Customer service. Not a rant but serious feedback. Long but if you care (or bored) you will read.

RAYVORN

I will be upfront, I have very little Elder Scrolls experience...Online or the standalone games over the years. But that honestly doesn't matter for this post. I want to stress up front that this is not a rant and I am not blaming any one that has to deal with 8mil+ people because you can't make everyone happy but at the same time you can't just get everyone frustrated by lacking the basics. But whoever is in charge of the direction and execution of ESO's customer service/support staff needs to admit to themselves that they can do better and make it happen . This is not my opinion, these are collective developed guidelines from managers, business owners, college professors, ect who have published endless journals about the reality of customer service in the business environment. It's impact on the success of your game is crucial. You COULD be challenging the #1 MMO King (not going to say their name but we know who it is) but you are shooting yourself in the foot with poor decisions that are EASY to fix.

Real quick background about me. This isn't to stroke my own ego it's just to inform you I am qualified to at least have a fair opinion. I am a retired Marine and while I served I was a part of the team that created the USMC website, both .com and .mil versions. The Marine Corps websites still set the standard for all Armed service (though I am impressed with what the Air force has done lately). If you know anything about working for government officials ...they want exactly what they expect and if you don't produce they replace you.

So with that, I won't be speaking computer jargon just plain English because I hope the developers and managers set their standards higher and us as players demand better then what we are currently being delivered. Right now this game is doing as well as it it (heard 8 million + players on console) in my opinion because of the amazing developers that are creating the actual game and because of the name Elder Scrolls. If this game was called BOBS BEST MMO and was the exact same game ..it would of already been down to 100k subs because people would of ditched it at launch. But because of what the developers have achieved in the last tow years it has done a 180. It shows in game. So much has changed from what I played at launch and it's spreading by word of mouth to other games (I've seen it). But of those new players who become interested I believe the customer service of ESO is doing not just us a disservice but the developers who actually make the game.

If I was willing to bet from the experience I have had in the last few days you are losing 1 out of 10 potential buyers just by the horrible website/registration design. It could be better or worse but it is costing you money. Let me explain:

When coming to the website you are required to make an account. This is standard. Every MMO out there does this. You also have to realize that people have been playing MMO's for years and players are NOT going to read the fine print. You can say well "that's their fault" but as a business manager thats a way to lose money. In the fine print of making an account it states that your Username will be visible to all players. First I can't believe this is in the game. I was smart and used a name that was not apart of any other account/email/ ect. It was 100% unique so that if I get hacked they also don't get access to other games I have played. This is really bad practice and while you have a TOS stating that it will be done, there are actual federal business laws where this practice is actually illegal. If enough players could prove they were hacked due to a business using loose guidelines and enough players petition (the federal government), you could find yourself in from financial hurt. I personally don't care because I am fine but if I was managing this system it would be fix #1. I've never seen a game allow peoples username to be seen by every player.

So you register and now you do what many players wanna do ...you go to the forums to post so you can ask questions about the game and interact. Well you can't because you need an invite. But you can't get an invite unless you purchase the game. But you don't know if you want to purchase the game because you have some questions you really like answered and haven't been able to find them using the search feature. See a problem? So out of 10 people who play this way when trying new MMO's, how many do you think said screw this and just moved on? 1 to many I am sure. I would fix this by allowing everyone who registers ...paying or not able to post on the forums. I mean who cares? If someone comes on and bashes the game....if you are providing a great product and great customer service your players would defend you in DROVES anyways. What are you scared of? I know it's not hard drive space for the increased forum usage....The more active it is the more potential customers are willing to BUY.

So moving on...you decide o well even if I can't post on the forums I will just purchase the game and THEN I will be able to get my questions answers and test them out. You go to the store and you see your choices. I am a new player (this actually happen to me) and BAM there is Morrowind. Preorder. Excitment. You click on Morrowind Digital Edition (not the upgrade because once again your new) and you begin to read all the cool stuff ahead. Then you keep reading and this is what you find. "Includes The Elder Scrolls® Online: Tamriel Unlimited™, the first game of the acclaimed online RPG series. Pre-order today and get the Discovery Pack!" Yep that SOLVES it. If I'm going to purchase something I might as well purchase Morrowind because it INCLUDES the Original ESO game and the Discovery Pack. This is the best bang for the buck. Now...here is where it gets FUN. If you know MMO's ...preorders have been around forever. Countless games have had preorders that included the original game...and usually all their expansions ect with them for free. When they do this..when you pre-order you get to play the CURRENT game RIGHT AWAY. Now as a manager of customer service it is your job to know that. Heck as a gamer you are required to know that. Well I purchased (as have many others...forum search proved) that when you purchase the Morrowind Digital Edition (not the upgrade) you can't actually play ESO right away. You have to wait for Morrowind to be release to have an active account to play Tamirel Unlimited. Even though the game is playable now and is included in the expansion, you still can't play it. I am dead serious. When I found this out I was like Dang it I must of missed some fine print somewhere. I looked, it's not there. It doesn't say anything about you will be unable to play Tamirel unlimited until the release of Morrowind.

So obviously frustrated like many others have been I began to move into fix it mode. I move to the support tab looking for the contact us button to contact someone to discuss with them how store is extremely misleading and to seek assistance for them to fix it or refund me so I can make the correct purchase (orginal game then the upgrade). I go there and guess what I have to register ....again? Umm I have an account why do I have do it again. So now going to my programing background, IT IS EASY to link the two together. There is NO reason to have two separate log in pages. You actually double the size of your database requirements using this illogical method. Not only that but it is a lot of extra code your web developers have to produce on the back end to make sure this happens. I am not accusing anyone but this is a tactic many web developers use to get their customers (in this case the publishers of ESO) to depend on them. They get a request, tell them how long its going to take, make it as confusing as heck and then show a working product to buyer. The buyer has been waiting so long that while it's not really good enough instead of saying No they just deal with it because they don't want to be delayed. So you end up with what you have now. This also locks in the developer because now they are the only one that is actually able to make sense of the code hindering the ability to outsource to another company/ect. If this is true or not, I don't know but this website while looks good, fundamentally on the back-end it is a train wreck.

Moving on, you finally get registered a second time. You go to the contact page...guess what there is No phone number ( I found one anyways but they didn't answer after being on hold for 5 hours and also never called back when I left a call back number) In their defense it was a busy weekend with DDOS. Fine...I'll just use chat its the same thing nowadays. No chat? Just email. Come on really? 8 million players. Elder Scrolls License. You have DUMBLEDORE as one of your main voice actors and you can't provide real time customer service? But here is the news flash players should know. It has been PROVEN (just google) that email support only actually COST more money then providing chat or phone service. Chat services are free. Just need a server...ESO has plenty. But where the savings comes in is that the employee has a 95%+ rate of fixing the problem correctly the FIRST TIME when speaking to the customer. Where email leaves a lot to the imagination. Pass a rumor around and see how it's changed when it told the 5th person. This forces the customer to email multiple times. An employee making changes multiple times. But most of all, when it takes forever for the customer to wait for an email...you start to lose players. That = less money. Chat/Phone service INCREASES revenue. Don't just look at the bills at the end of the month and be like I can save 2000$ a month if I turn off the phones. If your forums are filled with people saying they got fast, great service, then they will play longer and potential clients will be willing to drop money!

You guys I hope are starting to see the point. So to save time and my fingers I am just going to list some other non-functioning things I have found since I didn't have access to play the game for 48 hours. I was bored and waiting ....so I did what anyone would do...found the bugs.

List:
Not only does purchasing Morrowind not give you access to the game it LOCKS you out of making any purchases at all. I thought to myself...o well it's only 20$ I will just buy the original game and then just have Morrowind pre-purchased for an extra 20$. Nope doesn't work. The database sees that you own the original game already because it's packaged into morrowind. This disables ALL the BUY NOW buttons on the website for ANY product. It now states you do not meet the requirements for this product. The only thing I was unable to try was purchasing the game disc. I feel that the redeem code would not of worked because of the system but didn't test. If I bought the original game and then paid for the upgrade I would of been just fine but when you can save $20 by buying a packaged deal it's a no brainer but ended up being a long learning process.

When you submit a ticket, it's read by someone who response to you just to inform you it's been escalated to someone who can help you. This is also bad business. If the employee is not able to deal with the issue then don't HIRE them. Paying two employees salaries, 401k's, health insurance, ect is not as cost effective as paying someone who is qualified to do it themselves. Especially when it's as easy as "I want a refund so I can purchase the original game instead". Doesn't take someone with a BA to handle that.

Your Crown store has to many steps. Not only are products just Large images with a title and crown amount (complete waste of space) but when you click on them it gives you a very general description. When you click which you wanna choose PC, XBOX, PS4 it sends you to a page that gives you the full description anyways. So why add a step? That second page should just be a "quick buy" option page if anything. Allowing people who know what they are buying a fast purchase option. Everyone else who needs to read the details can go to the larger page.

Your Website tabs (links) aren't uniform at all. If I click on the main page it opens up everything as available to be clicked. Like Crown Store, updates, ESO PLUS ect. If I click the forums link then it changes to "Categories Dev Track Recent ect" The other tabs are no where to be found. Websites are suppose to flow from page to page leaving the structure the same. This builds comfort and familiarization instead of frustration. If I am reading the forums and see someone respond, O yeah its in the crown store check it out and being new to the game I am like "whats a crown store", seeing a link for it right at the top would get me curious to click it. Before you know it I am mapping out a plan to purchase crowns and spend money. Instead of just moving on because I don't know where to look and I get side tracked reading the next topic. Like I said, smarter people then I have already done all this hard work and published it. They teach it in colleges, tech schools, ect. Hire THOSE people OR send your current employees to THAT type of training.

Your Merchandise Link. It opens up a new window and takes you to Besthesda Store. It forces you off the page you were on. Forcing new windows open is ANNOYING. There is a reason POP UP's are not universally liked! It is simple code to make a web page appear in your current page. Multi Million dollar company shouldn't be using 1999-2005 web coding.

The Search button on the website when clicked takes you to it's own web page. I am sure everyone by now has seen that you can add a little type box for someone to search for something on the current page. Requiring it to have it's own page is a waste. It also ruins the ability for someone to hit the back button to go right back to the front page with the search bar. Forcing the user to have to click an extra page to go back home.

There are 100's more coding issues that could really make things user friendly. That also from a business sense direct people to areas where they are enticed to spend more money.

I really want to stress that I typed all this because I am shocked of the mistakes that are being made by such a beast of a license. 10's of millions of dollars are being missed out because of the standard level of customer service isn't being met. Elder Scrolls has the chance to take over the MMO market. You are on 2 consoles and PC. People have been waiting for a game to take them away from the one that always keeps drawing them back. The developers have proven that they don't want this ship to sink...by putting the work in. I have never wrote something this detailed before for a video game. Hope it hits the right eyes.

P.S. I paid attention in programming, not grammar/spelling:)

Molydeus

Holy moly.

RAYVORN

Molydeus wrote: »

Holy moly.

Yep, exact same thing I was saying to myself when I found myself locked out of a game as a new player by just pressing the "buy" button. Instead of raging on the forums I decided to be constructive. Besides I was rocking some Office Space movie in the background while typing this.

Molydeus

RAYVORN wrote: »

Molydeus wrote: »

Holy moly.

Yep, exact same thing I was saying to myself when I found myself locked out of a game as a new player by just pressing the "buy" button. Instead of raging on the forums I decided to be constructive. Besides I was rocking some Office Space movie in the background while typing this.

Don't get me wrong, this writeup is very impressive. There is a lot of insight in there, I'm just amazed you had so much of it and managed to organize it all.

RAYVORN

Molydeus wrote: »

RAYVORN wrote: »

Molydeus wrote: »

Holy moly.

Yep, exact same thing I was saying to myself when I found myself locked out of a game as a new player by just pressing the "buy" button. Instead of raging on the forums I decided to be constructive. Besides I was rocking some Office Space movie in the background while typing this.

Don't get me wrong, this writeup is very impressive. There is a lot of insight in there, I'm just amazed you had so much of it and managed to organize it all.

Appreciate it. Thanks for reading:)

Paulo69

Great feedback, I hope they'll read it.

To get this forum account, I had to make about 3 or 4 tickets.

mariskaas

The customer service in my experience took several days to get an answer at all, and the first two mails were from robots, just saying: is your issue solved? No of course it wasn't since they didn't do anything, and I did my research before actually contacting the customer service that I really couldn't fix it myself.
After I finally got a real person after about a week it was quickly fixed and they were nice and apologetic. But still, a robot response several times? That is just sad.

And yes the website sucks. I don't know if they already fixed the infinite loop I had in the store. When going to store and clicking in this case eso+ i just got looped back to store..

RAYVORN

mariskaas wrote: »

The customer service in my experience took several days to get an answer at all, and the first two mails were from robots, just saying: is your issue solved? No of course it wasn't since they didn't do anything, and I did my research before actually contacting the customer service that I really couldn't fix it myself.
After I finally got a real person after about a week it was quickly fixed and they were nice and apologetic. But still, a robot response several times? That is just sad.

And yes the website sucks. I don't know if they already fixed the infinite loop I had in the store. When going to store and clicking in this case eso+ i just got looped back to store..

This reminded me of something I forgot. While emailing the support team, after getting the generic response saying my issue was being escalated, after I received that update my status changed to "waiting on customer action". If you forwarded it to the next guy why does it say it's waiting on me. That forces me to type something in there because what if the Tech guy is just skimming his inbox and sees mine as waiting on me. They might skip it and move on to the one that says it's waiting on them to act.

Huyen

So many retired marines claiming they know it better. If you skipped that part, I might have read the whole story instead.
You know whats even worse? Dealing with a goverment that doesnt do *** because you cant pick up and leave, telling them that you gonna get your stuff somewhere else. As long as there is no valid reason for them to fear competition (aka people actually leaving in great numbers) they wont change their stuff.

mariskaas

RAYVORN wrote: »

mariskaas wrote: »

The customer service in my experience took several days to get an answer at all, and the first two mails were from robots, just saying: is your issue solved? No of course it wasn't since they didn't do anything, and I did my research before actually contacting the customer service that I really couldn't fix it myself.
After I finally got a real person after about a week it was quickly fixed and they were nice and apologetic. But still, a robot response several times? That is just sad.

And yes the website sucks. I don't know if they already fixed the infinite loop I had in the store. When going to store and clicking in this case eso+ i just got looped back to store..

This reminded me of something I forgot. While emailing the support team, after getting the generic response saying my issue was being escalated, after I received that update my status changed to "waiting on customer action". If you forwarded it to the next guy why does it say it's waiting on me. That forces me to type something in there because what if the Tech guy is just skimming his inbox and sees mine as waiting on me. They might skip it and move on to the one that says it's waiting on them to act.

Yes happened to me as well the 'waiting on customer thing'. They did not tell me that was there I get to go the the service website to 'update' my ticket to get them to respond again.

RAYVORN

Huyen wrote: »

So many retired marines claiming they know it better. If you skipped that part, I might have read the whole story instead.
You know whats even worse? Dealing with a goverment that doesnt do *** because you cant pick up and leave, telling them that you gonna get your stuff somewhere else. As long as there is no valid reason for them to fear competition (aka people actually leaving in great numbers) they wont change their stuff.

Well I feel your experience with the military was bad where mine was good. I only informed of my past website/coding history. I am currently a supervisor at my new job where the customers are just as vocal except my employees can leave when and how they want but so far so good using the experienced I gained.

I also don't agree that they won't do anything unless they lose subscriptions. They saw a need to fix the game and put massive work into it. If they saw the potential of improving their customer service division to gain similar effects as improving the game did, they would do it. Just takes one of them to say hey boss, I got an idea.

Everstorm

I once send in a ticket about a bugged quest that was preventing me from finishing Cadwell's gold. I never got a response to that ticket. I did however get a survey asking how I rate the costumer service...

theher0not

Everstorm wrote: »

I once send in a ticket about a bugged quest that was preventing me from finishing Cadwell's gold. I never got a response to that ticket. I did however get a survey asking how I rate the costumer service...

That has happen literary every time I use the support.

gorvishand

Had one of my characters locked 2 weeks ago for what ever reason. 3 tickets and a bunch of robot responses later still locked. My god I hate those robot responses.

anitajoneb17_ESO

Huyen wrote: »

you cant pick up and leave, telling them that you gonna get your stuff somewhere else.

Nice read OP, very few long posts on forums are actually so well structured and written and structured that it's a pleasure to read them until the very end.

While you're right on so many things, our friend @Huyen mentioned one of the aspects that you're missing : ESO has little to no competition (it IS the best MMO available right now). It causes the company to neglect issues or make savings without suffering too much loss and optimizing profit by lowering quality standards.

Other aspects are :

- MMO players develop some sort of addiction to a lesser or greater extent to their respective game. While they sound very demanding and loud with words, they're actually, in behaviour, more resilient to defects in the product than other types of customers.
- Hiring one competent employee MAY be cheaper than hiring several less competent employees but it doesn't have to always be the case - especially if you take outsourcing to low-wage countries into the equation. Which I'm sure ZOS does a lot.
- ESO is developed by ZOS but the general PR stuff (including this forum) is managed directly by Bethesda. Which means, other people, other servers, different hierarchy, etc. That is likely to be the cause of many inconsistencies we see on here.

Still none of this is an actual excuse. The general ergonomy of the entire web interface (forum, e-shop, support) leaves me just speechless on more than one occasion.

Everstorm

It is however typical that a large portion of the players are no longer willing to pay a monthly fee but still demand the same lvl of service.

Zyrudin

Well put together post with valuable insights.
I do think you are right, but what you idealize seems to be going extinct: despite generally people complaining louder than ever before, the general standards have also never been lower (and I'm not restricting this only to the assessment of customer service or even the quality of products).

Still, I can only think of it as a store bug that the core game is inaccessible until Morrowind comes out, just because you pre-ordered the expansion alongside actually purchasing the already existing game. I say this because you are also being prevented from buying the single item core game again.

Maybe tagging a few names will get it looked at, as it usually helps around here.

AnviOfVai

This is the guy you used to go to when you struggled with your Dissertation at University and he would say "its easy look!" and he then would write a full 2,777 words and 14,870 characters within half an hour and you would sit and stare at him for the next 3 days across your desk thinking this guy is not human.

(Yes that is an actual word count of what you have wrote)

But YES it is great feedback, I hope they will actually look at your post and take into consideration what you have said because most of this is bang on. I am just glad I bought mass effect instead hahaha

RAYVORN

katiesmith12341 wrote: »

This is the guy you used to go to when you struggled with your Dissertation at University and he would say "its easy look!" and he then would write a full 2,777 words and 14,870 characters within half an hour and you would sit and stare at him for the next 3 days across your desk thinking this guy is not human.

(Yes that is an actual word count of what you have wrote)

But YES it is great feedback, I hope they will actually look at your post and take into consideration what you have said because most of this is bang on. I am just glad I bought mass effect instead hahaha

Ha, I always used the Nick Burns (Jimmy fallon) computer guy. But honestly in the Web Developer world these fixes are easy. On the website side of things they could have them done in 48 hours or less (given that they are familiar with the code already from writing it). Building a website is like writing or reading a book. If you have started at the beginning you know where to find things if you have to skim back.

RAYVORN

anitajoneb17_ESO wrote: »

Huyen wrote: »

you cant pick up and leave, telling them that you gonna get your stuff somewhere else.

Nice read OP, very few long posts on forums are actually so well structured and written and structured that it's a pleasure to read them until the very end.

While you're right on so many things, our friend @Huyen mentioned one of the aspects that you're missing : ESO has little to no competition (it IS the best MMO available right now). It causes the company to neglect issues or make savings without suffering too much loss and optimizing profit by lowering quality standards.

THis is just an opinion though where as I am dealing with facts. FFXIV and WoW between them have close to 15 million subscribers. That is alot of MMO gamers who I am sure tried ESO when it first came out. How many of them had a horrible experience and dropped it the first month. How many of them do you think once or twice a month stop by the forums to see how the games doing? How many god I hate this cusomters service post do you think they see when they are debating on giving the game a try. My job as a manager is to assume ALL of them. It would also be my job to make sure the new player experience IN and OUT of game is SPOT ON because that is what makes people happy. Customer service is easy to do but hard to implement but once you have it in place its amazing.

This is the best way I can put it and I think it fits. ESO is a nice restaurant. You walk in and no one is there to greet you or you get a a stupid red electronic pad and are told go have a seat. You wait 40 minutes to finally sit down. When you sit down waitress just walk by you multiple times or try to avoid your table because they are still busy bring food out to other customers. After 10 minutes you finally get drinks ordered maybe an appetizer. After another 30 minutes you are on like your second glass of coke and are starving. The food comes out and ITS AMAZING (this is ESO the actual game). You guys spend the next 30 minutes eating say wow this food is great. Then you decide you want dessert and it takes another 20 minutes to order. Then its good as well. Then you have to chase the waitress down to get your check. FINALLY you pay and 2.5 hours have gone by from the time you walked in till the time you leave.

What did you learn. Food is amazing ..some of the best you ever had but if you want to eat at this restaurant you have to plan your entire night around it. So you will only be eating here on special occasions or when you are really craving the food.

Thats what you learned. What I would learn as a manager of ESO (restaurant) is this:
I need to get people seated as much as possible. Sit them down and serve them some bread while they wait. Have TV with sports on so people had to watch while they wait. Hire live music on the weekends only and have them play outside ect. The big one is realize that your growth has surpassed your expectations and start the process of opening another restaurant (hire more CS reps). If that is not an option open up a take out menu for those who just want the food not the experience (chat service).

anitajoneb17_ESO wrote: »

Other aspects are :

- MMO players develop some sort of addiction to a lesser or greater extent to their respective game. While they sound very demanding and loud with words, they're actually, in behaviour, more resilient to defects in the product than other types of customers.
- Hiring one competent employee MAY be cheaper than hiring several less competent employees but it doesn't have to always be the case - especially if you take outsourcing to low-wage countries into the equation. Which I'm sure ZOS does a lot.
- ESO is developed by ZOS but the general PR stuff (including this forum) is managed directly by Bethesda. Which means, other people, other servers, different hierarchy, etc. That is likely to be the cause of many inconsistencies we see on here.

Still none of this is an actual excuse. The general ergonomy of the entire web interface (forum, e-shop, support) leaves me just speechless on more than one occasion.

I get all that and just didn't include into my post because it dives way into the business side of things but the general rule of cusomter service is that you can't just look at the bottom dollar. If Zenimax is doing all the above they are living paycheck to paycheck. Meaning they just pay the bills but aren't planning for the future. Always having to play catch up in the world of business means you will never be first. It's as simple as that.

As a small share holder in the company (monthly fee/game purchase) all I can do is hope they do better. I did look into purchasing stocks from both these companies because I see the potential but sadly wasn't possible (private companies) but I just threw more money at AMD because they announced a partnership with Bethesda recently. Side benefits!

Huyen

RAYVORN wrote: »

anitajoneb17_ESO wrote: »

Huyen wrote: »

you cant pick up and leave, telling them that you gonna get your stuff somewhere else.

Nice read OP, very few long posts on forums are actually so well structured and written and structured that it's a pleasure to read them until the very end.

While you're right on so many things, our friend @Huyen mentioned one of the aspects that you're missing : ESO has little to no competition (it IS the best MMO available right now). It causes the company to neglect issues or make savings without suffering too much loss and optimizing profit by lowering quality standards.

THis is just an opinion though where as I am dealing with facts. FFXIV and WoW between them have close to 15 million subscribers. That is alot of MMO gamers who I am sure tried ESO when it first came out. How many of them had a horrible experience and dropped it the first month. How many of them do you think once or twice a month stop by the forums to see how the games doing? How many god I hate this cusomters service post do you think they see when they are debating on giving the game a try. My job as a manager is to assume ALL of them. It would also be my job to make sure the new player experience IN and OUT of game is SPOT ON because that is what makes people happy. Customer service is easy to do but hard to implement but once you have it in place its amazing.

This is the best way I can put it and I think it fits. ESO is a nice restaurant. You walk in and no one is there to greet you or you get a a stupid red electronic pad and are told go have a seat. You wait 40 minutes to finally sit down. When you sit down waitress just walk by you multiple times or try to avoid your table because they are still busy bring food out to other customers. After 10 minutes you finally get drinks ordered maybe an appetizer. After another 30 minutes you are on like your second glass of coke and are starving. The food comes out and ITS AMAZING (this is ESO the actual game). You guys spend the next 30 minutes eating say wow this food is great. Then you decide you want dessert and it takes another 20 minutes to order. Then its good as well. Then you have to chase the waitress down to get your check. FINALLY you pay and 2.5 hours have gone by from the time you walked in till the time you leave.

What did you learn. Food is amazing ..some of the best you ever had but if you want to eat at this restaurant you have to plan your entire night around it. So you will only be eating here on special occasions or when you are really craving the food.

Thats what you learned. What I would learn as a manager of ESO (restaurant) is this:
I need to get people seated as much as possible. Sit them down and serve them some bread while they wait. Have TV with sports on so people had to watch while they wait. Hire live music on the weekends only and have them play outside ect. The big one is realize that your growth has surpassed your expectations and start the process of opening another restaurant (hire more CS reps). If that is not an option open up a take out menu for those who just want the food not the experience (chat service).

anitajoneb17_ESO wrote: »

Other aspects are :

- MMO players develop some sort of addiction to a lesser or greater extent to their respective game. While they sound very demanding and loud with words, they're actually, in behaviour, more resilient to defects in the product than other types of customers.
- Hiring one competent employee MAY be cheaper than hiring several less competent employees but it doesn't have to always be the case - especially if you take outsourcing to low-wage countries into the equation. Which I'm sure ZOS does a lot.
- ESO is developed by ZOS but the general PR stuff (including this forum) is managed directly by Bethesda. Which means, other people, other servers, different hierarchy, etc. That is likely to be the cause of many inconsistencies we see on here.

Still none of this is an actual excuse. The general ergonomy of the entire web interface (forum, e-shop, support) leaves me just speechless on more than one occasion.

I get all that and just didn't include into my post because it dives way into the business side of things but the general rule of cusomter service is that you can't just look at the bottom dollar. If Zenimax is doing all the above they are living paycheck to paycheck. Meaning they just pay the bills but aren't planning for the future. Always having to play catch up in the world of business means you will never be first. It's as simple as that.

As a small share holder in the company (monthly fee/game purchase) all I can do is hope they do better. I did look into purchasing stocks from both these companies because I see the potential but sadly wasn't possible (private companies) but I just threw more money at AMD because they announced a partnership with Bethesda recently. Side benefits!

Most people these days are living from paycheck to paycheck (me being one of them) because they wont earn enough to save up and plan for the future. And most company's out there outsource their work because its cheaper.

esotoon

Great post OP. All valid points, well made.

If I may be so bold, as to add a couple other topics you might not be aware of, that cause customer's headaches:

1: The age gate for accessing the website. Why have it when nothing on the website requires an age rating? It's not needed and provides an extra step to the customer get to the information about the game. If you mistype your DOB it can be difficult to reset as you are locked out with no way of resetting the page and retyping your correct DOB. You have to manually delete cookies, etc. (This is especially a problem for players outside of the U.S. who uses a different date format. e.g. On some devices I get the UK date format dd/mm/yyyy and on others the US format mm/dd/yyyy, so it is easy to make a mistake if you are not paying attention)

2: Should you be banned or your account suspended for any reason, you are not only locked out of the forum, you are also locked out of your Account Information page. Whilst I can understand the forum ban, as there is a policy of not dealing with bans in public, being locked out of your account page means you are unable to get data regarding your subscription, payments, etc. Why not allow access to this page, but not allow any changes to be made to it?

3: (Connected to 2) When you account is banned/suspended for any reason, you can no longer sign into the website. Without signing into the website you are unable to track your support ticket via the web. This means the only way to know how your ticket is progressing is via e-mail. Which is fine, unless you do not currently have access to your e-mail at the time of the problem.

4: When dealing with support, they ask not only for the answer to your security question, but also for the question itself. I have yet to encounter any other business that has required you to know both, and it certainly isn't industry standard. Yet nowhere does it warn you that you will need to remember both for future reference.

5: Lack of clear communication. Should you be banned/suspended for any reason, you do not get told, let alone told why. You simply received an e-mail saying that you have successfully unsubscribed from ESO+. This happened to me recently when my account was suspended, when they detected suspicious activity on my account (they suspected it had been hacked). Whilst I am very grateful that they quickly took steps to prevent such hacking, an e-mail actually telling me that this was the case, would have saved two rounds of unnecessary communications to find out what was going on.

Joshua261

Paulo69 wrote: »

Great feedback, I hope they'll read it.

To get this forum account, I had to make about 3 or 4 tickets.

I was emailing for 3 weeks to get my forums acount it was just ridiculous

[Deleted User]

The user and all related content has been deleted.

RAYVORN

Huyen wrote: »

Most people these days are living from paycheck to paycheck (me being one of them) because they wont earn enough to save up and plan for the future. And most company's out there outsource their work because its cheaper.

This is very true. I don't remember the guy who stated it but it always stuck with me. He said that what made him rich was working longer. People get stuck into the mindset that I work 40 hours a week or 50 hours a week and I am living just to get by. He said then work 70 hours a week. He said that he was able to accumulate wealth because he worked enough to be able to set money aside after the bills were paid. This allowed him to invest. Investing turned into gains. Gains turned into having to work less because now his money was working for him. This isn't directed at you because I have zero clue about your work history, I am sure you work your butt off but I do know that a lot of people I worked with over the years showed up to work as late as they could and waited to punch their card to clock out soon as the clock hit 4.pm. If you spend your entire day at work waiting to go home its hard to become wealthy or even well off.

Outsourcing should always come down to two things and MUST be in this order from a business perspective. Sadly to many companies have them reversed.

1st = Is the company that I am outsourcing going to represent my company as if I was the one running it. Projecting what our core values are to the customer they interact with.

2nd = Lowest cost to achieve 1st priority.

When you reverse that you compromise and your business suffers for it.

RAYVORN

Joshua261 wrote: »

Paulo69 wrote: »

Great feedback, I hope they'll read it.

To get this forum account, I had to make about 3 or 4 tickets.

I was emailing for 3 weeks to get my forums account it was just ridiculous

I received an email and they refunded both my morrowinds so now those accounts are free which is good. They were extremely friendly but the process just takes to long. What's sad is they seem really helpful when it is your turn but if they could get that customer service down to less then 24 hours it would change the game for how people think about them.

alexkdd99

Nice read. Love the bit at the front about not being a rant, and it actually not being a rant. Most of the time that is said, it's a rant.

My experience with customer service started off great at console release. Somewhere along the line things changed, not sure what. In the beginning I would get quick response from actual people who could fix my problem. Anymore though it is a long drawn out process with a bunch of useless emails being sent.

Many of the other games I have recently started playing have better cs than eso, including f2p games.

Duiwel

OP, in the title you said this: you will read.

I'm just here to say:

Arthg

Duiwel wrote: »

OP, in the title you said this: you will read.

I'm just here to say:

How about you just refrain from posting a cheap meme in a thread whose title you can't even bother to read properly?

Not everybody needs to know you want to miss out on a very insightful, informed and carefully worded post - one of the only high quality ones I've read about issues and concerns I too have encountered and share: privacy, registration conditions, marketing techniques, customer service and the like.

Jemcrystal

I want to buy crowns with Steam Wallet. Plz make this happen ZoS. Steam said it was up to your okay not up to them.

AlienatedGoat

Sorry this happened to you, OP. I hope it doesn't turn you off of the game - it really is a great game.

ZoS has been making some seriously questionable business decisions lately, and it's hurting them. Whoever keeps making these dumb decisions needs to go.