Customer Service how to do it correctly

Colognoisseur

I go to the same large grocery store every week on the same day. Most of the time there are 2 or 3 cashiers. When I checkout I maybe wait 5 minutes before it is my turn. When my regular day occurs before a holiday the store is way more crowded. If they relied on the same 2 or 3 cashiers the lines to checkout would extend down the aisles to the back of the store. Yet at my grocery store when I am shopping around a holiday I notice an interesting thing. Every manager in the store is manning a cash register. There is even one stationed by the self checkout to keep that moving efficiently. These managers understand their customer experience in the face of a known uptick in activity will add to their success. This is what is meant by customer service.
This is in contrast to the experience with BCS customer service this anniversary, a known uptick in activity. As of writing this it is 10 days since I submitted a ticket to CS. I was have received zero response. They haven’t even got to giving me a ticket number. This is at the end of the anniversary. For the entire month they’ve allowed their obviously overwhelmed and too small CS department flounder. Where is anyone from BCS willing to pitch in? They sure aren’t working on anything else. They sure aren’t communicating. Sure seems like there is some time to help out. Unlike the managers at my grocery store I am guessing they can’t be bothered to pitch in to help out. Now here we are at the end with a snarled mess of CS and not a single word about doing anything about it. Even though it is part of their acronym BCS knows nothing about CS.

DevpoolMPQ_BCS

Hi there, and sorry to hear about the poor experience. For clarity, BCS does not run customer service for the game, but we do talk with those folks frequently and provide aid where we can. If you send me a DM with your CS ticket number I'll follow up on it personally.

entrailbucket

It seems clear that when they plan to offer cover swaps on a random store, especially on a store where most of the top .01% have a character maxed out, they need to SIGNIFICANTLY staff up customer service to handle that volume of requests.

I don't talk to hundreds of players anymore, but just about everyone I still talk to has at least one outstanding swap ticket pending right now, and a lot of them have been waiting a very long time.

This same sort of backup/delay happened the last time they offered this too -- I think it was a Chinese New Year store.

Vhailorx

d3 has always handled CS, not the developer. This is no surprise. Criticism should be directed at D3 (or 505 Games) if you think it has gotten worse.

Also, this might suggest an underlying problem that CS is absolutely overwhelmed with coverswap requests because all the high end players are dumping massive amounts of cp on the fan favorites store. The informal coverswap policy allows the top players to get much more efficiency from their legendary tokens than "regular" players AND produces a bad CS experience.

Either make the policy public/official and integrate into the game, or don't do it at all.

meadowsweet

@entrailbucket said:
It seems clear that when they plan to offer cover swaps on a random store, especially on a store where most of the top .01% have a character maxed out, they need to SIGNIFICANTLY staff up customer service to handle that volume of requests.

No mobile game company is going to advertise jobs, review resumes, interview candidates, pay to background check them, and spend time training them so that they can work for... three weeks? four? And if it's only "most of the top .01%" that can't be that many players either, right?

Alternative solutions:
1) Stop offering cover swaps
2) Cover swap requests go to the back of the line and are only dealt with part-time or when all other requests are completed
3) Build the cover swap mechanic into the game, so that players can do it themselves (since it seems like an "unofficially official" policy anyway?)

If #1 & #2 are non-starters because they upset the whales who pay your salaries, then just skip directly to #3 which seems inevitable if not long overdue.

entrailbucket

@meadowsweet I'm pretty sure CS for this game has been outsourced for a very very long time -- it'd just be a matter of paying (probably a lot) more for these busy periods.

2) is probably not possible because these covers do expire in game -- that's why everyone is freaking out about this currently.

I do agree with the other options and also with the general direction of what you're saying, I just wanted to fill in some details.

JoeHandle

@entrailbucket said:
It seems clear that when they plan to offer cover swaps on a random store, especially on a store where most of the top .01% have a character maxed out, they need to SIGNIFICANTLY staff up customer service to handle that volume of requests.

I don't talk to hundreds of players anymore, but just about everyone I still talk to has at least one outstanding swap ticket pending right now, and a lot of them have been waiting a very long time.

This same sort of backup/delay happened the last time they offered this too -- I think it was a Chinese New Year store.

I don't know who contracts the CS for the game whaere it's based or if it's remote ... maybe it's gigged out by the item

If it's based in the US or Europe and being handled on site ... tried "staffing up" anything recently? "Easier said than done" doesnt even begin to describe the impossibility.

The functionality needs to be built into the game, or the possibility removed by other development, but that requires dedicating dev time and business decisions to a minority, fringe audience held captive to a monopoly in a command economy. Seems unlikely, even after all these years. But who knows, maybe there's a plan... for sometime in the Second Decade