this complaint comes up a decent amount, and I can’t say I understand it. If they posted this morning that they’ve already deployed a fix and they’re working on more fixes over the course of the next day or two… what update are you looking for exactly? 9pm - still working on fixes 10pm - working on fixes still i promise 11pm - still am going to fix the things etc etc. I generally support the idea that they don’t give fluff updates where nothing has happened or changed just for the sake of giving people some blue text to read.
8 Likes
those studies clearly weren’t based on the reactions of posters on the blizzard forum.
The only thing which will please people, is having the game running flawlessly.
They don’t want to hear “we’re working on it”.
…it’s blindingly obvious that they’re working on getting things running as smoothly as possible.
Any sort of update is only met with snark and derision.
Responses about how “i work in IT, i can do a better job, hire me”.
or… “my 3 year old niece/dog could do better”
or… “2 hours ago, you said it would be 2 hours… it’s now 2 hours and 2 minutes and the servers aren’t back up. GG. Massive fail.”
etc etc
14 Likes
Were those studies conducted on customers that were gamers? In case you haven’t noticed gamers are very mean and entitled, to the point that Devs and CS employees at various gaming studios have quit their dream jobs because they simply don’t want to put up with the mental abuse that gets lobbed at them daily. Heck if you just look at the huge thread from yesterday where the Blues here were giving the “issue known they are working on it” updates you will see posters attacking anything a Blue said. They were calling the Blues stupid, incompetent, lazy, etc. Heck I saw one post that said if they didn’t get the servers up the guy was going to behead someone at Blizzard.
So yeah, I would avoid communication that is simply going to be met with vicious personal attacks. They will update when they can, but usually the only thing they can do is post that there is a known issue and that it is being worked on. Which honestly is all anyone deserves to be told.
9 Likes
Arguing in defense of appalling customer service because confirmation bias implies that most of the customer base is too toxic to appreciate it is certainly a take you can have…
What confirmation bias? It is provable and measurable fact. The gaming industry has a toxic customer problem and Blizzard is not the only game company to have severely curtailed their direct communication between employees and customers.
9 Likes
Arguing that giving updates more often is a good idea because confirmation bias from some study says so is certainly a take you can have. But your alleged study goes against the fact that when it is done here on the Blizzard forums it involves a lot more angry posts and a lot more aggressive posts and a lot more abusive posts. That is not just some theory. It’s not some random study not based in an actual event situation.
Not doing something because some players demand it doesn’t make it appalling customer service. Some of the activities of players is less than stellar though. The SFAs should not have to spend their days posting the exact same thing in every thread made because yet another player is looking for a personal response. For an ongoing issue, one post should be suffice. If the issue is still going on and there is no post, it doesn’t mean they have stopped working on it. It means there is no new information. It’s not a hard concept to understand.
Players don’t need to know the exact cause of the issue. If there aren’t any directions for players to follow, there’s nothing a player could do to help. Knowing any of the details of what is happening isn’t going to resolve the problem. Where does the release of information stop?
8 Likes
Discrediting the concept that studies exist that disagree with your opinion does not mean the studies are wrong. Make a valid argument not a fallacious one, or don’t make an argument at all.
Please refer me to where I suggested the SFAs should “spend their days posting the exact same thing in every thread made”.
One post should suffice, with regular status updates, even if the update is “no new info, will update again in X time”.
One thing that comes from the studies you don’t know about but discredit without any actual evidence is the concept of customer abandonment. It’s, for example, what you experience when put on hold after being told “hold please” and then you just wait for what feels like forever. Mitigating this is a core principle of customer service. One way to mitigate is to check in with someone on hold regularly so they don’t feel like that way. It’s simple, effective, and takes a tiny amount of effort for a big return on customer satisfaction.
But more importantly, in situations like a wide service outage, proactive notification that reaches the largest amount of your customer base is a must. And Blizzard has at least 3 modes of communication - the Forum (least effective), the BlizzardCS Twitter account (more effective), the Launcher (most effective). Yesterday’s service disruption was only mentioned on the Forum (unless anyone can show me otherwise?).
Yes, I agree that replying to every thread on the Forum would be inefficient and unwise, but then I never suggested that anyway.
I have in no way suggested that Blizzard needs to give us root cause analysis reports on issues. Between this and the “posting everywhere” comment, I feel like you’re just putting words in my mouth so you can strawman or you have not carefully read my post.
As an aside, I get that some folks replying to this seem to think Blizzard customers are apparently not deserving of good customer service because so many forum goers can’t act like decent human beings, but that’s a terrible strategy for a company to take.
It’s also SUPER weird to me that folks are here arguing against my complaint when in these same forums you can see ample evidence of customers experiencing, for example, customer abandonment. And if Blizzard isn’t interested in doing anything to improve their customer service, they simply will just ignore my post and move on with their day.
Again though, what kind of business are those studies actually studying? Because video game customer service is way different than credit card customer service, or retail customer service. Most video game companies don’t even really have customer service like we would think of it. So studies are not a be all end all, and don’t necessarily have to be wrong to not be valid in certain situations.
Honestly with the amount of stories of abuse that have come out, I’m surprised that any game company anywhere has customer service like Blizzard does. Also, Blizzard is not the only game company that has cut back on their communication because of a toxic customer base. Riot used to have their Devs communicate directly with their players on the forums and stopped completely because of the abuse.
I also think Blizzard could communicate better, but I’m not going to complain about it when I’ve seen how employees are treated when they do actually communicate.
8 Likes
So we agree but you don’t think it’s deserved.
I get that, I just disagree that it isn’t deserved.
Customer toxicity issues and customer service issues really shouldn’t be addressed in the same way, but that’s another topic entirely.
I think that customer toxicity is a bigger issue with video games than with any other sector of business when it comes to CS. Also I think that the way game companies are set up is not conducive to the standard CS implementation. I don’t think that the toxicity can be separated from the communication thing.
2 Likes
They do most of that. Yet players still make more threads asking for more updates. Or in the same post less than an hour later asking for more updates.
And you are discrediting the actual experience of other posters on the forum. Who have seen issues like this happen before. Your study means nothing here. Without access to the study, the criteria used to select respondents, the topic the study was asking questions about, what company funded the study, what the questions were, what specific business type the customer support was for, your study means nothing.
You assume a lot about me. You assume I am not familiar with the topic at hand. This isn’t phone support. There is no one on hold here. Your study means nothing. You are erroneously trying to compare phone support with a forum. They are not the same.
It isn’t a wide service outage. It is happening to certain servers and certain players.
It was on the launcher. Players ignored it. It was on Twitter. Players ignored it. There were mega threads in Customer Support and Technical Support. Players not only ignored it but created more threads about it because there hadn’t been a Blue post in the previous hour. There’s a sticky in General Discussion. Players ignored it. So tell me where Blizzard would have to put it for players to know about it?
Welcome to the Customer Support forum. It is a PLAYER-HELPING-PLAYER forum with Blizzard oversight and moderation. Customer Service is done through ticketing. Having more posts in the forums WILL NOT improve the customer service perception. It will result in players asking why one topic garnered a response when their one did not. It will result in players asking why someone’s question was answered when their exact same question wasn’t. Why do I say this? Because it actually happened. It’s not part of some study based on phone support. Those same studies are why we have the hold music we do. Because it was found that people would stay on hold longer if that was played. But that is PHONE support and has nothing to do with the forums.
You want a change in policy. That can not be done through the Customer Support forum. The ones who make those decisions don’t come to the Customer Support forum for feedback/suggestions and the SFAs are not liaisons with them.
World of Warcraft Suggestions and Feedback
Website Suggestions and Feedback
7 Likes
Alright. While I think the discussion has remained fairly constructive my centaur-senses are tingling and suggest it may not remain so, so I’m going to lock this one up.
Brightwarden, we try to provide what communication we can for various issues, but what that is tends to depend on the issue and impact. I think Mirasol gave several good examples of what we do for different issues. We also have a list of common issues (which I link in the Dragonflight Info & Known Issues sticky she linked), which includes the high contact drivers, which is updated continually.
https://us.battle.net/support/en/article/breaking/20112697
For Game and Realm Connections:
In situations where services are already showing signs of recovery, or when an update that will help correct that issue is already populating through the servers, we may decide not to send a proactive message immediately because it is already recovering.
For other situations where we’re not certain what caused the issue or when it will be resolved, those that often require investigation and resolution development, we try to put out a Tweet and Breaking News as soon as we know that is what it is.
We also have a combination of the two. Situations in which it appears things are recovering almost immediately but then don’t. So we’re waiting and watching, and then have to make the call that messaging should go out because the recovery we thought was happening took a turn. You’ll often see that with the delayed messaging.
I know that there are those that want immediate messaging regardless of the situation, but it isn’t always feasible in every situation and the value of constant updates is questionable at best. I personally find non-update updates kind of annoying. We try to strike a balance as we’re able to.
For any feedback you may have on communication, I think the links Rufflebottom provided are the best.
12 Likes