I keep seeing post on reddit, tiktok, facebook, instagram, etc of people having to deal with customer service bots. People have put years into their accounts, and have lost them due to these bots and their inability to comprehend the needs of the players. I’ve had this happen myself, over an item I deleted by accident. Took several attempts to get the issue resolved. Just got the same generic bot reply, you do not have the schematic (for jeeves) but eventually, I got a real person, and they found i had deleted jeeves by accident, mailed me another one, problem solved.
I’ve been around since vanilla. I remember the pre-authenticator days where it wasn’t if you would get your account stolen, but when. You didn’t even get your items back most of the time. Just some gold and gear to get you along.
But the GM’s were always there to help you. I couldn’t imagine trying to recover an account these days.
If you don’t value us blizzard, just say so.
And do not say they are not bots. They are 100% bots. Or you have shipped your GM’s off to people overseas that do not understand or care about the game, or its players.
We need the GMs that care back. We need the blizzard that cares back.
Welcome to 99.99999% of big business customer service. Blizz has humans who respond to the more complicated stuff but the bots are there for the lower end stuff. Sucks but that’s not a bliz issue, that’s just how our economy works these days.
They do have Customer Support, but the big layoff in 2012 changed a lot. That was when 600 were let go.
The CS folks support ALL Blizzard games. There are no support people just for WoW so you are in the back of a queue with thousands of other people. Billing issues, account compromises, account access issues, etc.
Most things people ticket for are not things GMs can help with, or there are now self help tools so the system tries to sort things into buckets and hopes those helps…and that if it does not you will re-open the ticket.
Info here
It is NOT OPTIMAL and is very frustrating for users. The biggest issue I have is that they don’t tell you WHY something gets a template response so the customer is left upset and frustrated. I don’t mind being told “no, we can’t help with that” but I need to know specifically why.
Like, GMs are not allowed to give game hints, they can’t restore anything not in the game logs recently, they can’t exchange quest rewards, they can’t fix individual account bugs unless GMs give them permission. Stuff they never could do, but players don’t realize that.
Stuck, most item restore, mail restore, char undelete, guild dethrone, etc. are all self help tools know which is nice, but it can be confusing if a player does not realize that the GMs are not allowed to do most of those things now that players can do it themselves. Suck being one of the big ones you might still need a GM for if it does not work. Some of the others are now hands off.
Again, frustrating. If you ever need guidance on how to best use the current support system, head to the Customer Support forum. That is an Information Desk that helps folks navigate support, answers policy questions, explains services, etc. It can save a lot of time and frustration instead of waiting on tickets that either can’t be assisted with, or that are in the wrong category.
It is a blizzard issue. Just because others do it, doesn’t mean you should follow.
And just like the company I work for, who outsourced our help centers to the Philippines, they will regret it. Sure you’re going to save some money upfront by laying off all your u.s. based customer support agents. But in the long run, you’re going to lose customers. Costing us millions.
Here is a CS thread from 6 days ago where someone got the whole account fixed up by the CS team and restored. They still do it, but it may take some time. The CS forums were able to help guide them through it.
Even back then, they did give you your gear back if the logs supported it. They still do. They only give the starter gear kit if they can’t trace the items.
I’m sorry, but a few successful cases isn’t an excuse for the countless others i’ve seen with unanswered responses. It should not be this difficult to get basic customer support.
The problem with that is that a lot of people will say they “didn’t get support” when they really mean “blizzard didn’t do exactly what I wanted them to right away even though it’s against policy”.
If they actually put in a ticket and got a ticket number, then it does get answered. The time frame for that though is days, not hours most of the time. Again, there is no WoW team alone. CS handles all games.
The other big mistake people make is replying to the “do not reply” email address when a GM sends them a reply telling them to submit answers to questions to recover accounts. They need to put in another ticket, reference the first ticket number, then provide the info. Not use email. Blizz does a very poor job explaining that though. Just like they do a poor job explaining what GMs can and can’t do via the ticket system - so it just adds to the frustration for players looking for help.
Customers can get it all explained if they want, but few actually use the Info Desk (CS forum) resource that has been there since day one, is still active, and has Blues every day during their shift.
I am with you it is frustrating but I don’t think it is non-existant. It does need improvements.
My biggest fear is that Microsoft will do to Blizzard what they did to their own company and outsource support. Blizz had it all in house at the Austin TX office and the Cork, Ireland office.
This comes up too. What customers WANT a GM to do, may not be something the GM is able to do either because they don’t have tools, or the policies prevent it. Not getting the answer someone wants, is not the same as not getting an answer.
No, they have posted the discussion. They are literally getting back the same generic replies with no insight. Cut and paste bot replies. Others have done something against ToS and want to play victim though.
This is where they really need to use the CS forum. They need to find out why they are getting kicked to a template like the generic one that points to all the external resources like Wowhead. That is when the system thinks someone is asking for quest help, game hints, or something that GMs don’t do.
CS forum can help them get the ticket into the right category with the right info in it. Keep it short and to the point. Helps a lot with preventing the sorting nonsense from triaging them wrong.
Once again, it shouldn’t be this hard to get basic customer support. They shouldn’t have to resort to this or that when the capability and function is already there, and has been for years.
You should be able to go to a GM. Not jump through hoops. Or is this a circus? Should we light the hoops on fire?
It has been largely gone since the huge 2012 layoff. The way they handle tickets has vastly changed now that is it not just WoW they support. They cut staff and added a lot more games. I am sure they replaced some of those over the years as more games were released, but it is still not the same as the old systems.
No, it is not good and it is frustrating. I don’t know of any way you are going to get that changed though, esp now that Microsoft owns ATVI. Blizzard was still doing real people and in-house support last I knew, even though there is a ticket triage and template system that plays a part.
I see Microsoft as a threat to that but I can’t blame them for the changes over the years to support for nearly every company that exists. It is mostly automated, tickets, or live chat if they have it.
Chewy being a rare example of fantastic amazing customer support still!
I doubt many of them update to say “hey my issue has been fixed.” They just complain because they’re having to wait or because they didn’t get the answer they wanted and then they never update after the fact.
I’m not saying there aren’t any real issues, but it goes both ways. Customers aren’t always the smartest (myself included) and we don’t take the proper steps we should to get the help we need or we forget to follow up or miss an email/response.
It happens
You also have to compare the amount of players putting in tickets and asking for help to the number of employees available to handle said situation. They’d be crazy NOT to use bots, no matter how frustrating they may be for customers.
Truth. Most people did not have their accounts compromised before two factor authentication became a thing. SOME did, and Blizzard adopted two factor early on, but most did not.
It is not hard to keep a PC clean, use different passwords on different websites/accounts, avoid sites known for malware, etc.
I never had an issue with my Blizzard accounts. I am pretty boring and super safe, but yeah, Blizz did not cause people to get phished, malware, or use shady websites/gold sellers.
You seem to be suggesting that this is something different from Blizzard. How about the entire medical industry?
“Hello, your call is important to us. If you are a doctor or medical provider, press 1. If you want to schedule, change or cancel an appointment, press 2. If you want to reorder a subscription, press 3. If you are a lab rat … oh excuse me … a patient, with some other question remain on the line for the next customer service representitive. Wait times are currently 48,271 years long.”
I updated my bios and windows 11 license I paid for refused to activate. I spent so much time stuck in ai bs until an option came to have a Microsoft person call me. The person that called me guided me through all the stuff I had already done and after a while he said a higher level tech would call me lol. AI was way smarter than the person that called me. I got lucky on a three year old reedit post where a similar issue occurred to a tech savvy person and their solution worked . I fear where we are headed when it comes to customer service.
