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Open Letter to Support services.
Connie Sim
Posts: 98
I have a few suggestions that if taken to heart by the support department at GGS would go a long way towards increasing our satisfaction with you.
1. Please respond to our inquiries so that we can tell that you have actually thoroughly read our request, complaint , concern.
I realize that all of you must get numerous tickets that need to be reviewed and the temptation is to read them quickly and maybe not as thoroughly as they should be read. Please just take the few extra seconds to do so then send a response that is clearly a response to the specific question or concern and doesn't sound like a canned kneejerk response.
2. Please choose your terms accurately.
For example, during my recent difficulty with GGS in regards to an accusation then judgement and punishment for alleged account sharing I was left very confused and unable to identify exactly what I was doing that caused the problem. Instead of saying something like, "We see that two accounts access the game from the same IP address" all I got was the canned response of the definition of account sharing which was multiple people accessing the same account and advised to change my password.
Since no one else had my pass word I was afraid that someone had found a way to hack it. I expressed this to the rep I was corresponding with but was never able to get a clear response. This lack of clarity led to what then resulted in what was supposed to be a permenant Ban for account sharing.
If the representative had been willing to give me just a little more information or had used the term multiaccounting I would have understood the problem instantly. I had failed to notify GGs of the fact that my husband also had an account on the game. I remembered intending to do so, had thought I had done so but my memory was faulty. Because I was operating under the impression that I had notified them, I was left in a state of fear and confusion not knowing how to rectify the situation. I changed my password and told no one but within two days was given the notification of a permenant ban still not understanding what I had done wrong.
3. Give your customers the benefit of the doubt instead of treating them as if they are some sort of criminal not even deserving your attention. Try to understand that this game is very addictive and sudden withdrawal can elicit a major emotional response.
Again, responding to us as individuals who may have a lot invested in the game and have inadvertently caused the problem due to lack of understanding what caused it, can help clear things up rapidly. Curt responses with minimal information, no specific examples of when the infraction occurred or how it is identified are not only unhelpful, but treat those of us who pay your wages through ruby buying and long term play as if we all purposefully try to circumvent rules of play. I realize that there are certainly players who do just that, but many of us simply don't understand what the problem is and how to rectify it. Surely the game is designed for other members of a family to participate.
4. Provide a clear mechanism that is accessable to us for escalation of a problem.
IF we are not satisfied with the response we are getting there should be a clear way for us to access another representative or team leader, and if we are still dissatisfied a higher level than that. The ability to contact GGS customer service other than through email would be outstanding.
And finally -
4. DO NOT LIE TO US. Do not tell us that something is so when it clearly is not true. That is just insulting to our intelligence and shows a considerable lack of respect to those who make it possible for you to have gainful employment.
I know there are those of you there at GGS who sincerely want to do your best for us and provide quality customer service to the best of your ability. It shouldn't take numerous separate contacts in order to finally find someone who will listen and treat us as the customer rather than a nuscense that they just want to shut up and go away.
I have worked in customer service for many years. I understand how hard a job that can be, but I have found that listening to your customer, really listening and not judging generally difusses situations and leads to a satisfactory conclusion.
I am grateful that I finally stumbled upon someone who cared enough to really help me instead of judging and punishing.
Athough this refrences a recent event. I have had several other interactions with GGS support that, although not equally distressing, were just as unhelpful and unsatisfactory until I just finally gave up trying to get my issue addressed.
I know that many players have expressed upset and dissatisfaction with the responses they get from GGS. This is clearly evident when reading this section of the Forum. Excellent long term players have quit playing and others never stay long enough to really enjoy the game. It's difficult for me to express how distressed I was during my recent ordeal. The anger, frustration and helplessness I felt because I wasn't able to get anyone to hear me and act like they cared was nearly unbearable. Obviously a business that drives its best customers away won't last very long.
This is offered in the spirit of trying to help you understand us as customers and to help make your job easier. If you take these suggestions to heart I believe that you will find your interactions with us more rewarding and your job more enjoyable. I know it will make contacting support less of a chore and increase satisfaction with GGS.
Thank you for hearing me out,
I remain
Connie Sim
1. Please respond to our inquiries so that we can tell that you have actually thoroughly read our request, complaint , concern.
I realize that all of you must get numerous tickets that need to be reviewed and the temptation is to read them quickly and maybe not as thoroughly as they should be read. Please just take the few extra seconds to do so then send a response that is clearly a response to the specific question or concern and doesn't sound like a canned kneejerk response.
2. Please choose your terms accurately.
For example, during my recent difficulty with GGS in regards to an accusation then judgement and punishment for alleged account sharing I was left very confused and unable to identify exactly what I was doing that caused the problem. Instead of saying something like, "We see that two accounts access the game from the same IP address" all I got was the canned response of the definition of account sharing which was multiple people accessing the same account and advised to change my password.
Since no one else had my pass word I was afraid that someone had found a way to hack it. I expressed this to the rep I was corresponding with but was never able to get a clear response. This lack of clarity led to what then resulted in what was supposed to be a permenant Ban for account sharing.
If the representative had been willing to give me just a little more information or had used the term multiaccounting I would have understood the problem instantly. I had failed to notify GGs of the fact that my husband also had an account on the game. I remembered intending to do so, had thought I had done so but my memory was faulty. Because I was operating under the impression that I had notified them, I was left in a state of fear and confusion not knowing how to rectify the situation. I changed my password and told no one but within two days was given the notification of a permenant ban still not understanding what I had done wrong.
3. Give your customers the benefit of the doubt instead of treating them as if they are some sort of criminal not even deserving your attention. Try to understand that this game is very addictive and sudden withdrawal can elicit a major emotional response.
Again, responding to us as individuals who may have a lot invested in the game and have inadvertently caused the problem due to lack of understanding what caused it, can help clear things up rapidly. Curt responses with minimal information, no specific examples of when the infraction occurred or how it is identified are not only unhelpful, but treat those of us who pay your wages through ruby buying and long term play as if we all purposefully try to circumvent rules of play. I realize that there are certainly players who do just that, but many of us simply don't understand what the problem is and how to rectify it. Surely the game is designed for other members of a family to participate.
4. Provide a clear mechanism that is accessable to us for escalation of a problem.
IF we are not satisfied with the response we are getting there should be a clear way for us to access another representative or team leader, and if we are still dissatisfied a higher level than that. The ability to contact GGS customer service other than through email would be outstanding.
And finally -
4. DO NOT LIE TO US. Do not tell us that something is so when it clearly is not true. That is just insulting to our intelligence and shows a considerable lack of respect to those who make it possible for you to have gainful employment.
I know there are those of you there at GGS who sincerely want to do your best for us and provide quality customer service to the best of your ability. It shouldn't take numerous separate contacts in order to finally find someone who will listen and treat us as the customer rather than a nuscense that they just want to shut up and go away.
I have worked in customer service for many years. I understand how hard a job that can be, but I have found that listening to your customer, really listening and not judging generally difusses situations and leads to a satisfactory conclusion.
I am grateful that I finally stumbled upon someone who cared enough to really help me instead of judging and punishing.
Athough this refrences a recent event. I have had several other interactions with GGS support that, although not equally distressing, were just as unhelpful and unsatisfactory until I just finally gave up trying to get my issue addressed.
I know that many players have expressed upset and dissatisfaction with the responses they get from GGS. This is clearly evident when reading this section of the Forum. Excellent long term players have quit playing and others never stay long enough to really enjoy the game. It's difficult for me to express how distressed I was during my recent ordeal. The anger, frustration and helplessness I felt because I wasn't able to get anyone to hear me and act like they cared was nearly unbearable. Obviously a business that drives its best customers away won't last very long.
This is offered in the spirit of trying to help you understand us as customers and to help make your job easier. If you take these suggestions to heart I believe that you will find your interactions with us more rewarding and your job more enjoyable. I know it will make contacting support less of a chore and increase satisfaction with GGS.
Thank you for hearing me out,
I remain
Connie Sim
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Connie Sim
Kingdom of Nephilium
Connie Sim @ usa 1
Post edited by Connie Sim on
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Comments
The Seperatists. (and occasionally OVERLORDS) Proud owners of aus1's GE capital, FP capital and 2 metropolises
Did somebody say overkill?
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
DarkDylan47 @ WWW1 HW KnightsOfNi8)
HAMMER [email protected] United8)
#TheDreamLivesOn
Use the search function.
Support shortcut-http://support.goodgamestudios.com/
Make Canada1 GGE!
the realerest.
Former whatever,
Proud nothing.
If I do something you need to know about, you'll know.
What is the face of a coward?
The back of his head as he runs from battle.
I too have invested in this game and want to save it..
We just want to help GGE improve to be playable again lol.
livesto-I mean customers...
Advocate of speaking up regarding mental health and seeking help
I too have had problems with customer support, and the game in general. My entire family plays, but all the ruby purchases come from three different sources, all of which are mine. Although I may not be the one actually acquiring all the ticket numbers, I do have a few, between this version and the mobile app versions (which are complete nightmares) Many of the in game problems are similar between platforms, but the significant issues residing in both platforms, are customer support related, many of which; you have mentioned in your post.
I'm currently creating what I call the "Kingdom Kome Kollection." This includes: copied and pasted threads, and responses from moderators in ALL Empire Forum Platforms, in game screen shots from myself and many other players, videos of in game "issues," taken on a DSLR camera, emails from other players, emails from GGS Customer support, in game messages, in game chats, and a host of other documentation.
Once I have over 1000 documents, and over 100 videos, these will be submitted as a single support item to customer support. A request for explanation, and reasons why known issues continue to not be addressed, and why notifications ARE NOT conveyed directly to players relating to such known issues.
To be blunt, when you view all of these problems (included in my Kollection) cumulatively, the picture is virtually crystal clear. It borders theft through deniable accountability.
I'm fairly confident that any type of civil litigation action to recover lost funds would fail in most US courts. However, other avenues of recourse are available. GGS has every legal right to sell e-commerce rubies as an add on to the game.
The problem resides with the fact that although it is a free game, when the add ons (rubies) are used to enhance gaming advantage; and that advantage fails due to known bugs, server issues, programming code with no voluntary reimbursement process in place, or intentional delay of reimbursement, it creates a caveat-em tor (buy er beware) situation.
In the event that GGS decides to ignore this post you have made (which by the way is now part of the Kollection,) and the Kollection I will one day submit to customer support, and not take action; then I will.
So, if anyone wishes to add to the Kollection, just keep posting, or drop me a message in the game. I will reply rather promptly. Hopefully, most of the issues will be resolved, and there will be no need to submit the Kollection to anyone.
We can only hope.
I'm entering this post to get this letter on the front page again. I fear its being missed because I posted in this section rather than one of the more active ones.
Good customer service is the hallmark of great companies.
Connie Sim
Kingdom of Nephilium
Connie Sim @ usa 1
Some comments on each of your points. Firslty i want to make you aware that i will forward this through to someone in support for them to be aware of since support do not visit the forum to answer complaints/criticism.
Without knowing which specific case you are refering to its difficult for me to provide any useful comments on this particular point. Yes, support do have a number of prewritten responses which are customised to the situation and used for the intional response. For any follow up queries an email is actually written. I can tell you that support does read all queries sent to them, but it may not be always immediately obvious what the actual problem is.
Whilst i do take your feedback onboard its a little difficult for me to expalin this fully without breaching the forum rules. However, after having reviewed some of your recent contact with support, that this overall message was also accurate based on the information provided to support during the initial report.
Part of the issue here is that there are certain items of information that we simply cannot provide for reasons of privacy and other issues. For example, if we can see that one IP address has been used to access multiple accounts, that does not necessarily prove that a particular individual has been responsible for it. Benefit of doubt is all well and good, but its a little hard to do when the records do actually show that something has happened.
Asking to be forwarded to a team leader is enough to get your case forwarded through.
Given that you haven't acutally provided any information here i'm not going to comment on it other than to say i cannot see any evidence that support has lied to you.
If you wish to discuss this on a further case by case basis then you are welcome to contact me via PM.
Regards,
Ethan
I made every effort here to be civil and understanding as to the limitations you work under but your responses are empty assertions. I appreciate you forwarding this to support. That response is the most helpful. I sincerely hope they read what I said and reflect rather than seek to defend their actions as that won't lead to any understanding of our problems or assist in improving customer service over all.
In response you your direct assertion that you saw nothing I was lied to about, the following two statements appeared on the reply to my second email ----
"Unfortunately the suspension placed onto your game account is permanent and cannot be undone"
"Please accept our apologies however your game account cannot be retrieved. Thank you for your understanding".
Since My account is now restored, what do you call those statements? or does "cannot be undone" and "cannot be retrieved" mean something I don't understand?
I don't seek and arguement here I am sincerely trying to give all of you a little insight into how your interactions come across to us. I don't think I've been effective.
Connie Sim
Kingdom of Nephilium
Connie Sim @ usa 1
That doesn't mean that anyone is support lied to you. It simply means that the agent dealing with it did not have the authority to overturn the decision based on the information. I do agree that it isn't particularly well worded and apologise on behalf of support for the confusion here.
I understand that and in an ideal world things would not have gotten to this stage. Quite honestly i would love to be able to highlight here some of the reports that support get on a daily basis that are full of incorrect information or false claims, perhaps then you would understand why they are a little sceptical at times when dealing with requests. Considering the number of false reports they get at the moment from the US server for account sharing, or the fact that alliances always claim to have lost troops after an update, it's not hard to see why these things can happen.
Regards,
Ethan
However the level of customer support is often directly proportionate to the money spent on such staffing. Canned responses and overwhelmed staff can be indicative of a group too small to handle the volume. To fix this, they need more staff, or more training, or higher paid/quality staff. The result of doing that? Rubies would cost 30% more than they do right now. We may be getting the best they can offer at their current revenue stream.
None of this excuses any type of lying or rude/curt responses, I'm just talking about the delay in implementing fixes or the inability to devote more personal attention to each case. There's probably a happy medium somewhere.
There's a reason you get better personal customer service at your Rolls Royce dealership than at your Kia dealership. If Kia offered the same, their cars could no longer be offered at the low prices they are.
Manatee @ usa 1
My ideal method of suicide: climbing Ultimo's ego and jumping to his IQ
Hi Manatee,
Just to clarify, this is not really related to this subject. Support has nothing to do with big fixes at all beyond information gathering. They do already give personal attention to a case no matter how much money a player has spent.
Regards,
Ethan
It is very possible that much of my recent problem related more to wording of responses than to the actual content, and I appreciate that you acknowledge that the way things are worded can be a source of misunderstanding. As I said I've done customer service and in a field that had far more life changing implications then a computer game.
Since this game is based in a non english speaking country and you deal with people who speak many different languages and come from different cultural backgrounds, language and cultural barriers are also at play. I also realize that support has to deal with people making unfounded claims and you have to sort through those that are valid and those that are not. Still the axiom "the customer is always right" is a valid one..
My entire point here is to open your eyes as to how support interactions are interpreted and experienced by some of your customers, because in the end, it's how we perceive and attach meaning to your responses that matters the most. I can think of several ways in which the same information can be conveyed that would elicit a different response and I would be happy to have that discussion with you in separately if you like as it's beyond the purpose of this forum.
In the end it's perceptions that matter, facts are almost irrelevant, and who is "right" and who is "wrong" does you very little good when dealing with unhappy customers. Apologizing is helpful but isn't a panecea. Active listening, no matter how garbled a customers request or complaint can help you clarify what they are asking as well as go a long way towards leaving the perception that you are doing your best to hear and understand the issue. That alone can diffuse a volitile situation.
Thank you for reading this and responding. As previously offered, I would be happy to elaborate further in a separate conversation if you care to. I choose to believe that you personally want to see happy customers enjoying a game that your company has developed and that you spend so much time and effort supporting.
Happy Customer = Happy support people = lots of fun at Goodgame studios
Connie Sim
Kingdom of Nephilium
Connie Sim @ usa 1
Not true, I recently had a ticket (which to me is still open, but the person responding says it's closed) where I demanded twice to have it elevated... and instead the same person kept replying saying that there was nothing more that could be done.
So the point of allowing tickets to be elevated or even (heaven-forbid) a direct route for issues to be elevated to supervision.
Giselle,
That is more likely connected to your actual content in the ticket. You were asked to provide evidence and i have no reason to believe that it would be forwarded if requested after you provided that information.
Regards,
Ethan
Ethan, do you mean "not be forwarded"?
Good thing Police Dept. and Fire Dept. don't get skeptical when dealing with false reports.
As for the actual comment, does the department (support) get paid to go through all of these reports? If so, then it is their job, hate the job all you want, but should have known what they were getting themselves into. Also anyone that has ever had a customer service related job, such as these jobs, then you know that even IF the customer is wrong, they are always "right".
When I got my 15 Towers in Green to level 35 for the Military achievement, I did not get the achievement.
When I sent a ticket into GGE about the missing achievement, I received a message saying, "Level 35 is the maximum level of an RBC tower in green."
How did that address my problem at all?
I also have multiple family members playing from my home, my wife and son. One member of support told me I needed a specific set of things to send to support in order for this to be okay.
I sent the EXACT items requested. A different person in support suspended me twice within 24 hours, the second time AFTER I sent the exact, specifically requested info to BOTH support members.
I was told AFTER the last suspension that the info I was required to send had changed, without notice, and was not posted in public any where for players to see. The new information was not relayed to me between the first and second suspensions.
So, I got suspended by one support member for doing EXACTLY as I what I was told to do by another support member. As a capitol holder at the time who refused to spend any money on the capitol, you can see how I can easily assume it was GGE's way of deliberately messing with my account.
I still face the same bugs during special events (Barimond) that I faced almost a year ago. So, I am told I have to have every troop of mine in a camp and stationary before the issue can be resolved. And with an event like Barimond, if you are down for 4 or 5 days because support does not respond right away or it's the weekend, you are effectively out of the event.
After a week into the Blade Coast event, GGE "lost" my account. All of my progress was lost in the event. I sent support a specific set of buildings I had up and where my progress was in the event. They were unable to rebuild my buildings for whatever reason. So I asked them to use rubies to get me back to the same level I was before they messed up, but instead of resource buildings just ruby buildings since those could be put in instantly. You know, a ruby tent for a resource tent, a ruby deco item for a resource deco item. These items could be built instantly and without the need for resources, and I only wanted to be exactly where I was before they lost my progress.
Support accused me of trying to scam them, because I had not spent any rubies in the first place, so why should I get ruby items to replace them? My point was to instantly get me back to where I was a week into the event, since GGE had screwed up.
I was told no, because I had not built ruby items in the first place.
Yeah, in the end, they sent me some tools and resources to my main. So I had to spend %65 of those resources shipping them back over, and I lost the whole week of progress I had done.
This kind of thing is what Connie is talking about. This kind of behavior from support is inexcusable.
And, by the way, I still have every email I sent to and received from support, and can easily document everything I have said here.
This is why GGE's revenue stream is dwindling, because their customer base is dwindling. And I see no hope for it with them continuing actions like I have detailed above.
You know only about %5 of people are scammers out there looking to get something for free. When someone contacts support and says something is wrong, GGE should run their business for the %95 who have real concerns, and not for the %5 GGE is trying to "catch" in a lie.