Taleswapper wrote:
Some people don't experience long waits for customer service. I understand that. But almost e veryone can tell horror stories of friends who lost items, lost quests, sat waiting under the world, etc and got no support for hours. And you're just selling yourself short by excusing SOE's poor customer service by saying they have hundreds of thousands of customers to tend to. That's their issue. That's something they've ignored since the beginning of the game and had they not, you wouldn't be getting ignored by their GMs at this point.
Same can be said for anything though. I've personally never had any trouble or delay taking a flight. And most of the people I know have never had any troubles (aside from the expected amount of time it takes obviously). But we've all heard "stories" of someone who had an absolute nightmare flight, where they got delayed at the gate, and their pass got lost, and their luggage ended up in a 3rd world country without them, and a whole list of "horrible" things.
Yeah. Bad things happen. And in a large enough sample size over a long enough period of time, anyone can amass a list of "horror stories" if they actively seek them out.
My point is that just becuase you can find such stories, and maybe even had something happen to you, does not mean that the majority of players have had the same experiences, nor that this is the normal level of service.
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As for what's a resonable amount of time: Most people don't play the game all day long. They get on do parts to a quest, grind, or whatever. They don't want to sit out half the time they are online waiting for a GM or a Guide to stop by and help them out. They should expect immediate service.
And your "immediate service" need is more important then the 80 other people who are having a problem right at this very minute? This is why I suspect that most people who really ***** about CS do so because to some degree they are extremely self centered. You think only about your inconvenience. What about everyone else? The GMs are not in the game go wait on just you hand and foot. And guess what? Your minor little issue isn't that important that you can't wait until the major ones are dealt with.
The only things that require immediate service are instances where you cannot continue playing without help. A KS dispute does not qualify. A minor bug does not qualify. Losing one kill to a bug does not qualify. Even dying to a bug does not qualify. You can play. And it's not like a death is that big of a deal. Get a rez and move on. At the higher levels of the game, you get used to dying frequently. It's just not that big a deal. I would *never* sit around waiting for a rez. Even if it took only a half hour for a GM to rez me, I could have made up the difference in exp in that time if I'd just gotten a cleric to rez me and then gone out hunting.
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Customer service is the cornerstone to any company. Where a company forgets that they lose customers. It's obvious that enough people aren't satisfied with their support by the fact that this thread is growing.
Yes. But there's a point at which adding more money for CS is a waste. It's a pretty simple calculation. Add up how much you'd have to pay for more GMs or CS people. Figure out how many fewer people on average will quit your game if you don't. If the second number is lower then the first, then you don't hire more people.
It's amazing how often people who have no concept of how business really works will make grand sweeping statements about what a company should be doing for them.
I've known a few people who've quit playing EQ just because they got bored. I've known a few people who've quit playing EQ because RL issues came along that made game time difficult. I've known a few people who've quit playing EQ to go play another game. In 5+ years of playing EQ, despite reading literally thousands of posts from people threatening to quit, I do not personally know a single person who has actually quit playing EQ becuase the CS wasn't good enough.
Not one. So. What should they spend their money on? Based on that info (and I'm betting just about everyone who plays, if they think about people who've left will see the same pattern), what should SOE be putting their money into? Lets see. More content will prevent people from getting bored. More expansions (and EQ2) will reduce the numbers of people who'll leave for other games. They can't do a darn thing about RL issues, but making the game as available as possible (like servers in other countries for example) can help a bit.
And yet people ***** when SOE just puts more money into new expansions and new games and not enough into CS for the games they do have! Yeah. I wonder why that is...
They know their cusotmers better then their customers know themselves. You all talk about quitting, but I'd bet that less then .01% of those who say that ever do. Why should they listen to you? Especially when IMHO, those who complain the most about CS are those with the most unrealistic expectations about what they should be getting for their 13 bucks a month. If those guys leave, good riddance! They were costing more then they were bringing in. If you take up more then a couple hours of a GMs time in a month, then you are costing them more then you are paying them. It's simple math that they'd have no problems at all if you quit. The customers they want to keep are the ones who play the game, don't expect the world from the CS, and don't constantly complain when everything isn't perfect.
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Anyone who isn't complaining about customer support or agreeing with my orignal post is basically saying "Look we know customer support sucks, but deal with it." Well why have that attitude? Why not expect more from Sony? You deserve it right?
No. We're saying that Sony CS is about normal for what we'd expect for 13 bucks a month. We're happy with it. I don't expect more from Sony because I don't pay enough to sony to expect it.
I work in an industry where we pay millions of dollars a year for support contracts that include immediate on the phone 24 hour support. I simply do not expect that level of support when only paying $13 a month. I understand that they cannot possibly afford to make everyone who plays their game happy. Their best bet is to make the game experience as good as possible for those with reasonable expectations and ignore the whiners.
I'm sorry. I simply completely disagree with you. At what point did we become such a "me" society that we automatically expect that any service, no matter how little we are paying for it, should be better because "we deserve it". Ok. Tell me this. What exactly did *you* do to "deserve" better service? Are you a special unique snowflake and deserver special treatment? Cause they sure as hell can't afford to provide that level of service for everyone...
