"New And Improved" Customer Service....Yeah, Right

[Fox the Clever]

I logged into EverQuest one day and discovered a notification in the patch message about a new and improved customer service feedback form. Fine, I suppose. I really don't use the petition system a lot, so personally I didn't care much about it.

A few days go by, and I wanted to know something about the sporali advisor earring (the one obtained in one of the Halloween quests) in regards to pet classes. A visit to the EverQuest official forums proved to be rather unproductive, so I decided to send a /petition in order to get some answers. Oh boy, here's where the fun began....

What's this? I have to tab out of the game? Well, no big deal, my character was in the Plane of Knowledge when I tried this. Then I came face to face with the "new and improved" customer service petition form. Good Lord, what mental giant designed this thing? It has got to be one of the most ungainly and non-intuitive interfaces that I have ever encountered on the internet. After ten minutes of fruitless experimentation, I finally gave up in disgust. A trip later to the official message boards revealed that a thread regarding this "new and improved" interface is, as of this typing, nine pages long and glowing red hot from all the replies and views. ALL of the responses were in the negative, with the general feeling that the interface was deliberately designed to be this way in order to annoy people so much that they wouldn't even bother making petitions anymore! Despite the fact that the official forums these days are starting to resemble the official forums of old (aka Whineplay), I can't help but to agree to this sentiment. I didn't think the petition system could get any worse from the previous cut-and-paste replies done by the English as a second language crew, but was I ever wrong about that!

I apologize in advance if this seems a bit critical of Sony, but this is primal scream, and I wanted to blow off some steam. So what do you all think of this "new and improved" customer service form?

[Qaladar Bragollach]

Petitioning to ask a question about a spell effect probably wouldn't have gotten you anywhere under the old system either.

[Xerius]

I have had opportunity since the revision to try the new petition system. I cannot say I am overly fond of it.

Welcome to progress.

It is in place, so I will use it when necessary and just live with it, the way I lived with all the means of petitioning that went before, some liked and some not.

My only criticism of the system is that it does not seem to be fulfilling its most basic function.

The petition system is the Help button of Everquest. It in my viewpoint should be the one function that works for everybody, but both by posts on the official site and by word of mouth from guild people and friends, it does not seem to be reliable for those with under 1 Gb of system RAM. Numerous people have noted that for those with the current required system specs (as opposed to the recommended), the petition window either will not come up, or using the petition function crashes EQ.

Which leads to my criticism, as I believe even if those with only the required system specs must live with reduced graphics, reduced sound, and reduced effects, at least they should be able to use the Help function.

[Ursawraith]

And of course don't forget the lovely /petition screens:

Error 404 and DNS errors

[KyrosKrane]

This started out as a two-sentence response, but I'm no good at being concise. =)

I'm of mixed feelings about the new help system.

On the one hand, I recognize the back-end system they're using. I've used it at a few other companies, and it's a solid system for handling questions. It allows plenty of flexibility for storing questions and answers, and it has good search features. It allows Sony's customer service reps (not necessarily GM's) to interact back and forth with the player in a more meaningful manner than the old "copy/paste response and close the petition" system. (Of course, this assumes they don't automatically close the issue anyway with the new system.)

On the other hand, it's absolutely appalling and completely unacceptable that "in-game" help is handled through a Web browser. Aside from breaking the immersion of being in a game, the first contact a player has with the system is a blank screen that demands your email address, then refuses to do anything else until you open your email client, find the email from Sony, and click the link in it. Your average game player will find the Web interface confusing, busy, and distracting. There are way too many widgets and not enough guidance on how to use the system.

I remember reading an article once discussing how customer support works. One way that companies keep support costs down is to put small obstacles in the customer's path. They couch them in the form of reasonable requests -- "Fax us a copy of your invoice, please" or "We can't help you here, please call this other department." When the customer complies with that step, they put another small, reasonable-sounding block in his path. Companies know that each time they put in one of these blocks, a few customers will just give up rather than try to get the issue resolved. Maybe the customer will forget, or maybe they figure it's not worth the time. If the customer refuses to comply with the "reasonable" request, the company has valid grounds to deny service. It's all a scam to lower support costs.

Sony's new help interface smacks a lot of this. I don't think Sony set out with the specific objective of pissing off their customers, but I'm sure the complexity of the form was a factor in their thinking. Less support requests equals less cost for customer support. This, of course, is backwards thinking, but it's typical of a corporate executive who's only responsible for keeping his costs down and who doesn't look at the big picture. He may save the company some costs by cutting down on support requests, but the true cost to the company becomes apparent when the aggrieved customer who didn't like the new system quits the game. However, since the number of customers who quit is considered a marketing and sales issue, not a support one, the head of support gets promoted for keeping costs down and the head of marketing/sales gets fired for not retaining customers. Having said that, this is more an indictment of the cost-oriented thinking forced on public companies by modern business practices than it is a complaint about Sony specifically.

What Sony needs to do is link the old, in-game interface with the new back-end system they're using. Make the old petition form submit your petition to this system, and allow the player to respond through the petition form. If the player wishes, they can use the Web site to track and respond out of the game, but the first line of interaction must always be through the game itself. Then, they must clean up the Web interface. It's great for an experienced computer power user who understands all the options for searching and finding info. It's horrible for a game player who has a quick question, or an aggrieved player who's upset at having deleted his Uber Boomstick of Fire-Throwing by mistake. The interface needs to be simple, comprehensible, and most of all, easy for the user to understand and use. On this front, the new system fails completely.

[Bobaten]

The part I miss the most is not the petition system, but the in-game access to the knowledge base.

[filobeto]

Kyro speaks of much wisdom, small obstacles to weed down the requests.

I work for a fairly large company (1000s of employees) and tracking time off was a headache, where the responsibility for tracking of said time-off fell onto management. Depeneding on the department, time off was handled different and in most cases not tracked very well at all.

Then comes an idea, an on-line interface where the employee reports their time off 3 Days prior to taking the time off. For those "emergency requests" of time off, the employee could call into an automated system to input their time off the same day. If it was NOT reported on time, the manager had to input the time off into the system for the employee. This upset lots of management, whom then would take out their frustrations on the employee that couldn’t follow the “simple” guidelines of the system.

Both interfaces were difficult to navigate, and most people just came to work vs. taking time off. Fast forward to today....the systems are not near as hard to use, but many people just prefer not to mess with them and not take time off.

Oh, and the new and improved system in EQ makes me <sadface>.