Community Detective Issue #14: A conversation with SOE customer service

Welcome back folks, and yes it is time for the latest installment of Community Detective. Last week I did a bit of a departure from the general column format by interviewing Funcom Customer Service Manager Edward Walsh III. This week, I'm doing something similar, but the spotlight is shifting to Sharon Morris, Director of Customer Service for Sony Online Entertainment.

Join me after the cut for an exclusive peek behind the curtain of the customer service apparatus at SOE, as we talk about breaking into the industry, the SOE Guide program, and more.

Massively: Could you tell us a little bit about your particular position and what it entails?

Sharon Morris: I am a Director in Customer Service. My main focus is on Star Wars: Clone Wars Adventures and Free Realms, but I have influence on all SOE products. I'm responsible for establishing and maintaining the right amount of staff that enables us to balance quality of response and time of response; I monitor that quality and timing consistently and review all performances with the Game Masters themselves.

I work closely with development teams to advise on impact of changes to customers and to prepare for that customer impact; this is also true for working with our marketing teams to prepare for special features hitting the game and marketplace. I coach, mentor and supervise the leads for the relevant customer service teams, and I review all of the completed surveys that we get in response to tickets that have been handled. I monitor social media activity including Facebook and our forums for CS issues, and I also review our policies and procedures documents frequently and look to improve processes that are not accomplishing what they should. With all that said and done, my main focus is to ensure our customers have a positive experience when they contact us with an issue.

Take us through an average day as an SOE CSR. How many petitions do you normally service on a particular shift? Do you also moderate forums in addition to in-game duties, or are there separate positions on the CS support staff?

The number of tickets taken by a CSR varies greatly depending on the game they work on. Adults/teens petition far more frequently than younger people so ticket numbers on Free Realms and Clone Wars Adventures are lower than they would be on a traditional MMORPG. Free Realms and Clone Wars GMs spend as much time on moderation as they do on tickets; every custom name and guild name has to go through a screening process by a CSR. The chat filters work on these games differently as a white filter, and they must be monitored and tweaked constantly.

A separate team called Community Relations is responsible for monitoring our forums; they do not fall under the Customer Service division at SOE. However, each manager of their respective games will browse the forums for CS issues and respond to those where appropriate. Our Technical Support and Account and Billing divisions also have a representative positioned on all forums to address those issues and direct customers on where to get help for such.

Is the Guide program (volunteer customer service and event staff) still active in EverQuest and EverQuest II? Does SOE make use of similar volunteer customer service in any of its other titles? Have any of the Guide alumni gone on to official positions with SOE?

Yes they are. Volunteer Event Guides are very active in EQ, EQII and Vanguard, though they are called Knights in that game. They create a dynamic feel to the games by running in-game quests and helping players where they can. Besides running quests, they love to help out with in-game player weddings or officiating over ceremonies. Guides/Knights can also attend player events and hand out snacks to help keep the party going. In EverQuest you can contact them by placing a /guidehelp or by doing a /who all gm. In EQII you can see them by doing a /guide.

I began my SOE life as a volunteer EverQuest Guide some 10+ years ago. I was Senior Guide Moonlite on the Erollisi Marr server for 2+ years before moving to San Diego from England to be a GM on the same project! I am one of many tales that are similar, and it's definitely something we are proud of at SOE.

Do SOE's CSRs also work on the company's other titles, or are they specifically assigned to EQII, Star Wars Galaxies, or other titles?

CSRs are assigned to a specific game title. However, some CSRs have been cross-trained across other platforms and as such are specialists in two, rather than one, game. They are used as a secondary when new expansions or content is released as this often increases volume of tickets and questions about the shiny new content. No CSRs are moved to games they have not been trained on, and usually when we do move people to their secondary trained game they take tickets on a specific issue such as deleted items or general questions. This is an industry best-practice, and we feel customers want a quick response that is accurate and don't care if the person behind the ticket usually works on another game as long as those two criteria are met. SOE is an innovator when it comes to this since we were one of the first companies to have multiple games to service.

Can you talk about the most common petitions that you see on a day-to-day or weekly basis? Stuck characters? Griefing? Something else?

This answer, like many of the others, will vary based on the game. But as a general overview, we see a lot of name change request tickets especially in our younger games as kids like to be someone different often as opposed to the teen/adult games where people are known by their one persona. Deleted or sold items across all games is often a big ticket issue. The wrong player looted a NO DROP item can often feature quite high in volume and then general issues tickets where a bug has halted progression for a quest or often user error .

In general, CS petitions that have to do with lost items are not resolved in the customer's favor (by restoring the customer's item). SOE is one of the few companies that consistently restores lost items. Why is it seemingly such a no-no around the industry, do you think? Is it a software/database limitation? Does it have to do with heading off potential exploits? Is it a function of CSR workload?

I think it's a mix of all three issues you raised. If we look at Star Wars Galaxies as an example, the database on this game was built in such a fashion that any crafted item which had unique stats that was deleted was cleared from the DB after 10 days, and it was impossible for a CSR to restore it. There have been some ways to exploit with deleted items and characters, but with more extensive tracking and logging nowadays it's rarer.

In my opinion the biggest reason for the denial would indeed be workload; deleted/lost/misplaced items have always been one of the top five issues in every game I have worked on. Mistakes will always happen, but there are often those who request a restore for an item one to two times a day or more especially when they know the items are not unique and therefore easily re-made by the CS team. Early on, our philosophy on item restores was similar to [that of the] rest of the gaming industry, but we have certainly learned it's more important to care about our customers' gameplay experience and to not impede that wherever we can.

What kinds of people and/or technical skills do you look for when hiring or assigning CSR positions?

To be eligible to work in our customer service department, you must live in San Diego, California and be over the age of 18. We're looking for people who are sociable and have an amiable, go-getter, love-to-help air about them. As far as technical skills go, you obviously need to be able to type accurately. A position in the technical support section of our customer support department will require you to have more technical skills regarding computers and their inner workings. And you should definitely be an avid video game player!

Is there anything you'd like readers and/or customers to know about your particular position? What makes it a demanding job? A rewarding job?

I can say without question that SOE provides a positive environment to work in, and this is the job that has had the most satisfaction for me over my career. Customer Support divisions are [paramount] to companies' success, and I have always found this role to be rewarding; but it's definitely easier to be in customer support for video games than it would be for photocopiers or glazed windows for example.

I have always been thrilled when people I have employed, coached and then mentored have moved on to other departments such as art, design and programming. Working in a service role has always made me strive to have my teams recognized as ones that provide professional, targeted, and helpful service that goes that bit extra to make the interaction a positive one, even if the answer to the request is in the negative; as such, the pride when customers write in to me, post on our forums, or take the time to respond to the surveys with positive comments is the reward for the hard work. The role can be demanding when unpopular policy decisions are made, but we are ultimately here to help our players have the best possible experience playing our games.

Thanks for your time.

Join Jef Reahard every other week as he goes behind the scenes to file first-hand community and customer service reports from the front lines of your favorite genre titles. From Aion to Zentia, the Community Detective case files are an essential part of any game-hopper's research library. Suggestions welcome, care of jef@massively.com.