You work for me!
1 Like
I tried that with a government employee onceâŚ
turns out they donât actually work.
1 Like
well they should use AI then because a canned useless response is worst than AI because you wait days for a useless answer that doesnât even relate.
3 Likes
Two words⌠guild banks. ? right. Itâs a huge bummer.
1 Like
lol Blizzard those guys are long long gone
3 Likes
This is IMO the biggest issue with CS right now. Their first couple responses arenât AI/bots, true. But theyâre definitely prefilled templates that have as much use as a bot response. Which is why you get so many people rage in the CS forum about getting âbotâ responses. Iâm not sure where the line is between an actual bot vs a human just responding with a canned template response that in no way addresses the customers issue, but I suspect the line is quite thin indeed.
1 Like
Itâs not even speculation. Thereâs been a lawsuit over how horrible that workplace is. Forget strict, itâs outright abusive.
2 Likes
With all due respect, I honestly do not believe this. Heck, my last ticket was about Hearthstone, selected Hearthstone in the drop menu, but my response said âWe see youâre having issues with your WoW account, please see this link to WoWheadâ. Ticket closed, marked resolved. Reopened a ticket, explained that they made a mistake. Ticket closed, said âThis was already resolved in another ticketâ and marked resolved. I opened a third and final ticket to explain once again that they made a mistake and asked for a real person to review my ticket and I got the exact same response. 
Iâve seen several other cases of the exact same thing.
Iâve seen far too many peopleâs tickets where the response was either AI or the absolute most incompetent persons in existence. In my exampleâs case, one could even be forgiven for thinking it was trolling.
Speaking thus, I remember reading an article from a former Blizzard employee who worked in CS and talked about how they would laugh at and make fun of, to each other on people who were seeking help. Iâll be honest, I was not surprised at all when I read that. And it also made my anecdote make a whole lot more sense.
Itâs quite possible theyâre using bots as all we have to go on is the mods say so in the CS forum. So I guess it comes down to whether the CS mods even know the truth or whether you trust them. I suppose it is possible that blizz tells them there are no bots handling tickets, when in fact, there are. None of us really know the truth.
But I agree that the way they handle initial tickets especially is horrendously bad and is very bot-like. But I still think thereâs a fairly good chance that itâs just some poor schmuck on below minimum wage using a tool to just send out spam template responses, as the faster they close tickets, the better their performance metrics look to their supervisors and therefore the less likely they are to be fired. But at that point, one has to ask the question, what is the real difference between that and a bot? Not much really.
Itâs unlikely weâll ever be able to find out which of these 2 scenarios is the true one.
Ironically, I think if they ever did implement AI CS, it would be probably be vastly superior to what we have now as the AI could do what the CS reps already, just google the issue or scan wowhead for an answer and regurgitate it back to you. Personally I simply choose to cut out the middleman and just go straight to wowhead.
2 Likes
Yeah, and unfortunately, they can spread any propaganda they want, it doesnât make it true. If they donât know about it, they really shouldnât be commenting on it, to be honest.
If they werenât so passive aggressive towards people who post there, it would be easy to give them the benefit of the doubt. But when they brigade people, delete posts that donât go along with their agenda/whistleblowers, it doesnât take a rocket scientist to know that there is definitely shady things going on.
I guess itâs a point of view thing. Referring people to outside websites then marking their tickets âresolvedâ really isnât good CS. I mean, they used to be the absolute gold standard for CS. Now, theyâre the biggest meme for CS.
I too sometimes look at WoWhead, but when youâre having issues with the game âHearthstoneâ and get a link to https://www.wowhead.com/item=6948/hearthstone, it really starts to paint an interesting picture.
2 Likes
This joke is so played out and lame.
Youâre kind of making their own point for them.
What youâre describing here is not generally considered good customer service in any other industry.
Aside from healthcare, maybe.
2 Likes
Customer service isnât done by AI in game. Ive an email where the gm gave so little care they incorrectly copy pasted the response cutting it off midway and starting it 3 words into the paragraph.
No AI would have that lack of care.
While I disagree with them at times the forum staff are far better. The CS forum is where you go to get answers these days.
2 Likes
Like much of the CS in existence now, Blizzardâs is pretty bad overall. I think all anyone can do here now is explain how it currently works so players can do the best with it in the current form. They have said that esp in high volume queue times, that there is a keyword based auto responder for the ticket system. No AI to it, just simple programming that sends a template based on key words in the ticket. This is mostly for common issues where there are player self help tools or it is for things GMs donât do (bug reports, game hints, etc.).
It is not AI, but there is some automation involved, at times. Then add in the templates they use even wen a real person answers and it does not help anything.
If it is game hint related like that, or work arounds, GMs are not allowed to give that info anyway. They are supposed to point people to the Community resources. Other players and websites like Wowhead. Best place to start is there, and the support articles.
I WISH they would do a better job of explaining just what GMs can help with and what they canât - the frustration for players, and GMs getting tickets - has to be high. Nobody wants to say ânoâ. I just wish the replies were more like âI am sorry to hear you have encougered a bug. GMs can not assist with bugs, those are handled by QA and fixed by the Dev team. Please report the bug via the bug report forums or in-game bug report tool. Bugs are fixed based on priority, with game breaking current content bugs having highest priority.â
Something like that that explains things.
Resolved in Blizzard CS speak means the agent has done all they can with the ticket and the issue is âcompletedâ from their end. The player may not be happy with the answer and it may not be resolved on the client end. The ticket end though, is closed with the answer given.
100% true. The CS forum serves as an Information Desk to guide folks through the ticket system, explain policies, explain account services, etc. They do a pretty good job on that and it can prevent people from wasting a lot of time with tickets for the wrong things. Tons of frustration saved.
Very true. We went from a person being able to click âGet helpâ and getting a very prompt response that helped them to having to jump over all these hurdles, having to take all these various paths, ultimately leading to a canned answer.
I honestly wish they were, I really do. I never recommend people going there. I really do feel bad when I see someone who was trying to find help, was getting robot replies that didnât help the issue and had no choice but to post there, despite many people not wanting to lay their dirty laundry out for the world to see, getting brigaded by a bunch of people and their alts, then walking away feeling like they were better off just dealing with the issue and sweeping it under the rug as best as they can.
2 Likes
Its truly astounding that a company worth tens of billions of dollars canât afford to hire real people to manage its game.
2 Likes
I have no idea why you persist in thinking that. The same people have been posting on their same forum chars for years, some for more than a decade. They are not alts and nobody is brigading. If they were, it would get shut down. They donât take kindly to sockpuppeting to cause drama like that. The replies are real people.
You seem to be talking about account actions - which is the only place âdirty laundryâ would even come up. If people want to ask about something like that they can, but they should certainly be prepared to be told the truth of their situation.
Ask Microsoft that question. They laid off the entire Tech Support team in Jan 2024, including the Blues who handed that on the forums. All that is left are some vague support articles and the forums - where players can help each other troubleshoot. MS apparently felt that Blizzard was wasting money on player support.
There ARE some CS/GM folks left but I donât know how many after MS got done. The office was in Austin, TX pre pandemic. I think most who work there are still local to that area. EU is in Cork, Ireland. They now share teams who cover tickets during the night for the whole game.
1 Like
They made all that money off the mount. It would be something to invest in.
As stated, they were the absolute gold standard. Good customer support/service is part of the whole âquality experienceâ. They really should bring it back to that. Sell other things that you know people will buy that donât equate to âpay to winâ.
Water isnât wet, water makes things wet
It was stated as a response to someone who states something obvious.