were in their so called help.

I had a truly bad experience with Blizzard that made me cancel my new account.  I bought WoW and the first expansion and only loaded in the basic game.  My intent was to play for my 30 days, then load the expansion and play 30 more.  If I liked the game, i was going to buy game cards whenever I felt like playing (with work and school it's hard for me to commit much time during the sememster). 

Anyway, I loaded up and played all of 16 hours the first week.  Then I got busy.  The last weekend of my 30 days, I decided to log in and play more only to find my account was closed.  No one had contacted me about anything with my account.  I contacted CS and was told my account was suspended due to suspicious activity.  Well, since i hadn't played in nearly a month, i was really alarmed that my account or computer may have been hacked.  I emailed this concern to CS and asked for some more info as I may need to go through the rather PITA task of changing all my various online account passwords if my computer security had been compromised (I in no way accused blizzrd of any wrongdoing here, i merely asked for more clarification.) 

The response I got back felt like they should have said "you dirty gold-farming-bot.  Piss off, your account will be reinstated when we get to it." for all of the lack of professionalism!  It said basically, because I wasn't using a credit card subscription, my account was "suspicious".  Didn't matter one lick that i had paid for the game and they weren't willing to even credit me the gametime lost (my account had been suspended for well over a week according to them, but weren't even willing to give me the three days i wanted to play).  I got really upset and told them this was very poor CS and didn't instill much confidence in their company.  Another CS replied with some generic form letter saying "See ya! Go play something else"

After that i returned the expansion unopened and decided that game would never be for me.  It's a shame because it looked fun and my boyfriend cancelled his lvl 60-somthing account too.  I know, two people don't make a ripple in the mud puddle that is Blizzards sub-base, but I have my standards. YMMV

I think that we shouldn't expect anything much from MMO devs and their CS especially. Because if you don't expect much you sleep better. CS is simply people who have set of rules and file of regulations that they read from. They read EULA and ToC, its actually their job to know both quite well and then set of specific rules on how to act in this and that situation. In other words people who read scripts. I've been playing games for 20 years and I never expect much from any game CS or DEV team or GMs. I just send tickets in. Usually if I finally get to talk with CS (in most cases its when you forget your password or want to renew old account) - its very straight forward. As long as you remember information that you provided in the profile - there is no problem.

I know that some people have problems with invalid CD keys, stolen accounts, etc etc. I had 1 invalid CD key in 20 years (my accounts were never stolen) and it was resolved quite fast as well. I think its people, some CS reps sound stupid from our perspective, but thats only because they are as competent as their bosses want them to be. If people behind the game companies would want to provide better Customer Support to the players they'd teach their staff better. Anyway, reputation says a lot about the game developer company and almost always about the games they release and the level of CS that can be expected.

Most important part of any CS is to show your customer that some one cares.

Problem may be small beans to the CS or to others but it is important to THAT customer.

Whether it is on the large, impersonal, level (on boards or blogs) or on small. personal, level (email,chat,phone), communicating openly and often can and will make most issues into non issues.

But once it reaches the CS level, it is usually a make or break time. Could be the last chance between having a happy paying customer and having a very vocal, ex-customer that will not ever forget, and will be happy to tell others all about it.

As always, we the customers can help make it better. When you deal with any CS, take the time to give feed back. It is almost standard practice, now to get asked to fill out feedback cards or surveys. Even if not, if you have an out of ordinary experience, either pro or con, let the company know.  Especially, positives, lets take the time to reward those exceptional ones in CS so they are the role models companies look for.

I used to work for a very large dot com, in their elite member customer service department. I worked in site enforcement, which means I was responsible for enforcing the rules of the site, and communicating those rules to the members, answering their questions about the rules, and from time to time taking on huge escalations that I eventually got penalized for because they harmed my metrics.

In terms of customer service reps, I was on the third level in rules enforcement. The top level was the rules manager for the site, the second level was a special escalation team, and I was in the group that fell just below that. Being that high up in the chain of site members, I had very important, very demanding customers coming to me.

Unfortunately, our rules manager  would pass rule changes onto the site live without any communication to customer service. I was responsible on my team for keeping up to date on these changes, and any time a rule change went into effect, it was a mad scramble of communication to my team, communication with our customers, and trying to get the rules manager to explain the rules (because beneath every public rule set, there are the technical details that help determine what qualifies.) 

The rules manager came to hate me very quickly, because I drilled her constantly with questions, and repeatedly brought up her lack of communication to the CS teams.

It was just like a dev team passing a patch onto live without letting the CS know anything - not the details, the how, the why, anything. It wasn't the CS's fault - we had great CS on that team, some of the best I've worked with in my CS career. It was the fault of the people above us who failed to see the importance of customer communication, internally and externally.

I suppose because of that, I tend to be a little more sympathetic if a CS agent in a game gives me an answer that doesn't quite make sense. Usually, that CS agent is just passing on whatever information they've been told, and they're in the dark themselves. And, unfortunately, most CS environments discourage independent thinkers who challenge the "system."

Eve Online (I love the game) is the worst customer service ever in the history of bad customer service. I can go on for hours and I have proof but just trust me..it is the suck.

It's funny to see this topic since there is a lot going on about it over in the official CO forums right now. 

This past weekend in CO the server was on the fritz for about seven hours before it was made public by the CS department that there was indeed a problem. And even at that, the post was in the Champions Discussion forum, not on the main page, nor was it reflected in the Server Status display on the main page.

Now I'm certainly not suggesting that this is the norm for Cryptic. Whenever I need help in-game, I get it promptly and politely. There was even on case nearer to launch where they credited all subscribers with another full day of play because of down time. Usually they do a very good job of communicating with the subscribers, but this case was  total breakdown.

Personally, I don't care what happened or how long its going to take to fix as long as you're honest with me that there is indeed a problem. Things happen that we can't predict and not all issues can be given a completely accurate ETA for fixing them. However, it only takes an extra 30 seconds to make a post explaining the fact that a problem has occurred and they are currently trying to fix it.

 In gaming I've only one bad experience in 8 years of CS usage and that was recently playing DDO. I paid my 15 bucks for VIP access and never got the bonus points and other things they said I would.  After having my support ticket, to find out why, last four days straight without a response I went online and found out it was a bug they were working on. Since the only reason I paid up was for things I could have spent that money on using points I canceled my sub. On the 27th day I get some ahole who initiates chat. I started to tell him the problem thinking maybe even if it is a bug, this guy might be able to hook me up with my points. He tells me I'm supposed to get my points at the END of the month not the beginning. When I replied with the url to  an official release stating the exact opposite, that in fact the points should have been given to me right when I paid. The url was from the DDO website and guy says, "I am only able to respond concerning official rules and our guidelines handed to me by my superior. Gossip columns are irrelevant." The url was turbine somethingorother and their employee called their own website a gossip column. I still haven't gone back to see if I got those points. 

On the other hand, I work in CS everyday at the Home Depot. I'd like to let everyone know that last week our company made ignoring a customer the same level of infraction as a major safety violation. We can be fired, and one guy at my store was today, for ignoring or attempting to avoid customers. If you are ever in a Home Depot and some dipshit tries to hide or ignores you, get their name and go ask someone else for the manager. If they still try to give you the run around, call 1-800-553-3199 and let them know. Trust me, corporate gets paid to keep you happy and will gladly let the peons feel your anger. They won't just up and fire someone, they will review the tapes etc, but the problem will get resolved:)

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.

Excellent Article, and a topic of great interest to me.

I also believe that good communicative customer service is the key to one of these MMO companies really setting themselves apart from the pack. In that I mean not only communicating coming changes and updates to customers but also, and most importantly, listening to customers. I am in sales/ marketing and over see the distribution of millions of dollars worth of quickservice restaurant products in Canada. Truly listening to what our customers want is what keeps any business in loyal customers. It's alot harder to win back a customer lost than it is to just keep that customer happy in the first place. Sometimes this means bending or breaking a policy or two, execeptions will have to be made here and there, but long term customer retention, which I think is the goal of all of these companies, is of utmost importance.

MMO customer service centers need to begin to train their service representatives that customers want to be heard. They want exactly what they ordered at the price quoted, no hidden fees or secondary charges (microtransactions Im looking at you) and they want it fast. Customers do not care what the underlying issues are within the company preventing them from getting what they want. They do not want to hear long winded explanations, they justw ant what they want and that's it. When a company can't deliver it better make dang sure it's customer service department is well prepared with phone and email scripts to let the customers know.... "We f'ed up, we're sorry we would like to retain your business, how can we assure that we can keep you as a customer in the future?" Giving out a free weekend of game play here or there for times were servers go down, or giving an individual who has been the victim of bad service a free month of playtime might be laughable to some, but customers have VERY long memories and a hell hath no fury like a customer scorned.

I personally would like to relate an experience of good customer service from an MMo company. NC Soft is the publisher for CoX. I had decided to leave this game a while back to persue Champions Online. The exit experience demonstrated good customer service. I was emailed with a thankyou for your business note, and  attached was  a customer survey for me to fill out about what I liked and disliked about the game and what made me leave. It was lengthy, but if answered honestly, which it was, would have given them all the information they needed to retain my business. I sent it back. I got a thankyou for the response reply.  I thought this was very well done and whent he last expansion came out I renewed for 3 months to try it out. I had no hard feelings and was treated as a valuable customer upon leaving so When I saw an update that appealed to me, a resub was a no brainer.

Make the customers feel important. Listen to them. rememer who's subscription money pays your mortgage, and buys your undies and you'll do alright. It's too bad this isn't remembered more in the MMO sector.

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.