What problems does a player face today when contacting the support service, — he tells in his material for App2Top.ru Vasily Sabirov, a leading analyst and co-founder of devtodev, together with Anna Bashkirova, head of Customer support outsourcing at devtodev.
Why is customer support important?
The role of customer support in free-play games is very important.
Just imagine that the player who is classified as a “whale” in your game is dissatisfied with something. He turns to support and asks for a conversation. What happens if he doesn’t get an answer? What happens if they answer, but not like that?
Most likely, he will leave.
So it turns out that in free—play games, whose income is most often 80-90% formed just from whale payments, the development of user support is ultimately working with monetization.
That’s why it’s important.
A few words about the research and methodology
The devtodev team conducted a study of the modern support market. From the point of view of user experience, we checked how the situation is with support in 10 match-3 games of various companies.
We contacted the support of the following studios: BelkaGames (Clockmaker game), Wooga Games (Jelly Splash and Tropicats games), Disney (Frozen Free Fall game), Peak Games (Toon Blast game), King (Farm Heroes Saga game), PlayFlock (Indy Cat game), Playrix (Homescapes game), Nevosoft (Gemmy Lands game), Awem (Cradle of Empires game).
The support work was evaluated by several parameters: response speed, organization of communication, who answers (human or bot), availability of FAQ, communication channels, ease of communication. In addition, we arranged a stress test for each support service and looked at how agents reacted to it.
A little below are the conclusions of this study, a story about how the support work is arranged on average now and what we should ideally strive for.
Response rate
The speed of response is the first thing we evaluated and what every customer pays attention to. At this stage, the player’s attitude towards the project and its developers is formed.
As a rule, support services respond within a day, some are pleased with the answers within a few hours. The worst option is when you can contact support only from Monday to Friday during business hours.
Communication channels and their convenience
Is it easy to report your problem, or do you have to wade through survey forms to contact support?
What did we see?
As a rule, the “Write to support” buttons are already inside the game, which is convenient. There are also often options for “Contacting an agent on the game’s website” or “Contacting by mail”.
The ideal option is when all communication with the agent can be conducted inside the game (for example, in a chat).
Discomfort is caused by “throwing” from the game to the mail, additional filling in of survey fields, the need to register and specify PIN codes, the absence of a return message about the acceptance of the application.
Most often, a live person answers in all the support services we have checked, which is a plus. In some cases, we received a response according to a prepared template, especially to the very first appeal, from which there was a minimum of information on the case.
Imagine an angry player who, for example, has a sword missing, and the support service offers him to invite friends to the game and get crystals for it.
Availability of a competent FAQ
Sometimes the problem can be solved independently, but the player can only find out about it if:
- a) The FAQ is detailed and clear;
- b) it is easy to find.
The companies that we checked, as a rule, have well-written FAQ, but sometimes they are difficult to find, or they are not duplicated from the game to the site and vice versa.
Stress test
We tried our best: we cursed, ignored the agent’s clarifying questions, asked to restore the mythical level that we had already passed, poured curses and were nervous.
In general, the support staff that we managed to reach showed themselves professionally — they responded positively without hints of stress. It was not possible to arrange stress tests for those companies that immediately close the application without specifying whether the client still has questions.
Formal answers, answers according to templates are also very annoying — this creates a feeling of disinterest in the player, detracts from the significance of his problem. Often in stressful situations, support offers compensation in game currency, but against the background of responses with templates, such a decision makes the client feel as if they want to buy him off, not wanting to deal with his question.
What problems have we identified
In general, we were satisfied with the support work, but we noticed common weaknesses that are more or less common to everyone.
There is no support in Russian (applies to foreign companies)
When contacting support in Russian, the player often receives an answer either in English or in a mixture of languages. Some services use Google Translate, which categorically spoils the quality of communication.
Formal answers, using templates
It follows from this that the client most often receives in response information that has little to do with the issue that concerns him, the loyalty of the player falls. It is especially embarrassing to receive an automatic response in the spirit of “Thank you for your feedback” when the purpose of the appeal is far from a review.
Instant closing of applications
And if the player still has questions? It is often impossible to reopen the application, you have to apply again.
Inconvenience of communication by mail
This communication channel most often involves filling out survey forms at the first request. You get used to the good things — namely, to chats with support staff — quickly, so you intuitively expect that such an option should be present everywhere.
Support time limit
It is especially sad to receive an automatic email on the request that the support service is not working right now.
The quality of support work in relation to paying and non-paying players
It is logical that there is a priority, but it is confusing that the “write and close” approach to non-paying players is more common. The loyalty of the non-paying user is no less important than the loyalty of the paying user. Everyone has the opportunity to write a bad review in the store and put a unit to the application, as well as to raise waves of negativity in social networks.
***
This analysis of the support market showed that game projects still have a lot to develop. The quality of the service provided by the support service is ultimately determined by the most important parameter — satisfaction and good mood of the user, not just speed.
By the way, the study was conducted by specialists of the new devtodev direction — Customer support outsourcing. In fact, our support specialists evaluated their own colleagues from gaming companies.