Customer Support Update

OP would be a nice empathy post if it wasn't standard tactic used every single time something like this happens.

"We didn't expect [hugely anticipated launch/mega-popular sequel] to be this popular, guys, we are truly sorry for the [lag/disconnects/crashes/lack of support in Early Access launched specifically to get as many users users as possible to playtest and find us issues to solve]".

To be fair, GGG's take on this is pretty original, and not as annoying as, say, constant disconnects. It wouldn't even be an issue if they hadn't made this post - we know the game is EA, nobody expects everything to be resolved for quite some time.

The real reason is always because it is cheaper to not even try being able to serve your customers during a (fully anticipated) popularity spike, just find a plausible excuse. You know approximately when the spike is going to go away, and you can then (optionally) pretend that you solved the issues, and (always) thank people for their amazing interest, support, and patience. Tried and true, works like a charm for game launches.

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MathiasSoul#7397 wrote:

2A. To explain further, say you're at Position 3 out of 5000 in queue, your Case is about to be worked. However, you send a second email going "Hey, been a while, please look at this", the Case Management System automatically puts you right to Position 5001 and you've effectively extended the time it takes to get to your Case.

...

- Send in one ticket for each problem and wait for a duration of at least 20 business days before prompting again (At least at this time, training classes and nesting periods can take a while)

In this case your advise is causing more issues. If you follow that exact advise, by your own knowledge of the system, you'll never get your ticket answered. You wait 20 business days, then send a followup and get put to the back of the queue again. The best thing to do is not sending a followup by your advise in this situation, but things get missed and forgotten all the time.

The real solution is for them to realize their system is horribly broken so they need to fix it, not realize it, apologize and do nothing different. They need to prioritize finishing tickets to completion before taking on new tickets. If an agent can only handle say, 100 tickets simultaneously, they shouldn't be addressing a new ticket without closing a previous one.

I have this exact issue, I sent in a ticket over a month ago as I wasn't aware that the support staff were on leave. I got a reply on the 7th of January asking for some information to which I promptly replied, only to not receive any more replies since. I waited a week (14th of January) and sent another reply just asking if perhaps my message was deleted or missed. So am I to assume that when I was asked to supply some additional information to my ticket reply, that I had inadvertently set myself at the back of the queue? I suppose I'll almost never receive a reply or resolution to my ticket. Sucks to have purchased a supporter pack that I am unable to use for over a month now as it was attributed to the wrong sub account, as I was unaware that I had 2 when making the purchase.

Support is still bad. Whatever improvements you're trying to make, it doesn't have any effect. Whoever handles your Facebook page is a complete novice, borderline disrespectful to your fans and customer's needs. You don't offer support there. cool, fair enough. But they are still clueless about basic help and lack any PR skills. Going back to email support: do you even have a proper ticketing system, a queue? Your support team is ruining the efforts of your creative team. It's shameful!

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Virauge#3323 wrote:

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MathiasSoul#7397 wrote:

2A. To explain further, say you're at Position 3 out of 5000 in queue, your Case is about to be worked. However, you send a second email going "Hey, been a while, please look at this", the Case Management System automatically puts you right to Position 5001 and you've effectively extended the time it takes to get to your Case.

...

- Send in one ticket for each problem and wait for a duration of at least 20 business days before prompting again (At least at this time, training classes and nesting periods can take a while)

In this case your advise is causing more issues. If you follow that exact advise, by your own knowledge of the system, you'll never get your ticket answered. You wait 20 business days, then send a followup and get put to the back of the queue again. The best thing to do is not sending a followup by your advise in this situation, but things get missed and forgotten all the time.

The real solution is for them to realize their system is horribly broken so they need to fix it, not realize it, apologize and do nothing different. They need to prioritize finishing tickets to completion before taking on new tickets. If an agent can only handle say, 100 tickets simultaneously, they shouldn't be addressing a new ticket without closing a previous one.

20 business days is fairly reasonable in my experience with a large company, and at that point fresh hires should be in.

Typically, each average Agent should be handling about 10-12 tickets or emails per hour. A CMS like Salesforce will give you 2 at a time (They don't just bomb them with a hundred, that'd by psycho psycho).

The reason I recommend 20 business days for another prompt is to address possible work avoidance. With obvious pressure on the support team to do as many tickets as possible as fast as possible (These guys likely make minimum wage, it's not a lot of wiggle room to be a SupportHero:tm:), what can happen is an Agent who's not super super into it may just close your ticket without working it to boost their metrics.

In that regard, it's useful to be bumped to back of queue to ensure your ticket is eventually worked. The flood of tickets will catch up as the team expands to handle the flow and as trainees get used to the system and work efficiently

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Evistarator#2819 wrote:

I have this exact issue, I sent in a ticket over a month ago as I wasn't aware that the support staff were on leave. I got a reply on the 7th of January asking for some information to which I promptly replied, only to not receive any more replies since. I waited a week (14th of January) and sent another reply just asking if perhaps my message was deleted or missed. So am I to assume that when I was asked to supply some additional information to my ticket reply, that I had inadvertently set myself at the back of the queue? I suppose I'll almost never receive a reply or resolution to my ticket. Sucks to have purchased a supporter pack that I am unable to use for over a month now as it was attributed to the wrong sub account, as I was unaware that I had 2 when making the purchase.

You did send it to the back, but the information provided will still be useful for the next Agent to work it. Had you not replied, the Case would've stalled until you did, and then reset anyway when you finally provided the info.

Responding is good and useful for your case! Sending in emails without prompt is not.

You did the right thing!

"

Aristiell#1440 wrote:

Appreciate the info you shared Mathias.

Seems like the only thing that can be done is for us to wait, sometimes thats the hardest thing to do.

Sure hope GGG resolves my issue soon but damn, it sure is frustrating as hell to wait :(

You're welcome, I do hope your issue gets resolved! It is very frustrating to wait, especially if the issue is severe.

Hopefully you can continue enjoying your time in the meanwhile, just check your emails once a day. As much as it feels like a company won't care, it's their job to remedy the situation and no one's going to REALLY be left to rot forever

Both poe1 and 2 locked for change of location. (vpn) .. No word from GGG on why they have disabled the unlock system, but you (ggg) keep spreading FALSE info by saying add there email to your whitelist.. WHY are YOU not telling the truth?

Why no official update on ALL of the locked accounts?
Why no update on your Unlock system being turned off?

Lastly why are all people or bots tagged ggg on here useless?

Dear GGG,
Would be nice to give us a weekly update, big or small. Keep your testers involved in what is going on.

Every session to gather informatin about whats going wrong has a certain aspect of communication in it, this goes on in every business in all fields.

I would really like to know when we are going to see our bought MTX and hideouts. Also would like to know when you guys will nerf the shit out of those purple chaos balls which hurt like a truck. Also, please for the love of god nerf the range of the beams those priest shoot out.. I had 'em out of screen and still had the beam following me xD.. And lastly, please try to deliver a fix to the atlas, not able to travel along roads which are there or should be there is super evil.. I had to reroute at least 50 maps to get to the desired citadel..

Otherwise, love your game <3

No offense Mathias - But in light of people waiting since 2-3+ months or more despite keeping information, mails concise short and even proactively providing most if not all required information. Is ridiculous.

With the attitude you seem to present in terms of handling professionalism and customer interaction; Especially when mentioning you had the role of a team-lead. To me and from my professional experience it sounds like you've come from a provider or service with extremely low standards:

- No. People will not get into "trouble". No matter what. What are you even on about?

- There is no "simply" or "right" or wrong. The customer shouldn't have to navigate through any sort of process-based inefficiencies, mis-evaluated "tools" or some hidden, ridiculous rulesets that are entirely the company's or provider's problem. The customer doesn't care about any of that.

- What you fail to realize first before all: GGG has severe process, backend and infrastructure issues. Most customers provide the "minigame" information proactively. On their first mail. Which is completely ignored. To then split out that "process" back into it's individual bits.

At this rate and average assuming 10 "bits" with (if lucky) one interaction per 2 weeks. It would take even the smallest 10-second standard request. Take an incredible and estimated timeframe of up to 5 or more months! Assuming the customer has the means to babyset and remain constantly responsive/available over the course of literally half a year. Just to babysit on a problem that resides on GGG's end.

Not on any level: Be that ethical, professional, practical or even the most basic legal responsibilities and requirements - is that tolerable or acceptable.

Your condescending, imho unprofessional, shared experience isn't helping at all here. Especially when the "customer attitude" is that of blaming the customer, for not going through absolutely ridiculous hoops and unnecessary minigames. That are mainly cause by process or infrastructure inefficiencies; By the seller, company or provider. Especially if not even basic priorization seems to work or be performed. At all.

And that's all even without the ridiculous premise of pushing people and requests to the very back of the entire queue. Without any sort of priorization.

If you have a critical issue with your bank. Or no matter what bought service as a matter of fact. You'd consider it normal for people to wait for 3-6+ months. To either: perform a critical mutation on a stolen card for example. Or locking/recovering a compromised account?

- If you buy and pay for a car and it's scheduled for pickup today... or let's just say tomorrow. The car is already paid. But suddenly you, if not all customers are supposed to suddenly wait 3-6+ months. To pickup their bought car.

So the customer is supposed to walk by foot for half a year now? While the seller does not fullfil their contractual obligations in any reasonable form? We both know - That's not how things work. It's absolutely - ridiculous.

You can't seriously be sitting there with some fancy sub-standard callcenter examples. And then blame that sort of problem on the customers "behaviour" or some minor technicalities. Which the customer cannot realistically know, expect or fullfil.

I'd urge you to somewhat refrain from interpolating some previous or "normalized" "standards" and examples. While blaming and patronizing users that basically cannot access a paid product for weeks months on end. Often reaching into values of hundreds or thousands of dollars.

Especially since you seem to miss the extent and scope of the current culmination of issues. And especially: Since those (mainly process- and efficiency) related problems have been known about. Without any apparent improvement. Since 5-10+ years.

This isn't meant personally. I just hope that patronizing users from low-quality or substandard provider perspectives. Will only make things worse.

2-3+ months multiplied by 5-10x. For a 10 second mutation. Caused by GGG in first place. NOT the customer. You've got to be kidding me - trying to normalize that sort of severe issue. But I don't think you were aware of the extent of the problem.

Please do not patronize users with sub-standard corpo perspectives and bs. Thank you.