Customer Service

[Slayne]

At the moment the community here is small and Karl has done an awesome job at keeping us updated with development of the game. When the game launches I am sure he will be flooded with emails for various issues as he continues to fix bugs and make updates to the game. I am sure we can all say that the customer service of xenimus has exponentially gotten worse over the years. What is there planned for PV? And if there is no system planned, what are some suggestions we can come up with to help make things easier on karl.

[Entropy]

There could be a designated email account, say help@projectvolucris.com, that all customer service emails will be sent to. There would also be a team of a select few people to monitor the customer service requests at designated intervals throughout the day. This way, customers would know at approximately what time to check their email for a reply from the CS team, and there would be a sufficiently large enough group of people checking through the various issues and working with the player to resolve said issues.

I, for one, would be happy to help with customer service.

-Kevin

[Richard. UK]

Hey guys,

E.J had it right for a long time, when he actually played the game and enjoyed Xenimus. His time and dedication was very much Xenimus centric at some points. However he lost all interest, which is the dieing shame for a game of its type and community. Bearing that in mind thinking about Karl and the way Karl schedules things and works with everything I would say this should not be an issue at all. I feel that Karl would be more than adequate enough to manage his time coding and time to speak through the forums whilst even also dealing with Customer Support.

But it is only time that would tell on such things, don't get me wrong the concept of a group of 2 or 3 people for customer support and issues would be a great helping hand as this would give Karl the relaxation from digging through true bugs to actual people who have general questions that could be answered without any of his precious time being juggled about.

In my opinion if Customer Suppport does take off in Volucris my input is that it should be issued to people who will also deal with in game problems and support, this would almost take the form of Game Masters, but I think if there are too many GM's or Customer Support players then the game would be overruled by people who become very power hungry and condecending.

Thats my opinion!

All the Best,
Richard

[Karl G.]

I think it would be a big help to delegate the CS task to others. I'm going back to school soon after release, so it would be quite helpful if CS representatives here on the forums could take care of that, and send me condensed updates every few days to draw my attention to particular problems. Private communication can be set up by an email system; I'll see if I can figure that out.

[Hatebreed]

I think this where player base is kept or lost. EJ seems to have forgotten that or simply doesn't care with his "don't like it? then quit" attitude.

Kevin and myself have a lot of customer service experience with the businesses we're in, and I have to say that quality service is what keeps the clientele returning again and again.

Also, an important thing to look for, if you are going set up customer relations system, is competent and literate people. We certainly don't need people like plateau (from xentales) attempting to give advice or help with problems.

[Karl G.]

There will be requirements to be part of customer service--and yes, literacy and attitude will both be considered.

What business are you in, just out of curiosity?

[Hatebreed]

I own a shop. Vision Performance. We specialize in after market performance and fabrication. At the shop itself, keeping people happy is an absolute necessity.

We also drift and drag race. The racing itself doesn't have much to do with customer relations but the booths we set up at the events attract a lot of potential customers.

[Slayne]

another though to reduce emails is to answer most of the questions by having a comprehensive website that is CONSTANTLY UPDATED. EJ forgot about that as well.

[Karl G.]

Hatebreed - Wow! Owning a business is a big responsibility--(proverbial) hats off to you, and I wish you success. Entrepreneurship is not easy.

Slayne - Yes, I definitely want to keep the website updated. That's why I started the Wiki--it's a lot easier for me to change. I have another site design that's been sitting on my computer for a year, but I've been so busy with my job and programming that I just haven't found the week or so it would take to bring it fully online with a reasonable amount of content.

So for now, we'll just use the forums, I suppose.

[thadiusofx3]

Dont' forget I set up that trouble ticket system for PV.
Seems that would be a lot easier to keep track of things than with email.

[Karl G.]

Trouble ticket system? I don't remember this...

[thadiusofx3]

Yeah basically the players just submit trouble tickets under different categories (account related, bugs, lost items, tech support, etc) and the administrators can log in and reply to the trouble tickets with solutions and fix the problems, then close the ticket.

[thadiusofx3]

viewtopic.php?f=9&t=686&p=3581&hilit=helpdesk#p3581

[Karl G.]

Ah! Thanks for the reminder we never used it, I guess, so I forgot it even existed.

[thadiusofx3]

Yeah it was a little ahead of its time.
can't believe its already been over a year since that thread lol

[Hatebreed]

Thanks Karl

I hope you consider me as a possible choice in helping out with customer service for the game. It would be the least I could do to show my support.

[speed3b]

You could possibly have a couple of layers of CS.
Level 1
Level 2
Level 3
...
...
Level X (Karl only?)

I dont know. Only a quick little idea in my head that didn't complete itself.


I could also be of some help if needed. But i dont know what good i could do for you.