Customer service in gaming:
How to ‘pwn’ at player support
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Table of contents Introduction Part 1: How to develop a world-class approach to customer service in gaming Part 2: How to deliver winning mobile gaming player support Part 3: Why maintaining a player connection is critical in gaming Part 4: The benefits of hiring gamers for games customer support Part 5: Why customer self-service is crucial for player support Part 6: How to exceed player support expectations through outsourcing Conclusion
Introduction The games industry is undergoing dramatic change as customer service becomes another battlefield for winning over players. Generally speaking, however, product development and the critical function known as player support have not always gone hand-in-hand. For most studios, game development often absorbs the lion’s share of time and attention – for them, it’s all about the release of the game, the company’s core business and “raison d’être.” No doubt, player support is often a secondary concern. But, given that the online games economy relies heavily on attracting and retaining players, and then moving them to recurring or micro payments, the lack of good player support can be damaging to gaming companies’ bottom lines. A growing player base requires happy players. Recurring payments require recurring customers. A player support strategy must factor in somewhere – and studios are starting to take notice. Game studios and publishers have a massive opportunity right now. As the industry becomes increasingly fragmented and competitive, smart game studios can extend their game lifecycle and improve the value of their brand by providing better service. At TELUS International, we serve some of the largest gaming titles
TELUS International - How to ‘pwn’ at player support
in the industry. From console, to mobile, to social, to MMO – we’ve done it all, and understand what it takes to delight players and keep them loyal. Every touchpoint with a player is an opportunity to deliver an exceptional customer experience, to stand out from the crowd, create brand loyalty, increase a player’s lifetime value, and even use real-time feedback to improve games. All of these have a direct impact on the bottom line. Gamers are continuously looking for the latest and greatest in terms of graphics, storytelling, soundtracks and playability, and their expectations for customer service and player support are no different. The following recommendations and expert analysis offer tips, tricks and best practices for gaming customer service, backed by the knowledge and experience that a strong player support strategy can serve as a real ‘game-changer’ in the industry. Each section functions as part of the larger content piece, but is also designed to stand on its own individually, so please feel free to jump around and use the table of contents to find a specific topic of interest. Thanks for reading!
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Part 1 How to develop a world-class approach to customer service in gaming
TELUS International - How to ‘pwn’ at player support
The gaming industry has evolved into a rapidly growing behemoth that attracts the best minds, top investors, and most importantly, impassioned consumers around the world. The eSports industry, where gamers compete in front of thousands of adoring fans, is anticipated to reach $696 million in revenue in 2017, according to Newzoo. Major media outlets like TBS, Yahoo and ESPN are setting up specific verticals to showcase this world to an ever-growing audience, and global brands like Red Bull, McDonald’s and Intel are sponsoring events and players. New England Patriots owner, Robert Kraft, and New York Mets chief operating officer, Jeff Wilpon, even signed agreements to own citybased professional eSports teams. While eSports continues to emerge as the NBA or NFL of gaming — it already draws in more viewers than many mainstream sports — it has played a part in influencing the growth of the gaming industry overall. Newzoo predicts the industry will grow to an astounding $1.5 billion by 2020. The gaming industry is evolving rapidly with companies constantly testing new business models, distribution strategies and development tactics for their games. But as anyone present during an eSports match can tell you, fans and players are not afraid to be
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vocal. Gaming companies must remember that even during the most chaotic or exciting times, customers want their voices heard and concerns addressed.
Supporting the gamer Jon Brock is the head of community management at WorldGaming, an online gaming platform that primarily hosts FIFA, Madden, NBA2K and NHL competitions. With more than 2.7 million registered users, WorldGaming has invested heavily in its user support, with Brock spearheading all playersupport efforts. He joined the company after years spent building his expertise in the famously customer-oriented travel, tourism and hospitality industries. Brock is applying much of what he learned from tourism into his new role in gaming. “Gamers are not treated in the same fair way that someone sitting down at a restaurant, or booking a vacation would be,” says Brock. “There’s a stigma attached [to] gamers that they aren’t consuming goods as others would be, and that’s just not true.” The creator of the popular Roshpit Champions game, Ryan Racioppo, says that it’s a mistake to overlook gamers’ needs and ideas because of how active they are in making sure their concerns are heard. “There’s a huge culture of witch hunting in the gaming world,” he says.
Manny Anekal, the former VP of Product Marketing at the Major League Gaming, expands on this point. “It’s very important to remember that gamers, potentially more so than other mediums, are a very passionate group. So if you do something right, they’ll exalt you. However, if something is done wrong, they will surely let you know.”
Don’t take your audience for granted Players’ loyalty in gaming should never be taken for granted. Racioppo says it’s very easy for customers to voice their displeasure and lose patience. “If they’re not having fun, they can quit. If their friends don’t play, they’ll quit. If they get angry, they’ll quit. The bottom line is that your customers have so much choice, they can jump ship at anytime.” Brock agrees, adding that in this climate, the best way for gaming companies to differentiate themselves from the competition is by offering superior service levels. “When you’re dealing with people who live in the online space as gamers do, they require an extra touch, because competition and alternatives are so easy to reach,” he says. “Once you’ve built the basics of your support team, you can begin tracking customer pain points, identifying larger areas of problems, and creating new offerings to combat those issues,” Brock says.
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Establishing service principles In his new role at WorldGaming, Brock says he immediately went to work implementing a guiding principle within the customer experience and support teams known by the acronym TPEAH: Thankful, Pleasant, Empathetic, Approachable and Helpful to every single player. It’s important to treat every player with the same baseline level of respect and courtesy, he continues. “The reality is that gamers are not kids sitting in their parents’ basements,”
The reality is that gamers are not kids sitting in their parents’ basements. They are future leaders with PhDs.
TELUS International - How to ‘pwn’ at player support
Jon Brock VP Community Management WorldGaming
says Brock. “They are future leaders with PhDs. Many are becoming lawyers, or doctors or accountants. They live online, can easily be reached there and do expect the best.” This means gaming companies have to be accessible on as many social and traditional channels as possible. On top of well-known social channels like Facebook, Anekal suggests a few alternatives as well. “Platforms like Snapchat, Twitter and live video [Periscope, Facebook Live, etc.]
can all be used from a customer service perspective.” In a world where all those options are available for free, it’s a smart choice for companies to have a presence on each. As gaming popularity continues to grow, and as more money, talent and resources continue to pour into the industry, it’s becoming exceptionally important for companies to step up their game and treat customers to the same experience they’d expect from any other world-class service.
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Part 2 How to deliver winning mobile gaming player support
For a long time, the Nintendos, Segas and Sonys of the gaming world were king — but the rise of the smartphone opened the door to a new ruler: mobile games. A recent state of the industry report by Adobe, however, found that mobile games have the highest abandonment rate out of all app categories. To continue to grow their audience— and their top-line — mobile gaming companies have to prioritize the customer experience, or risk irrelevancy in such a highly competitive marketplace.
Mobile gamers are everyone The accessibility and low cost of mobile games means that players aren’t like “traditional” console and computer gamers (although there can be overlap), says David Laperle, IT director at Ludia, the Montrealbased mobile-game developer behind Jurassic World: The Game. “With [mobile games], we reach a totally different type of customer that we couldn’t reach with console gaming,” says Laperle. Mobile gamers are distinct in that there is no real set demographic. For contact centers and customer support teams, that means being prepared for anything, including requests from people who may not understand some of the basics of gaming. “You can’t go into it with preconceived ideas about what the level of knowledge or product
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understanding these players have,” says Wyatt Fossett, a communications consultant at Adrian Crook + Associates. From lost progress due to a dropped connection, to in-app purchase and billing issues, customer service teams need to have the patience and willingness to field all types of requests from a wide variety of customers.
A quick response is key Mobile games may be addictive, but that doesn’t mean gamers won’t abandon them in an instant if they’re unhappy. “There’s so many options out there,” says Fossett. “If the one game that I’m playing isn’t responding to me, or one tiny thing is wrong, I’m going to uninstall and install something else.” With plenty of opportunities for mobile gamers to flee, ensuring a timely and efficient customer support experience can serve as a differentiator. “The industry standard is not very communicative,” says Fossett, who knows some companies that can take weeks to respond to customers. Responding to customer inquiries within 24 hours is the general expectation, but on social, those timelines are even shorter. Ryan Loerke, a player experience manager at game developer Hyper Hippo, stresses that if a mobile gaming company uses social media for customer service, responses have to be almost instant. “Our rule of thumb is
checking in at least every hour while we’re in the office,” he says.
Picking the right tools Having the right tools and the right team in place is critical for delivering the best customer service with minimal customer effort. In-game tools like KTplay, Zendesk’s Embeddables and Helpshift allow players to remain immersed in the gaming experience as they seek assistance, while simultaneously providing support teams with comprehensive customer information to effectively troubleshoot. “If someone sends us, or anybody, a support ticket through in-game settings, that ticket will come with all [their] information: device ID, type of device, how much RAM is on that device, how long they have been playing,” explains Laperle. Offering a combination of customer support avenues, such as in-game tools along with self-help FAQs and email support, allows players to engage with customer service in a format that works best for their needs.
Managing team size Staffing can often be a challenge when it comes to mobile games support. When you have millions of users, how do you determine the right size team to deliver great
TELUS International - How to ‘pwn’ at player support
With plenty of opportunities for gamers to flee, ensuring a timely and efficient customer support experience can serve as a differentiator.
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customer service without cutting into profits? Unfortunately, there is no secret formula. “There is no real answer to the size of the team. It is all a feeling-out process,” says Fosset. At Ludia, the team has opted for a hybrid internal-external approach. “What we want to do is offer a structure that allows us to grow over time,” Laperle says. Although they have a core, dedicated in-house team of experts, they also use an outsourcing partner to help scale when needed. The right outsourcing partner will be able to work with you to determine a team size that leaves you agile enough to scale up or down based on customer needs.
Understanding mobile gamers While slightly different demographically, mobile gamers are still seeking the same level of high-touch customer service as their traditional gaming counterparts. A big part of delivering that exceptional service is understanding what the games mean to those who play them. “For some people the games that we build are way more than just a game. It’s an exit, an entertainment after a long day at work, something that they can rely on,” says Laperle. By understanding that games often mean more to players then just winning or losing, it will enable the kind of customer support
Loerke, and the industry, aspires to deliver: “Our number-one goal is just to make sure when you contact us, you leave feeling like we did everything we could to make you want to keep playing.”
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Part 3 Why maintaining a player connection is critical in gaming
In July of 2016, just days after Americans celebrated the 240th birthday of their country, a new kind of excitement took the nation — and the world — by storm when game-maker Niantic released Pokémon Go. Before the week had ended, it had been downloaded on slightly more than five percent of Android smartphones, moving past Candy Crush Saga to become the biggest mobile game in history with 21 million active daily users, according to SurveyMonkey. Niantic’s servers crashed several times as more and more people attempted to become Pokémon trainers. In response, Niantic put the world at ease by posting known issues on its social media channels as well as its official websites. It kept Pokémon Go’s devout fans abreast of its progress in fixing bugs such as distorted audio, GPS issues and server connectivity problems, setting an example for customer support in gaming.
Gaining knowledge from the gaming community As the Pokémon Go example illustrates, the immense popularity of gaming leads to an increasing number of customer service and support challenges for many gaming brands. “Gaming is somewhat of a unique industry in this day and age because a majority of players interacting with their particular game are constantly connected to the mothership,”
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success,” says Buffalo. Companies, though, still face an ongoing battle to keep customers satisfied, especially within the modern form of instantaneous response via social media and the internet.
Fan loyalty rewarded with better games
says H. Alexander Buffalo, department chair of Media Arts and Animation, Game Art and Design at the Art Institute of Tampa. With that in mind, players have a community on the internet on places like Reddit where they voice their opinions or displeasure. Gaming companies monitor these types of sites to gain knowledge about what is and isn’t working. “In addition, that connectivity allows immediate feedback so a company knows fairly quickly if a game will carry its weight. In the past, it was essentially a wait-and-see approach. Now, it’s a rapid response due to the instant noise that’s created across various media,” says Buffalo. The speed at which information is
Gaming is somewhat of a unique industry in this day and age because a majority of players interacting with their particular game are constantly connected to the mothership
TELUS International - How to ‘pwn’ at player support
H. Alexander Buffalo Department Chair Art Institute of Tampa
exchanged worldwide continues to evolve at a mind-boggling rate, with gaming companies using this type of connectivity to their advantage to update games and fix glitches. “Now that you can get online and can play in a multiplayer or massive multiplayer community, gamers are constantly connected,” says Buffalo. What keeps them connected is the community, and the constant updates from the company itself. “You’re always receiving messages like ‘New content. New update. Bugs are being fixed.’ They’re constantly keeping you in the loop. This type of relationship with the consumer and the effort to keep the gamer happy is how the industry will maintain its level of
A poignant way in which companies respond to customer complaints is in how they produce games in the future. In CNET editor Ian Sherr’s article “How Electronic Arts (EA) stopped being the worst company in America,” he writes that “...gamers are not like most normal people; they’re committed, passionate, enthusiastic consumers who go all in when a new game they want is released.” Matt Parke is one of those people. By day, he’s a 37-year-old husband, father and digital media producer for CBS television affiliate WTSP. At night, however, he’s a gaming aficionado, playing upwards of four hours a day of mobile and console games. He’s got seven different consoles at home, including everything from the original Nintendo to an Xbox One and PlayStation 4. He’s loyal to specific developers because they show consistency in how they produce games based upon customer suggestions and concerns. He cites the award-winning Red Dead Redemption, developed by
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Rockstar San Diego and released by Rockstar Games in 2010, as one of the best games he’s ever played. Perhaps not coincidentally, the game had one of the best debuts ever for an Americanmade game in Japan. “It does a masterful job of reinvigorating the Western genre that has become outdated in movies,” Parke says. “It’s easy to see how much the company cares about their loyal customers because gamers like me appreciate nuances like the ones I mentioned.” If Rockstar’s game is an example of what to do right, EA’s 2012 release of Mass Effect 3 is just the opposite. Sherr writes on CNET.
No matter how many designers, developers and testers are hired to work on a game, there are no greater experts in this industry than the people who play the games obsessively.
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com that fans were so incensed by the game that 250,000 people flocked to a prominent consumer advocacy site, voting EA the worst company in the U.S. The company received countless complaints about how it had become a business that lost its connection with gamers. Andrew Wilson took over as CEO in September 2013, bringing with him a commitment to the kind of creativity in design and storytelling that fans craved and called for. EA is now one of the stronger companies in the business. EA’s story may be a cautionary tale about what happens when gaming companies
lose touch with their fans, but it’s also a lesson in how to address customer service in gaming. No matter how many designers, developers and testers are hired to work on a game, there are no greater experts in this industry than the people who play the games obsessively. Gaming companies’ support departments need to keep as many lines of communication with their fans open when things go wrong — and when things go right — or the companies risk losing the very people they’re built to serve.
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Part 4 The benefits of hiring gamers for games customer support
Almost half of all American adults now play video games. Naturally, when half of the country and a large chunk of the world are plugging away at the latest Zelda, Call of Duty or Uncharted game, there are a lot of players to keep happy should a problem arise. Gamers in particular can be a unique demographic, and managing their distinct customer support expectations is easier said than done. While there are many ways to go about the task, there is one approach that promises rewarding benefits: Hiring gamers for games customer support.
What’s at stake Gamers aren’t typically one-time customers. If a developer earns their loyalty and enthusiasm with a great game, they can become longtime supporters. For example, a fan of Destiny will eagerly pay for additional downloadable content, including new story missions, character skins and more. In fact, The Taken King expansion pack set a new record for day-one PlayStation 4 digital sales. In the process, gamers won’t just generate ongoing revenue from personal purchases, but will encourage others to play as well. “Your players, your community, are often your best tool in terms of advocating for the game,” says Emma Siu, a community engagement manager at Electronic Arts, who has worked on franchises like Need
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world of friends. This is why Siu says one of her chief philosophies is to connect with gamers as peers. “I want to build meaningful relationships with people,” she says. “You want to connect on that basic human level and relate to them.” And when it comes to customer support, nobody can connect better with a gamer, than a fellow gamer.
Speaking the same language
For Speed. “You need to look after your communities, because they’ll look after you.”
What gamers expect from customer support By the time a gamer reaches out to a contact center for assistance, they have likely exhausted all other forms of support. As huge proponents of self-service, players often turn to members of their vast online community (via FAQs, comment boards or Reddit) to troubleshoot problems. When they need help to log into their World of Warcraft account, resolve a payment issue with their Overwatch downloadable content, or troubleshoot a midgame crash in the Telltale Games series, it’s important that player needs are met quickly
and that they exit the customer support interaction happy. Beyond having their problems resolved, one of the main factors in the delivery of exceptional customer service for gamers is also being understood. “The nature of the call might be ‘Hey, I can’t connect to World of Warcraft’ but the customers real motivation behind it is ‘Hey, I’m not going to be able to spend the weekend with my friends,’” says Randolph d’Amore, who has worked in video game customer service for 15 years. It’s important for customer service staff to know that a game issue isn’t like a broken printer to players; a game is part of who they are as a person, and it often represents a connection to a whole online
TELUS International - How to ‘pwn’ at player support
It’s important for customer service staff to know that a game issue isn’t like a broken printer to players; a game is part of who they are as a person.
Hiring gamers who can deliver empathetic and specialized support will help the customer feel comfortable communicating their frustrations in gaming-specific language — easing customer effort and creating a powerful connection to the brand. “Gamers talk to each other as though they’ve known each other for years. There’s very little formality, and there’s no need to break the ice,” says Sethlans Vayu, a customer experience manager at Australian video game developer Halfbrick Studios. “A gamer in support can provide that.” That deep understanding of the game can’t be learned through training alone – it must come from experience as a gamer. Players will know whether the customer service agent is part of the gaming community right off the bat. “You’ll hear it in their tone of voice or lingo. Things like that indicate that you’re speaking from the same place,” says d’Amore. “You’ll hear a level of
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awareness and an immediate understanding of the types of challenges you’re facing and why that challenge matters.”
Hiring and retaining gamer customer support agents How do you go about finding and hiring passionate players to work in customer support? The truth is, they’ll often find you first. Gamers are typically eager to work in the gaming industry, checking job postings on developer pages or popular gaming sites on a regular basis. Word-of-mouth from existing agents can also be highly effective. “The person-toperson referral rate is really high and gets you really fantastic candidates,” says d’Amore. “When I was at Activision doing the hiring and training for [customer support quality assurance], it was not uncommon during the busy seasons to see that 25-plus percent of applicants were referrals from existing employees.” Once the applications start rolling in, there are certain qualities to look for in a candidate. “Someone applying for a support role should be inquisitive about the different disciplines and areas of game development,” says Vayu. If gamers apply a passion to learning beyond what they already know, they’ll develop a broader knowledge base they can draw from to provide more complex help.
And while passion for a game does matter, it’s still important to consider customer service fundamentals when hiring. “You can’t just say ‘Okay, this person plays a lot of Destiny, so they’re hired,’” says d’Amore. Finding candidates who are innately interested in helping others is critical for great customer support. Vayu believes that a passion for serving others is not just important for the delivery of good customer support, but employee retention as well. “If you have someone who wants to help people, and who experiences that rewarding feeling when they have, then they’re a candidate that won’t be hard to retain,” he says.
Why hiring gamers matters Gamers want exceptional customer support and no one is more invested in delivering that promise than other gamers. “I have seen gamers be more invested in entry level call center positions, that other people might think of as a speed bump before their next job,” says d’Amore. “They really care and they get much more into it because it is not only their livelihood; it becomes an extension of their culture and their passion.” That’s a powerful and unmatchable force when applied to customer service.
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Part 5 Why customer self-service is crucial for player support
TELUS International - How to ‘pwn’ at player support
Among the ever-expanding selection of customer support options, self-service has become increasingly prevalent. Microsoft’s Global State of Multichannel Customer Service Report found that 90 percent of customers now expect companies to help them help themselves with selfservice support. And while more and more customers are turning to FAQs, instructional videos and online forums for assistance, gamers in particular are one group that gravitates towards self-help as a primary means of service. An often tech-savvy community, gamers have long turned to online peer-to-peer assistance and other DIY options for support. “It’s far easier to just type your problem into Google and find out what other people are saying about the same problem, instead of trying to contact a support person,” explains Wyatt Fossett of game-design consulting firm Adrian Crook + Associates. Self-service is also a faster support option than calling or emailing, minimizing lengthy disruptions to the gaming experience. That’s why it’s critical that gaming companies prioritize self-service as a first line of support in addition to the traditional support channels. Here are four ways to provide exceptional self-service support to gamers.
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1. Let gamers run the show Before developing self-service support material, gaming companies must listen and be receptive to players and their issues. “Never assume you know what gamers will want or ask,” says Sethlans Vayu, a customer experience manager at Halfbrick Studios. “Player interests are diverse and will grow and evolve.” Creating a static FAQ that assumes what problems gamers will face, and only addresses basic concerns, simply won’t cut it. Self-service options need to be driven entirely by gamers’ needs. “Whatever we want is secondary to what our consumers actually want,” says Tony Walsh, the founder and director of indie-game developer
Phantom Compass. “We need to pay attention to what they’re talking about.” Besides collecting data and feedback from tickets via other support channels (i.e. email, phone, live chat, etc. ), Vayu stresses the importance of going online to see what’s concerning gamers. “Trawl forums, Reddit, your game’s social-media page, Twitter wherever there is mention [of your game]. Start a tally of things your players are saying or asking. This is not only the best way to keep ahead of issues, but to keep connected with your players,” Vayu says.
2. Leave self-help breadcrumbs online Forums like Steam discussions and Reddit
TELUS International - How to ‘pwn’ at player support
Never assume you know what gamers will want or ask. Player interests are diverse and will grow and evolve. Sethlans Vayu Customer Experience Manager Halfbrick Studios
are a part of many gamers’ natural habits. It’s in these online communities that gamers like to present issues and engage in peer-to-peer troubleshooting before they even consider reaching out to a contact center for support. It is, therefore, critical for games companies to be present in these forums, too. “Sometimes questions come up in there that really only a developer should be answering,” says Fossett. Answering forum questions is an act of customer support in itself, but where self-service comes into play is in the digital breadcrumb trail left behind. The question and answer becomes archived in the forum thread, and any gamer who has the same issue later on will likely come across that
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response in their online search. However, Walsh does emphasize the need for companies to find the right balance of interaction; sometimes it’s better to allow the community to answer their own questions. “[Be] cognizant that gamers don’t want a parent in the room the whole time. They want to have their own conversations and don’t necessarily want the developers to get involved,” he says. “We need to allow gamers to have those conversations where they want to have them and we just need to be available if we can.”
3. Create strong knowledge bases In addition to listening to gamers and leaving digital breadcrumbs, companies should also create “original” self-service content options. One common approach is a knowledge base, made up of short, cross-linked and SEOfriendly articles offering simple explanations to common challenges or inquiries. The support material can function like instructional encyclopedias that expand as new customer concerns come in, or as old ones evolve. Knowledge bases often appear directly on a company’s support website, but both Walsh and Fossett also suggest creating Wikis on gaming sites like Fandom or Gamepedia, where a company can catalog information about its game, including any patches that have been released to address problems.
TELUS International - How to ‘pwn’ at player support
When it comes to the creation of any type of self-service material, SEO optimization is critical, as these documents must appear in a Google search in order to be useful. After all, creating the most educational FAQ document known to mankind will be of little help if a gamer can’t find it online.
4. Stay involved — because the job is never done Like game development, self-service is not a one-and-done process. Keeping gamers happy with self-service is an ongoing and adaptive venture. “When your product’s long-term success depends on constant engagement and content updates, then this is a good way to be involved, whether it’s directly moderating those conversations or leading those conversations,” says Walsh. Walsh likens neglecting self-service support options to an ignored garden: “If you walk away from it and it gets untended and weedy, then you have a lot more work to do when you go back in.” By ensuring selfservice is a priority with a regular maintenance strategy, gaming companies will keep their players happy and coming back for more.
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Part 6 How to exceed player support expectations through outsourcing
The gaming industry can be a dog-eat-dog world. Console game makers can spend millions of dollars on production costs alone. Ubisoft’s Watch Dogs, released in 2014, cost in excess of $68 million to produce. Meanwhile, the multinational game studio reported last year that the online-only multiplayer game Tom Clancy’s The Division — which is reported to have cost nearly $90 million to produce — had grossed more than $330 million in its first five days of release. When that much money is on the line, gaming companies need to be focused on customer acquisition and retention. But to understand the success of the gaming industry, one must also study what motivates gamers to invest substantial amounts of money and time into certain games. And it’s becoming increasingly apparent that it isn’t necessarily a game on its own that sets it apart, but rather the community and customer service around it. Here are some ways that gaming companies can earn a competitive advantage through customer service, including contact center outsourcing.
What gamers care about when it comes to customer service Gamers really, really, really love certain games, to the extent that they spend hours a day and lots of hard-earned cash playing
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them, and many more hours talking about them on blogs and in online forums. Take World of Warcraft, for example. Released in 2004 and still played by millions today, the computer-based game is the most-subscribed massive-multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) to ever exist. Players spend upwards of 22 hours a week on the game. They also pay monthly subscriptions of $13–15 (longer subscriptions get preferential rates), and that’s not including the in-game costs to, say, change an avatar or buy a pet. Considering their investment, they want to know that a game developer loves them back. When a game crashes in the middle of a raid, or the graphics frame rate is unbearably slow, a gamer wants to be able to get quick help from someone who can empathize with them. After all, any amount of time the game is paused due to a glitch or more complicated technical problem is too much time. Thankfully, some parts of a gamers’ experience are relatively predictable, making the development of a smooth customer service approach a little easier. Most gamers’ first lines of defense are to seek out advice on the game developer’s community forums, non-proprietary gaming message boards like GameSpot, Gamesforum or GameFAQs, as well as
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online bulletin boards like Reddit. Game developers need to have a good sociallistening infrastructure in place to detect these conversations and respond quickly, before negative comments about a game can spread across multiple channels. Having customer-service reps (CSRs) interacting on these boards can help build loyalty and trust in the gaming community.
Protecting gaming studios’ reputations means troll control Online gamer communities are necessary channels for players to talk to one another, including helping each other troubleshoot issues. It’s also extremely valuable for game developers to use these boards as an opportunity to connect with their audiences. But since forums also attract trolls, developers must do what they can to ensure those trolls don’t ruin the experience for their players. “Users who experience online gaming toxicity [meaning rude, abusive and bullying behavior] are over three times more likely to quit the game,” says Chris Priebe, CEO of Two Hat Security and cloud-based gaming-intelligence company Community Sift. Gaming studios should consider outsourcing at least some of the more laborious forum monitoring and interaction, Priebe continues. “Game developers should keep their focus on developing great games,
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and find ways to support their customers which don’t distract them from that.” Investing in technology solutions to help mitigate the negative impacts of trolls can also prove successful. The popular online game League of Legends, for example, decided to combat the harassment found in the gaming world through artificial intelligence (AI). Players were able to teach an AI what constituted as racist, homophobic or misogynistic language, and with time, the AI was able to recognize when abusive terms were used, and send feedback to offenders.
Outsourcing support can help developers stay focused It’s crucial to have the right tools in place to meet gamers’ needs in all stages of the customer journey. However, this has become more challenging as digital delivery of games (including Google Play/Apple App Store) bypasses the retailer for many game purchases. Outsourcing support to contact centers becomes an even more attractive prospect in these situations, as the right outsourcing partner comes equipped with the people, processes and technology to collect, analyze and present user feedback in ways that gaming companies often don’t have the internal bandwidth to support. Outsourcing these functions, along with
other customer service responsibilities, enables game developers to focus on their core competencies of bringing innovative, exciting and entertaining games to market. Game developers can avoid investing in the real estate, human resources and technology related to running a support center by working with an outsourcing partner. Regardless of who operates the player support operation, hiring gamers who understand the passion for playing helps protect a game developer’s reputation while keeping players happily engaged. In the games industry, attracting players makes a game successful. Keeping them engaged can turn it into a blockbuster.
TELUS International - How to ‘pwn’ at player support
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Conclusion Games studios are finally starting to view players as less of a commodity, and more as an opportunity to build and retain a community of loyal customers. By offering professional customer service, studios prevent players who experience problems – be they technical, payment, or game-related – from simply leaving the game. Instead, that player can find a solution to the problem and then continue playing the game, spending money, recommending the game to friends, and then buying more games from that studio. Where once studios could rely on their ability to design, develop and launch great games, they are increasingly looking beyond that for a point of competitive differentiation, and for many studios, it is customer service that will enable them to compete successfully in this fast maturing market. Currently serving some of the largest game titles in the industry, we know what it takes to delight players and keep them loyal. If you’re interested in discussing how to launch or improve your own player support programs, please reach out: https://telusinternational.com/contact
TELUS International - How to ‘pwn’ at player support
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About TELUS International TELUS International is a global BPO and ITO company with service delivery centers around the world, including in Canada, the United States, Central America, Europe and Asia. TELUS International is the global arm of TELUS, one of Canada’s largest telecom companies serving almost 13 million subscriber connections. Connect with us at: telusinternational.com | @TELUSInt