Azaroth

This is probably a sentence that should cross the mind of every customer service manager in the world when one of their employees starts treating customers like they don’t matter.

This applies to every situation in every business. Except maybe if you’re a dominatrix (hi call me).

The problem is that it all too often doesn’t seem to.

Now you have a problem. Actually, now the owner of the business has a problem.

The way to handle this problem is from the top down, of course. The first thing that’s wrong, from your view in the clouds, is that your manager is not managing. This can be for two main reasons:

A) The manager doesn’t care, or is possibly very bad at customer service themselves and has no idea what their job description is.
B) The manager has become too buddy-buddy with his or her subordinates.

The first is your fault. The second becomes a problem in situations where a customer has a complaint, especially about the staff, and the staff get to the manager first and begin to laugh it up with their boss about what an idiot the customer is, what a fool they are, etc. The customer now meets a brick wall of disrespect. Meeting with the manager doesn’t only do nothing to solve their problem, but it makes it worse. Absolutely unacceptable.

Again, as the owner of the business this is your fault and your responsibility. Obviously the axe must first fall on the manager. Immediately. This is a person who has no idea what they’re supposed to be doing, so question why the hell they’re getting paid. Hopefully they’d have come in with an innate sense of what their job is, and what customer service actually is. If they didn’t have this, they should have been turned away. If you didn’t turn them away for whatever reason, you should have instilled it post-haste.

Your customer service representatives below your manager, be they waiters or game masters or anything else, must realize that they are there to deal with your customers in a positive manner. It is not their job to be snarky, bitchy, or to present any kind of attitude. In other words.. your spat with the boyfriend does not enter the workplace, Ricardo.

All of this, of course, starts with you and your example. It starts with how seriously you take your business. These people need to know that they’re valued employees, but that their job is to treat your customers with respect and attempt to resolve their various issues and concerns with the service. They need to understand that this is your business and your money, and their job isn’t to cost you any of it because they felt like coming into work dripping with attitude today, or because they just kind of feel like looking down on people today.

Unfortunately, all too often customer service representatives are allowed to run wild and free without any concern as to what their job actually happens to be. It happens in restaurants, hotels, online games, at the zoo. And unfortunately the only thing worse than having absolutely no customer service whatsoever is having BAD customer service.

Since this is supposed to be a MMO blog, my example is going to be MMO related! Yay!

Obviously danger lies in amateur games (or even professional games) in which volunteer help is utilized.

First of all, the danger of customer service in online games is heightened by what I’ll call the computer rage effect. Referencing road rage for the example, I’ll point out quickly that it soon becomes very obvious that somewhat extreme emotions can present themselves rather easily and frequently when dealing with another human being from behind a computer screen.

Obviously beyond the feeling of invincibility that is often described to be felt by human beings when behind the wheel of several thousand pounds of steel, taken even further by being near completely protected from reprisal behind a computer screen halfway across the country or in a different part of the world, there can be an even larger disconnection between human beings behind computers.

Two people conversing only through text are prone to quite a few communication and information failures. Is the person with poor typing skills assumed to be an immature brat? Would the 300 pound biker be treated with the same level of respect from 3,000 miles away compared to if he were standing in front of you?

Text is also inherently flat and colourless. This prompted the addition of cute smilies and such into text chat. There is no voice inflection or facial expression to take cues when interpreting what the person you’re speaking to just said. Are they being nice? Sarcastic? Even malicious? You’re left up to your own imagination to decide for the most part.

This is, again, another aspect that closely mimics the problem of road rage. In fact, road rage studies have shown that much of the problem people have in situations like these is the lack of a facial expression to interpret. When Random Car A cuts me off, I’m left to my own devices to decide the motives and demeanor of the person inside. Left to my own devices, I may very likely assume the worst and be overcome with rage. However, were I to know more about the person inside, I may be less inclined to become upset. It’s hard to be too angry at a smiling 74 year old grandmother with thick glasses and her 8 year old granddaughter in the backseat, anyway.

Volunteer help can compound problems. Especially when your manager is not experienced, skilled, and in tune with his or her responsibilities. Treating people with the level of respect demanded by these positions can be difficult enough in the first place. Doing so without pay becomes far more difficult, and attitude is likely to creep in unless the person is truly a fit for the position. Hint being that most aren’t.

What will complicate things even further is volunteer help providing customer service for a free online game. This becomes a situation where the customer service representative has thoughts of “Man, I’m not even getting paid for this!” going on in the back of their head, and eventually “You’re not even paying anything, you’re not a customer!” may even slip out the front. This is over the line, this is a complete misunderstanding of the business model (unless there is no business model and the service is truly a charity job, which is rarely the case - however, doesn’t excuse the attitude and driving users away because an employee couldn’t manage to, again, understand what their job was).

The case I’m bringing up now is actually relating to games. Which is good, because otherwise you might wonder why this post is here on this blog.

Recently I’ve been doing a little gaming on the edges of the online gaming world, for fun and profit. Mostly because I want to see how other people are doing certain things.

This example does happen to be a free game, staffed largely by volunteers. It does have a business model. Most importantly, this game is just getting off its feet. Now is not the time to be stinking the joint up with terrible customer service, to say the least.

Now, I won’t mention the name of the game. This is commentary, not a vendetta. Bad customer service is bad customer service, and I’m not likely to throw a fit or stalk anyone. Even if it’s REALLY bad. However, some customers will. Some will never come back. Some with families. Some will spread the word and hurt your bottom line forever. Fail to take word of mouth seriously at your own peril as a business owner. Fail to take customers seriously as a business owner and you won’t be a business owner for long.

Now, picture myself as a regular everyday player busily humming away on your fledgling online game. Having a good time, getting going, almost ready to recommend this game to his friends.

Along comes PeterPaulJJR0X. He begins to repeatedly kill and loot my poor self. He begins to make threats regarding any choice I may make to defend myself. Soon it becomes clear that he is a rampant exploit abuser, and even admits so in threats. He’s rather proud of himself, too.

So, myself, being a regular and everyday player goes ahead and pages customer support. Not to test them or anything, as I am a regular player. I was genuinely upset about the situation, but calm and respectful as well as presenting only facts, not hearsay or imagination. A chat log is even included for convenience. Feel free to recheck the logs or anything you like, I say.

Response to this, 53 hours later no less, is little more than evidence that the entire ticket either wasn’t read or even possibly ignored entirely for one reason or another, followed by a snarky comment. “This is a WAR game, afterall.”, I’m told after a one-liner reply that proves no attention was paid to my complaint. Ah, I see. There are no rules in WAR!, I guess.

Now, as a regular customer, I’d be rather upset. My page sat for more than two days, the customer service representative ignored my complaints about the player and the rules he was breaking as well as specific examples of exploits he was using, and on top of everything I was ladled out a healthy serving of total disrespect with a side of au gratin potatoes (that’s a quality side, however).

Taken aback (!), I proceed to page again. This time, questioning politely why my complaints were ignored as well as whether it was necessary or not to include a snarky comment. I review exactly the exploits and broken rules I am complaining about, most of which are described in the “official game rules” as requiring immediate banning. I proceed to suggest, again very politely, that possibly they should take customer service a bit more seriously.

My reply was an epic example of Bad Customer ServiceTM:

First of all, you don’t pay for anything so you are not a customer. Second, I don’t get paid to do this, so keep your idealism about how I should behave to yourself. Third, you weren’t clear in your post that you suspected ******. You also didn’t include ********** for me to check out.

I wasn’t being ’snarky’ and I did not ignore the entire thing. This is the way things are. Unless there’s a rule broken there is NOTHING I can do and it IS a war game. Don’t like it? Don’t play.

Now, let’s quickly examine what happens to be wrong with this reply. If I wanted to be a dink I could just say “Everything.”, but I assume that you’re actually interested if you’ve read this far.

> First of all, you don’t pay for anything so you are not a customer.

Now, see, my feelings are hurt. Well, maybe not. But what MAY be hurt is your boss’s pocketbook when you start driving away customers with your bitchy little attitude and terrible understanding of the business model.

The statement was wrong in every way. Did it really need that “First of all” at the beginning? Couldn’t I have just been told that I’m not a customer?

> Second, I don’t get paid to do this, so keep your idealism about how I should behave to yourself.

Oh, my. My goodness gracious.

Here we see a person who, as described earlier, not only has no grasp of the business model - but also no idea what his or her job description happens to be. Compounding the problem is the perceived notion that attitude may be somehow justified because they volunteer their time. Unfortunately if your volunteering is hurting the business more than helping it, maybe you should get the fuck out. Now that’s just a suggestion. The main point here being that this person has clearly selected the wrong job or place to donate their time and should be relieved of their duties immediately, without question.

> Third, you weren’t clear in your post that you suspected **********. You also didn’t include ********* for me to check out.

Yawn. More attitude. However, allegations and blame placed on the customer for a failure to do one’s own job correctly now! Juicy!

Unfortunately, also completely untrue. Had this person spent time actually reading my first OR second ticket, they should have clearly seen both a clear and concise description of all problems, exploits and broken rules as well as chat logs which they were invited to confirm (I actually did go back and recheck, thinking I was crazy for just a moment).

That they didn’t bother to read either ticket in their entirety suggests that they may have not spent time confirming anything, either. Just a hunch.

Specific exploits are edited out of course, to protect (possibly?) innocent games from their own terrible customer service. I’m just that nice.

> I wasn’t being ’snarky’ and I did not ignore the entire thing.

Hm. One wonders what they’re being then, exactly. I wouldn’t say “pleasant”, but then again who am I to judge.

And yeah, it’s true, he didn’t ignore the entire thing. I’m fairly convinced that he read at least the first sentence. Beyond that, either he’s lying or he has a head injury.

> This is the way things are.

Suddenly I feel like I’m on Prison Island. “This is the way things are, boy! Get used to it!”.

One wonders if “This is the way things are.” is a standard customer service line within their company. And what does it mean, exactly? Is ALL of their customer service like this? Is it a warning? Is he trying to give me life advice? I don’t understand.

What I do understand, however, is if THAT’S the way things are, then the boss needs to step in and wring some necks.

>Unless there’s a rule broken there is NOTHING I can do and it IS a war game.

This is where I let forth a very loud sigh. Again, I cited specific examples of broken rules. They were clearly too far beyond the first three words of the ticket and escaped this fellow’s mighty goldfish-like attention span (a really SMART goldfish, though). What’s more frustrating is that I went over everything again in my second ticket for him very slowly, and in many less words. The only rules broken here are every single rule about customer service, apparently. But that’s “the way things are”, so who am I to complain.

Again, yes, it’s a war game. I wonder why you have rules at all, then. Hell, why attempt to debug the game? One becomes particularly alarmed once they begin to realize that this is probably a standard line offered by this customer service representative. You can only hope they don’t all use it as an excuse for not doing their jobs.

He’s right about one thing, however. There is clearly nothing he can do.

Don’t like it? Don’t play.

I once ate at a restaurant. I didn’t ORDER the pubic hair soup, but it came anyway. I was told “Don’t like it? Get the fuck out”.

Indeed, I did. I was left to wonder why there wasn’t an owner, or at least a manager, immediately strangling the everliving fuck out of my waiter. I mean after I was finished, anyway.

I drove by six months later. The windows were boarded up.

Probably too many pubic hair soups. However, what’s far more universal and applicable to business failure in general is the bad customer service.

Anyway, at this point I obviously asked to speak to his superiors. Predictably, this request was ignored. Through a little sleuthing, I found the email of the person I should be talking to.

Once again I sent along a very polite, calm, and respectful email… including a little trap this time.

In order to judge whether or not I was being given the run around once I was replied to, I failed to include the name of the offending game master. Obviously if they were truly interested in investigating or resolving this situation this would inarguably be a vital piece of information to have. A reply of “Ah, okay. Thank you very much. I will look into this.” requires no further information on my part if there is no further investigation on theirs.

Of course, their reply was basically as I had imagined. I was promised that the matter would be looked into, that they’d get right back to me.

That was a week ago.

It doesn’t matter what business you’re in, what industry, or at what level. You’ll never succeed if your customer service is amateur hour. It’s an easy thing to overlook, and it’s an easy place to cut costs. But truly fine establishments differentiate themselves through truly fine customer service. The food can be as good as it wants, but if the waitress drops hot soup in my lap and proceeds put a cigarette out on my tablecloth while telling me to get the fuck out if I don’t like it… my experience probably isn’t going to be rated as excellent no matter how good the bread was.

-Az