Letter to Steven Reid about lack of customer support

[Badgeking]

And another one climbs on a big boy horse. I make no claim, I stated facts moreover I stated facts you can easily verify for yourself. I made no value judgement on support, in fact Ive never even had any contact withthem.

 

I never stated that you made any comments about support did I? I simply took something that was news to me and commented on it. From the looks of everything a lot of us have dealt with up until this point, it all seemed outsourced. I was simply stating that if it is indeed true and Bioware Ireland is in charge of support, there will be no hope.

[shyofday]

FREE 2 PLAY.. i said it.. ive played better free to play games.. and there support has been better too...

[Badgeking]

FREE 2 PLAY.. i said it.. ive played better free to play games.. and there support has been better too...

 

I agree with you on this! One of the reasons we PAY a monthly fee for this game is to get customer support. Why PAY for something that we are not getting?

 

A few days ago I had to contact NCsoft because I was not able to login and forgot my security questions. Within 30 minutes of my support ticket, I had a detailed, personal message back to me requesting a little bit more information. An hour later, I was able to login to my account again. THAT IS HOW YOU DO CUSTOMER SUPPORT! Waiting now almost 20 DAYS (!!!!!!!!!) for support is just AWFUL!

[MrTijger]

I never stated that you made any comments about support did I? I simply took something that was news to me and commented on it. From the looks of everything a lot of us have dealt with up until this point, it all seemed outsourced. I was simply stating that if it is indeed true and Bioware Ireland is in charge of support, there will be no hope.

 

I doubt it, but then hyperbole and doomsday predictions seem to be all the rage, I also think that they clearly need time to get their house in order which is pretty much what I'd expect.

[Badgeking]

I doubt it, but then hyperbole and doomsday predictions seem to be all the rage, I also think that they clearly need time to get their house in order which is pretty much what I'd expect.

 

Yes, some time is needed to "get the house in order", however the game has now been out for 26 days counting the head start. Other games (like Rift) had a bumpy customer support start, but that only lasted a few days, and the whole time they were telling the community that it would improve. We have heard nothing and support has not improved at all in 26 days. Hence all the doomsday predictions. They have had more than enough time to get things ironed out with customer support, but with each passing day and with no comments from support or improvements, it seems like nothing is being done and they are happy with the sorry state it is in now.

[MattsPistola]

I agree with you on this! One of the reasons we PAY a monthly fee for this game is to get customer support. Why PAY for something that we are not getting?

 

I couldn't agree more. I had a call with CS and after telling him all of my drivers are up to date and ran him through the steps I had taken, he proceeded to read off a list of questions asking me if I had done exactly what I had outlined.

[Dkfeb]

I have to agree about the customer support being sub-power. I understand that they most definitely have their hands full, however that is not MY fault. I paid them for a product which was advertised in a certain way, primiarily, it was advertised as me being able to play it! When that doesnt happen, people tend to get frustrated and seek answers. When they don't get any answers they get even more frustrated and when they get wrong answers and get sent from A > B > C > A, they get even more frustrated.

 

My own story is that after playing happily for about a week and enjoying this wonderful game, I downloaded a patch, immediately following this patch i began encountering Error Code 9000. It would start with latency spikes many of which going into 100,000 and then I would be kicked from the service. This would happen ever hour or so, however it got progressively worse to the point were the game was unplayable. As soon as I logged in I would be disconnected with an Error Code 9000 message.

 

I checked my internet, background programs etc. All the things that everyone usually does before checking with customer support and I found no problems. In fact, my brother plays the same game using the same internet connection and he was lucky enough not to encounter this problem. Anyway, So I emailed CS and explained my problem and when it occurred and stated how I had checked my internet connection and I did not have background programs running and even explained how my brother was playing using the same internet and had no problems. I included the DxDiag and Tracert which they asked for and happily waited. I received an automated cut and paste response suggesting I visit the forum to check for potential reasons behind 'performance issues', and it expalained that it was most like my internet connection or my in game settings. Completely ignoring the fact that in my email I had already explained that I was running the game perfectly fine for about a week.

 

So i emailed a second time, asking for clarification on the issue because the first response I received wasn't helpful. I stressed that my internet connection was fine and that it was not a problem with my ingame settings as I was running it fine before the patch. Again I received an automated response telling me that there might be an issue with my internet connection and told me to try closing the game and opening it again. As if that is not the FIRST thing anyone does.

 

If anyone had taken the time to read either of my emails they would have known how frustrating such a response would be as it is clearly ignoring EVERYTHING I have said and is simply a "hurr silly customer, turn off switch and turn back on hurrr".

 

The only reason I have managed to play again is thanks to a poster named Deewee who posted a work around for the problem.

 

Disgraceful CS.

[MandFlurry]

I'm going to agree with this. As a lot of people are aware, i am very active on these forums helping people with a LOT of technical support problems.

 

However, since i am active, i rarely see actual CS reps giving advice. There are one or two really good reps, but they hardly ever post here.

 

Then there are the 2-3 reps that i personally have had direct discussions with support managers about for giving completely false and incorrect information to players, giving them false hope. These players then come back and cause all kinds of arguments in threads.

 

So in summary.. +1 for the OP.

 

I see CS also takeing down some issues like not being able to use ur Credit or Debit Cards for ppls subscriptions. they say it's quite a big problem, and are working on it. Yet they Censor the subject on the Forums.

 

CS does have major problems includeing some ppl not being able to speak English fluently sometimes.

Edited January 8, 2012 by MandFlurry

[Folgrin]

EA Demands their profit. Occupy Kaas city! We are the 99% lol

[satansmurf]

I doubt it, but then hyperbole and doomsday predictions seem to be all the rage, I also think that they clearly need time to get their house in order which is pretty much what I'd expect.

 

If you know you are going to have millions of people playing a game for the first time publicly, one would assume they knew the first few months would be chaos and have the people in place to handle it.

 

BioWare seems to have looked at every previous MMO release, threw out anything they could have learned from it, hired a few people based on annual support/CS projections and then hoped that patches will silence enough people in the first 30 days to keep the game from tanking.

 

I am surprised a game company has not yet created larger virtual teams of support representatives built out of their actual player base. Player Advocates if you will, that will go to the mat with all the different teams trying to help the players resolve issues. Sure, it may not get resolved in a way someone wants, but at least it would feel like someone tried.

 

Based on legth of in game tickets and lack of posts on boards, they are way way way way way understaffed for initial release.

[satansmurf]

EA Demands their profit. Occupy Kaas city! We are the 99% lol

 

Now THAT was funny! lol

[SaltAU]

I know of other business' that would immediately remove him from his position. The customer support in this game is beyond pathetic. If he is ultimately responsible for it, he should be looking for another job.

[Bobiefatt]

Lets just say, no ticket at all ever got a normal awsner.

 

They arent simply ready for it it seems.

Which is bad.

[HillbillySith]

I've been dealing with the patcher main assets/repair loop for the last 4 days. Yesterday I spent 16 hours, yes 16, not a typo trying to get the game fixed. Numerous phone calls, e-mails to support and the net result.... 1 e-mail back with an obvious copy/paste to do things I did the first day, included in my e-mails and posts on the customer support forums were copies of my launcher logs and DxDiag. None of my customer support forum posts were responded to by any bioware employee. I am trying one more clean reinstall and then Bioware looses another customer.

[Stankturd]

Completely agree with the OP - Deserves a cigar.

 

This right here. Help us Bioware, you're our only hope.

[Swift]

I sent this as a personal message to Stephen Reid a few days ago hoping that we would read it and do something about the lack of customer service. At this point, nothing seems to be happening.

 

What planet do you come from where a single man can overhaul an entire department to work differently enough to show visible improvement in mere days?

 

Seriously, what you are asking for simply isnt something that can be delivered on in days or even weeks. A slow, gradual transformation over a matter of months is what would likely happen. It took Blizzard almost an entire year after launching WoW to get its Customer Support department up to scratch.

Edited January 8, 2012 by Swift

[sildoor]

What planet do you come from where a single man can overhaul an entire department to work differently enough to show visible improvement in mere days?

 

Seriously, what you are asking for simply isnt something that can be delivered on in days or even weeks. A slow, gradual transformation over a matter of months is what would likely happen. It took Blizzard almost an entire year after launching WoW to get its Customer Support department up to scratch.

 

atleast in wow I got GM'sin person who helped my ingame problems .. even the first month..

 

here in swtor I have 5 tickets with gamebreaking bugs that I need help with .. so far only help ive got are automated droids -,.- how hard can it be for a gm to just pop by and fix them, most of them should be easy to fix, like that my questlist is full and I can't delete a single one of them -.-

[Swift]

how hard can it be for a gm to just pop by and fix them, most of them should be easy to fix, like that my questlist is full and I can't delete a single one of them -.-

 

What you think may be easy to fix may not be the case. I will provide one example. In World of Warcraft, if you delete an item, a GM cannot simply spawn another one.

 

Players think it should be the easiest thing in the world to do, just spawn another item, but with the way the loot system is built for WoW, certain conditions have to be met before an item can be generated in game and the GMs have no way to simply make the item appear, so many, many loot related tickets get closed with a "Sorry, we can't do this."

 

It should be easy, but with the way the game has been made, it simply cannot be done.

What are easy fixes in your mind do not always translate to easy fixes in game.

 

Edit: For the specific example you gave, considering the 1.1 patch notes has a fix to make those missions able to be abandoned, it would suggest that it is simply not within a GMs power to remove them from your mission log, probably due to their associated database entries.

Edited January 8, 2012 by Swift

[Badgeking]

What planet do you come from where a single man can overhaul an entire department to work differently enough to show visible improvement in mere days?

 

Seriously, what you are asking for simply isnt something that can be delivered on in days or even weeks. A slow, gradual transformation over a matter of months is what would likely happen. It took Blizzard almost an entire year after launching WoW to get its Customer Support department up to scratch.

 

Of course nothing is going to happen overnight, or even in the course of a week or a month. However, a message about what is being done would be nice. SOMETHING that lets us know they understand there is a problem and are working to fix it!

 

Keeping the community in the dark is not helping them. If they were to come out and say "Look guys, we know that the customer support department is not preforming well right now. We understand that tickets are being closed without answers, tickets are being replied to without providing any type of help, and some of the GM's have the english skills of a 5 year old. However, we are working on fixing all of these issues. Know it might take a few weeks, but you will notice some improvements in the coming weeks". Sure Stephen Reid can't change the whole support team over night. However, as the COMMUNITY MANAGER, it is his JOB to inform the community about important issues. The lack of customer support right now is a MAJOR ISSUE, and he has said NOTHING about it!

[Swift]

Of course nothing is going to happen overnight, or even in the course of a week or a month. However, a message about what is being done would be nice. SOMETHING that lets us know they understand there is a problem and are working to fix it!

 

After such a short period of time, what do you want them to say though? Do you honestly think they have a full plan worked out, costed and ready to be put into action that they can share?

 

If they came out and said "Thank you for your concerns, we know it isn't the best and we are working on it, but we have no specific things we can share right now" they would just get blasted by most of the people in this thread for being too vague and, essentially, telling them nothing.

 

What most here seem to want is a full, detailed plan of what they are going to do which, considering its not even been a week since this was posted, is a completely unrealistic expectation. The desire for Instant Gratification is, unfortunately, very prevalent on these forums.

Edited January 8, 2012 by Swift

[Badgeking]

After such a short period of time, what do you want them to say though? Do you honestly think they have a full plan worked out, costed and ready to be put into action that they can share?

 

If they came out and said "Thank you for your concerns, we know it isn't the best and we are working on it, but we have no specific things we can share right now" they would just get blasted by most of the people in this thread for being too vague.

 

What most here seem to want is a full, detailed plan of what they are going to do which, considering its not even been a week since this was posted, is a completely unrealistic expectation.

 

Well, take Rift for example. When that game launched, customer support tickets (while they were still being personal in each reply and HELPING the paying customers) were taking awhile to get answered. On the forums (and the website) they had a message about this. They knew there was a problem with the wait for some help, and they TOLD THE COMMUNITY that they were working on hiring more staff and getting them all trained to provide helpful support. Sure they didn't tell us all about the budgets and stuff, but they flat out said "we know it is a problem and are working as quickly as we can to fix it". Sure enough, in a matter of days support ticket wait times were dropping and they commented that players should notice a reduced wait.

 

It has now been 26 days since head start, and they have said NOTHING. Not even a "We are working on it" or even a "We know it is an issue". For all we know, they could be HAPPY with this poor support and don't see a need to change it. Because they are not saying anything, it seems that way.

 

Also, for them at this point, cost should not matter. If they want to keep subscribers, they need to provide support. They have already said that they have 1 million people with the free month. Well, if each of them just bought the $60 basic version (which is not the case), they made $60 million dollars in one month! If they keep all of those million players happy, they will be earning $15 million each month just from subs alone. Sure they have server costs and stuff, but it does not cost nearly the amount of money they are bringing in. Keeping subscribers informed and happy should be the main goal here, and with the poor customer service, they are not going to be keeping subscribers for very long.

Edited January 8, 2012 by Badgeking

[Vodalus]

@Swift: Here's a great example of what could be done. SR could get off Twitter, where he fires off a handful of one-liner replies that are basically reworded and repeated all day, and come to these forums for something other than a couple of posts to shut disgruntled (legitimately or not) customers by calling them out as being liars. I get it, they lied about things on the forums. Shut 'em down, that's fine. But that should not be the only interaction that he has with the actual community in the official forums in his position as Senior Community Manager.

 

Simply being present would be a change. It's the easiest thing to do in a customer service position. Be there to listen to your customers.

 

But he isn't interested in providing customer service (or community relations), he just wants to look like the big-guy-on-campus and swoop in to save innocent little BW from the big-bad forum rancors.

[Shaz]

I am truly appalled at the state of the CS in this game. Not to badmouth any member of the CS team exactly, but simply the structure of how they perform the 'service'. It's not a service... because I have not gotten actual service for my petitions, I have gotten canned responses that were pulled from a list. It honestly seems like it's all computerized, with a bot scanning the petition for keywords and spitting out the 'most likely' response.

 

And then, to top it all off....

 

My last petition was deleted. It was regarding severe harassment. It was not 'Passed On.' It was not 'Resolved.' Heck, it was not even 'Closed'!! It was OUTRIGHT DELETED with ZERO response ever given, SIX DAYS after I sent it in.

 

Gee, BioWare, thanks for all that customer service. Don't I feel cared for.

 

I have played many MMOs over the years since I first started playing them in EQ1 in 1999. I have even been customer support myself, back when EQ1 used player volunteers as actual CSR. Am I just spoiled in getting actual responses from CSR teams? With actually speaking to them? To actually getting more than copy/paste non-interactive letters? To getting into question/answer sessions with the CSR until we are both satisfied that the situation has been dealt with to the best of the abilities of the CSR- before they pass it on (if they need to)?

 

 

Is:

 

CSR: I hope that helped. Is there anything else I can do for you?

Player: Nope, I'm good. Thanks!

CSR: You're welcome. Happy I could help!

 

just asking too much now?

Edited January 8, 2012 by Shaz

[TomWhiting]

Is:

 

CSR: I hope that helped. Is there anything else I can do for you?

Player: Nope, I'm good. Thanks!

CSR: You're welcome. Happy I could help!

 

just asking too much now?

 

Apparently it is. So is actually READING and COMPREHENDING the ticket the 'agent' is responding to. Customer service? Not even remotely close.

 

I don't care if there are millions of tickets pouring in a day, their job is to resolve them. That is their ONLY job. If they can't do so, then it's time for them to look for other work.

 

It's been proven time and time again that these 'agents' either don't read the ticket, or just don't understand what people are saying. If it's #1, they deserve to be fired, flat out, no exceptions. If it's #2, they need to pass it on to someone else, you know, someone that speaks ENGLISH.

[Nolez]

bumppp