Customer service not working

[Fherlayt]

I would have a creative suggestion to make the game / service better. Like you all know, the customer service is not working very well in its current form. For example, I lost 1800 balens like 2 weeks ago. I submit a ticket, I got a copy-paste robot response after 4 days, I reply, explain the problem, get a human response after 7 week, I respond, waiting since another 3 days.

I understand that there is a really sheer number of tickets flowing in. Also I understand that R2 CS has really no access to any game data or logs, they can't modify anything, and most of them are not expert players. Still, we are customers, and when we have trouble, we expect help, and that "we are licensing only the game, so we can't help with anything" is really not an excuse. So how about this:

When a ticket is submitted, filter it depending on the total payment the player has made.

1.) No payment ever: same as you do now, send a robot response after a few days, and if the player continues to inquire, ignore him.

2.) Small payment (up to 100$ in total): read what the player wrote and try to help them if it's not too big effort. Don't push it too hard, but remember, every whale started like this!

3.) Significant payment (100-1000$): Respond the ticket in 24 hr workday, serious paying customers love that! And assign one of the few CS representatives to the ticket who have good knowledge of the game. If the player continues to complain after the first copy-paste rejection, at least think that he might be right. Check the logs etc. and if HE IS RIGHT, help him. Remember: what he paid and will pay can be several months salary of your CS person, and takes like 1-2 hours of work.

4.) Heavy payment (1000$+): For god's sake, these are the people who give 98% of your income! You should treat them like any other company treats his best customers. Ie. if he can't log in to the game, don't make him wait for 1 week! If he loses 1800 balens, or his XY items, or suffered some other loss due to a bug or wrong communication, check the damn logs, and return him what he lost with an apology in the shortest time possible.

If you do it right, your otherwise not so small income will be doubled or tripled at least.

[Greenfireflygirl]

It's interesting that you're suggesting that we give special treatment to the heavier cashers, when other players complain and accuse us of doing that already. I have to say, that we really should take care of all our players regardless of their recharge record, in the same amount of time. It's getting really disappointing that some players are waiting longer for ticket responses than others, something such as lost balens, I would put through to a mod and ask for help on it if it were me and I hadn't had a reply past 48 hours... other issues can take longer, so I'd be more patient for example with a game bug ticket..

But yeah, ideally, just answering them all sooner would be best... in the meantime, don't forget to give a mod a head's up when you think a ticket is taking too long for a reply. (and no, a few hours is not too long for those who now feel like spamming me with ticket numbers they just made.... )

[Fherlayt]

My reasoning is that when you have to answer hundreds of tickets by non-paying customers daily, you are doing a kind of "humanitarian work". You work for free. This is nice and cool. However, this is the reason why even paying customers do not get the help they deserve. I play this game since 19 months. In that time, I had problems (items lost, bugged, recharge and other problems) about 14-15 times when I had no choice and write a ticket. I received acual help 2 times (in both case, it took about 2 weeks in total). The other times, I got a copy-paste response at first, and never got a second response. I play other games too. Doomlord is not as "visually stunning" as Wartune, but there, if you have a problem, they help you, in 24 hours. They can access all logs, they can modify the database, and their admins know the game. So if you send in a ticket, they understand what you want, can decide if your complaint is fair or not, and if it is fair, they help you right away. And unlike here, on their forum people are positive. I know a lot of player here who paid a lot of money but quit because he got ignored repeatedly when he got a problem.

Like me now - I like this game very much, and I paid much more than for any other game, but now that I see I don't get the help in such a trivial matter, I will not spend more. And keeping paying customers should be the top priority!!!

And I say, the core of this problem that you try to help everyone, but you actually help no one. Then, at least, please help those who pay for the service.

Once I read about some "Wartune VIP program" by Proficient city which was exclusive to those who spent at least 500 USD per month. One of the main offers for these VIP players were that they can write with their problems to the company (ie. they offered a working CS service), even on skype, and their issues will be helped and resolved. I found the amount (500 USD/month) ridicolous, but the idea wasn't that bad. Any game of such complexity need a working customer service, because it increases your customer happiness - and as such, your income - by a LOT.

Also, about the issue which I see here on the forum all the time: "if your ticket is not answered, please give the number, and we forward it". Why is this necessary? The default should be that the customer service sees ALL open tickets and replies / resolves all without begging on the forum to do so.

[Billy_McF]

4.) Heavy payment (1000$+): For god's sake, these are the people who give 98% of your income!

Glad you are not a maths teacher

[Greenfireflygirl]

Also, about the issue which I see here on the forum all the time: "if your ticket is not answered, please give the number, and we forward it". Why is this necessary? The default should be that the customer service sees ALL open tickets and replies / resolves all without begging on the forum to do so.

Fair enough on your reasoning... but the answer to why it's necessary is precisely for reasons you already posted. There are a lot of tickets, some of them are more superfluous than others, and some are downright trivial. They try to answer them all in a timely matter, but I would think they take them into priority, based on how urgent the issue is. (and not on how much you spend) If it were me, I'd do things like missing balens right away... then move on to players who can't log in, who have some bug preventing them from playing, then on to bugs and suggestions, leaving complaints till last. On top of that, if something was really requiring a simple response, no matter how trivial, I'd try to knock some of those away quickly, and if some of them required a very in depth review of systems, more analysis, more investigation, I'd put them aside to ponder upon, after giving out a we're working on it reply, and come back to it, when I either had more info, more players with the same issue, or more time. (this is kinda how I do it here when I see stuff needing help and we get overwhelmed)

This system would work fine, if I had all the time in the world to complete stuff, but we have a time limit on how long a ticket can sit before it gets closed. So for that reason, if one of your tickets hasn't been answered yet, for whatever reason, and it's been 48 hours... or more.. then yes, hit a mod with it so we can get someone to pick it up from where it might have been set aside and get you an answer for it. But first... check your ticket log to see if there is an answer you didn't get in your email folder. And second, see if you're willing to wait another day on it, or just bump it yourself by responding to it, asking when you can expect a reply, and third... know that for whatever reason it's set aside, sometimes your issue can't be helped right away, and sometimes not at all... but any kind of answer, even a, sorry you still have to wait, is better than nothing, so at least you have us to grab you that.

But I don't know if setting it up to be elitist, in that only those who spend the most get the most attention is really fair here. Ideally, we'll just get the system working to where all tickets are answered in a timely manner, and for those that aren't, you ask one of us to spank them for you

[rangelaeyes]

Any amount of help in a timely manner would be great. It took four months to finally get them to fix my bugged Medusa. FOUR MONTHS.

As it stands, I don't expect a whole bunch out of R2. I don't even bother trying to help people on the forums anymore, since help = bans.

[Fherlayt]

Still waiting for a reply to my ticker Case #: 175716.... thx.

[EsmeWeatherwax]

Still waiting for a reply to my ticker Case #: 175716.... thx.

Can you let us know what it is about, so we can poke the correct department about it.

[Fherlayt]

This is what I get as response:

"SEP 29, 2014 | 05:45PM CST
R2 Rhett replied:
Hi,
Really sorry about the delay and inconvenience. Already forward your issue to the pro team. Please wait for the result patiently."

I have not been contacted since

The issue was as follows:
I spent a large amount of mount whips on training. The game was lagging as always, so I clicked it one too many times, and the program subtract from me 1800 balens without a warning! 18 USD is quite a large amount for just deducting from a player without confirmation. This is a recent change, previously one click spent only 20 whips, but now it's 50. The confirm there is broken, since it comes up every time, not only when spending balens, so when you click 1000 times, you have to turn it off. Confirm should be ONLY when you spend balens. Especially since now its 18 USD.
Anyway, I asked the confirm fixed, and the accidental transaction either undone, or getting a compensation.

[Xanderz007]

I would have a creative suggestion to make the game / service better. Like you all know, the customer service is not working very well in its current form. For example, I lost 1800 balens like 2 weeks ago. I submit a ticket, I got a copy-paste robot response after 4 days, I reply, explain the problem, get a human response after 7 week, I respond, waiting since another 3 days.

I understand that there is a really sheer number of tickets flowing in. Also I understand that R2 CS has really no access to any game data or logs, they can't modify anything, and most of them are not expert players. Still, we are customers, and when we have trouble, we expect help, and that "we are licensing only the game, so we can't help with anything" is really not an excuse. So how about this:

When a ticket is submitted, filter it depending on the total payment the player has made.

1.) No payment ever: same as you do now, send a robot response after a few days, and if the player continues to inquire, ignore him.

2.) Small payment (up to 100$ in total): read what the player wrote and try to help them if it's not too big effort. Don't push it too hard, but remember, every whale started like this!

3.) Significant payment (100-1000$): Respond the ticket in 24 hr workday, serious paying customers love that! And assign one of the few CS representatives to the ticket who have good knowledge of the game. If the player continues to complain after the first copy-paste rejection, at least think that he might be right. Check the logs etc. and if HE IS RIGHT, help him. Remember: what he paid and will pay can be several months salary of your CS person, and takes like 1-2 hours of work.

4.) Heavy payment (1000$+): For god's sake, these are the people who give 98% of your income! You should treat them like any other company treats his best customers. Ie. if he can't log in to the game, don't make him wait for 1 week! If he loses 1800 balens, or his XY items, or suffered some other loss due to a bug or wrong communication, check the damn logs, and return him what he lost with an apology in the shortest time possible.

If you do it right, your otherwise not so small income will be doubled or tripled at least.

I almost fell off my chair when I saw this )
First of all,from a legal pov i think they have to treat us all the same.regardless if you buy stuff or not.
When you go to a store for example in real life,and let's say you buy a toaster.Would you go and ask the people in front of you what items they are buying so you can push them out of the line?Like everyone who just buys bread go behind me i iz here and paying for a toaster!!! i would say it's a matter of education.

Now regarding your balens...

As you see in that picture,that is the message you receive when attempting to train your mount.It clearly sais that you pay balens or whips,and that whips are collected first.By checking the don't show this again box,means that you are aware of it,and don't want to benefit from R2's protection system against people using balens by mistake.
Is it R2's fault that you can't properly read that message and ticked the box?i guess not.
Lag on whips sounds pretty weird to me,if you would have said astrals,then yes.But you know what this looks to me more?It looke like mr casher over here found a nice autoclicker,and that autoclicker did just too damn many clicks for him.
Since your case is already being reviewed atm from what it seems,i would suggest the person that is doing it to check the click intervals between the mount trains.If there are all the same then you clearly used a clicker,you forgot to stop it and got busted.FYI clickers are not legal.Or do you think you should be allowed to use them since you pay alot on the game also?

But in any case,you checked the box,u clicked too many times,ur fault.

And for future reference,r2 doesn't only get money from people like you.They get money from free players alow,which activity counts to the game being upped on search engines,youtube etc,and there is a quite big income to be received from that also.

1 million free players also have at least 1 million friends who might come to the game,some of which might cash or not.
Hm,di i forget to say something?
Ah,yes.LOL

[papashai]

Original post:
There is a basis for this idea. And there is somekind of legal basis for separate group of players -> customers.
The moment you pay to get something in return (either in real or in virtual items) you become a customer.
for "micro" transactions there is or could be a difference in "customership".
Fact is that a customer has more rights as a user (free player).
The product is wartune (and its not in BETA version) combined with forums and customer service.

The product is not working right, because there are issue's within the game and with customer service.
Legaly the product is not what the customer could expect from it.

subsystems
then there is the subsystem that has been mentioned before.
By keeping this subsystem alive you legaly become part of the customer service product.
let me state that this work around had its origin when cs started to be poor but now its no
workaround anymore its allmost part of the ticketing system.

A forum mod should mod a forum... and customer service staff should provide customer service.

what is next?
write a ticket, tell your guildmaster who tells a mentor who tells a forum mod who tells a cs elve ....
endless subsystems in the making...

THEY (R2) need to fix both the game and customer server (and yes customers have more rights as users)

[Fherlayt]

When you go to a store for example in real life,and let's say you buy a toaster.Would you go and ask the people in front of you what items they are buying so you can push them out of the line?

Bad example. Let's suppose I want to buy a toaster in a store. But I simply cant get to the cashier because there are hundred people there who dont want to buy anything just went to the shop to warm up
the point is, the game has let's say 100.000 players. 2.000 of those pay, 98.000 not. Each player submits a ticket once per month. There is a customer service which can answer 2.000 tickets per month. What would you do? What law forces me to work for people who don't pay me? It's a common term: "this is a free service, so don't expect customer service".

As you see in that picture,that is the message you receive when attempting to train your mount.It clearly sais that you pay balens or whips,and that whips are collected first.

Ok, let me explain the obvious. When you want to spend whips, you don't need a confirm button. When you are out of whips and the program would subtract balens instead, THEN you need a confirm. The program is not working that way right now. There is ALWAYS a confirm. A confirm which comes up always, not only when needed, is useless. Btw, this is an intentional scam, widely used in Chinese games. This is why you should never buy balens unless you spend them immediately.

It looke like mr casher over here found a nice autoclicker,and that autoclicker did just too damn many clicks for him.

It looks like to me mr troll over there has no clue about how this game work... No person in its sane mind would use an auto-clicker where EVERY extra click would cost them 18 USD. But when events give out 20-30k whips it takes a lot of time to click those away. Have your mouth drop, mr, but after hundred clicks it IS possible to click one too many times accidentally without an autoclicker.