Why We Need Community Management: A Rant

We don't really have a category for rant, but we should!

Okay here is the existential question that begins my rant: Why do ALL virtual worlds and game companies have technical and customer support during work days between 9am and 5pm or some rough equivalent of that? I really don't know of a single virtual world that has customer service hours AT NIGHT or ON WEEKENDS which is when the use of their service is the highest. It does not take an ethnographer to figure out this simple fact: the majority of MMOG/Wers, with the rare exception of retirees and people with disabilities, play games AT NIGHT and ON WEEKENDS! So this policy which seems to be pervasive is like having a restaurant that has a sign in the window that says: "Dinner Served 9am-5pm." It's the ultimate oxymoron.

I know that these game worlds are designed and managed by very intelligent people. So why do none of them seem to get it? Here is an example: The following incident occured in a virtual world I frequent that shall remain nameless: A popular location for weekend activities was literally sold out from under the community that essentialy squatted there. Everyone who LIVED in this virtual world was aware of this community who seldom logged on on weekday nights and pretty much never during the day, but took over this location with temporary structures literally every weekend (which by the way cost them money, which is why they took the structures down during the week when they were not in-use). The Community support person responsible for parsing out land to groups, a relatively new feature at that point, had never been in-world on the weekend and was entirely unaware of this group's regular practice of using this area. He unwittingly sold the land to another group, causing a pretty severe fracas and backlash (particularly against him) throughout the community.

This is such a simple and really essential problem and I am utterly baffled as to why no-one seems to grasp that "support" that is available exactly when you don't need it is equivalent to having no support at all.

My current problem that precipitated this rant is with technical support, but anybody who has experienced a downed server in WoW after hours knows that basically, the world has literally come to an end and there's not a damn thing you can do because there is no-one there to answer the phone. In this case, I have purchased a brand new game from Sony (Pirates of the Burning Sea) with which I'm having repeated installation kacks. And because I have not had the sense to try installing it between 9am and 7pm during the week, I basically cannot play it for the entire weekend until Monday morning when service reopens.

Sorry to go on and on about this. But the problem is that people who make these games seem to have no idea what their players are actually doing. They still are working from the old "a game is a product" model. An MMOG or virtual world is not a product. It's a service. And it's a 24 hour service that ought to have 24-hour support. Or at the very least support when people are actually using the product.

I've heard it suggested that MMOG companies should have embedded ethnographers whose job it is to hang out in-world and just find out what people are doing. Most  customer support or community support as Ron points out is only there when there's a problem. And in some cases, as with the story described above, at that point, it's too late. Why not avoid unhappy customers and learn about what they are doing BEFORE there is a problem, provide them with services when they need them, pay attention to what they are actually DOING intstead of waiting for them to have problems and then expecting them to be addressed at your convenience.

Next time someone asks me about the future of MMOGs, I'm going to say, the next innovation!!! Customer service!!! When you actually need it! Wow, what a concept!

Comments

[Izzy Neis]

I smile like a Cheshire Cat, and agree wholeheartedly... especially when dealing with youth.

[Sheri Pate]

Celia,

Your point is beyond valid. The sad part is that it boils down to one simple fact, money.

MMOG providers see their user base as one thing...profit. They do not see the MMOG's value to the person who partakes or "lives" in the environments that they are providing. All they really see are how much profit comes in per person and they could care less if their support hours are beyond 9 to 5.

That is the crux of MMOG community management. Unless you have a person in charge of the community who actually understands the needs of the MMOG's population, how are they really to know what those needs are? The majority of community managers in MMOG's truly don't know their user base. However, if you do happen to have that one-in-a-million community manager that understands the community that they represent to upper management, they have to be able to get the point of why it is important to have 24/7 customer service across to the bean counters who actually approve the money to increase the support hours and manpower to staff it.

The sad part of it is, is that the majority of MMOG providers don't care. They could care less what a gamer's customer service needs are. I have witnessed it first hand across several online worlds. There was a time where ONE of the three online worlds that I have been in, actually had customer service representatives available 24/7, but that soon went away to help cushion the bottom line.

In MMOG's, it's a sad state of affairs to know that you are partaking in a SOCIAL world, paying through the nose to be a part of the MMOG that you have chosen, but then have it shoved down your throat by poor MMOG management that you are only truly a number that really doesn't matter to them.

Sad, sad, sad. But as always Doc, you are absolutely right.

[mszv]

A big game like WoW doesn't have support during the weekend? That's pretty surprising to me. For a game with such a large population, you could do what's sometimes called a "follow the sun" model, where support roles from one center to the next, essentially "following the sun". This doesn't work well if you have a small language population that can only be supported in one place, but it can work well in other situtions. I'm surprised.

On the "server down" situation - there are systems that can let you know when something isn't working - trigger an alarm. Sometimes a person can get in from home to fix it. Again, I'm kind of surprised.

For a small independently run MMO I can see why after hours support might be an issue, not for a big one.

[Brian 'Psychochild' Green]

Posting quite a bit after the fact, but that's what I get for being busy. :)

Sheri has part of it: there is a financial element here. Hiring people for the night shift generally costs more (unless you outsource to another time zone, but that has it's own unique problems). Having 24/7 CS coverage would be nice, but it costs money.

Further, the honest truth is that customer service doesn't matter. I recommend you take a look at an old blog post of mine to get some insight: http://www.psychochild.org/?p=50 Honestly, most people don't care about CS. Yes, sometimes a particular event can set you off and make you upset, as in this case. However, did this make you quit? Will the company lose money from your actions? Perhaps, but only because you have an audience that reads your blog. For most people, they'll complain with their friends, but in the end they'll keep p(l)aying. As I said in my blog post, the most popular games tend to have the worst CS, but they remain popular. CS doesn't seem to help the bottom line.

My thoughts as a developer.

[Sheri Pate]

Brian, I disagree with you when you said,

"However, did this make you quit? Will the company lose money from your actions? Perhaps, but only because you have an audience that reads your blog. For most people, they'll complain with their friends, but in the end they'll keep p(l)aying."

Do you know that I took a HUGE GAPING CHUNK out of an online world (which will remain nameless) because I absolutely refused to tolerate their pathetic management.

How do I define a huge gaping chunk? I took away my presence which brought member-created-content education courses almost to a stand still. In essence taking a not-so-mundane or ordinary chunk of profit out of the pockets of that MMOG. The world that I used to inhabit leans heavily on the profit generated by User Created Content. To take away the single largest avenue for members to learn how to make content seriously affects that MMOG's bottom line.

Do you know, when people asked why I was leaving, the post asking that question (which I answered) was removed and deleted from their forums by the community managers because (as I was told by one of their senior officials) that they didn't want a ton of people leaving that MMOG to follow me because of the reasons I stated (which the reasons that I stated publicly were much kinder than the real reasons I bailed).

So yes, without a doubt, the lack of customer service and the pitiful excuse for Community Management that they _think_ works, DOES make people leave. When you have a person like I am (which some argue that I have Icon status in that world), that does so much for their communities only to get burnt by pitiful customer service, you better believe that the choices that are now available in online worlds makes it easy, actually INCREDIBLY easy, to shop around and find one who has a staff who isn't COMPLETELY inept.

You know I've said it a thousand times. CEO's of MMOG's should just keep their mouths shut and leave the managment of their communities who are fair, polite and are basically "Philosopher Kings-in-training".

[Brian 'Psychochild' Green]

Sheri,

You aren't actually disproving what I said, that "For **most** people, they'll complain with their friends, but in the end they'll keep p(l)aying." (Emphasis added.) You can also read my blog entry above to get a more nuanced explanation.

From a purely business point of view, it makes sense to provide the absolute minimum amount of CS to keep maximum profit. At some point, CS does become too expensive to maintain a profit. The problem is determining the value of an individual player; some are definitely worth more than others and therefore worthy of more attention. Celia's complaint about CS not being 24/7 would mean that the costs would go up significantly. The ideal solution would be to find out when the most valuable people want CS and provide that if it maintains a reasonable profit.

I also find your anecdote interesting. You won't even name the place that upset you so much, so that other people can't avoid it. Also, if the world were robust, another person would take your place within a reasonable amount of time; that's the promise of user-created content. (Going back to black-hearted capitalism, this is a great argument against user-created content as a basis for a business.)

In response to:
"You know I've said it a thousand times. CEO's of MMOG's should just keep their mouths shut and leave the managment of their communities who are fair, polite and are basically "Philosopher Kings-in-training"."

Yeah, and some developers have said that the "walking wallets" should STFU and keep paying their money. That doesn't mean it's polite, accurate, or a good idea.

[Sheri Pate]

Oh Brian, the only thing I have to tell you is this:

The reason WHY I won't name that world is because I have a saying, "Make your words kind, gentle and tasteful, for one day you may be forced to eat them."

I don't believe in belittling others by mentioning their names publicly. To be honest, they're not worth it. Why would I want to give them the attention that they aren't even worth?

Trust me, there have been countless thousands that left my "old" world for the same reasons I did. I'm just above having the need to "out" people. Those who know me well will know EXACTLY which world I'm talking about. However, it's not for me to out them, it would not be kind, gentle or tasteful if I DID go on a REAL rant about them.

Call me a pacifist, call me a coward, call me a girl who won't kiss and tell OR better yet, consider me as a human being who feels that bringing people's attention to a product who's CS is pitiful would be a waste of both our time. Mine for even mentioning the name, yours for wasting your time checking it out.

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