Young gaming customers are a special group, and their customer support needs are in a class by themselves.
Perhaps few understand this better than Steve Wilson, Customer Service Manager at Cartoon Network’s MMOG – FusionFall, whose customers are primarily boys age 8-13.
To determine what kind of customer support would best serve this audience, Steve’s team turned to focus groups. (To get the most participation, the focus group asked a lot of questions about the game itself, then Steve’s group ‘snuck in’ some questions about their support needs.) Not surprisingly, the findings showed that traditional support vehicles – phone, knowledgebase – didn’t work for this group. Instead, they discovered several recurrent themes.
First, kids distrust customer service. Many don’t like admitting (especially to adults) they don’t know something. So who do they trust for answers? Fellow gamers. So, Cartoon Network puts a lot of focus on community forums. They allow players to exchange ideas, and allow the support staff to support one to many, maximizing each agent’s time.
Second, reduce customer support hurdles anywhere and everywhere you can, or customers will leave. Forcing customers through the knowledgebase or pointing them to phone support won’t work. Chat is an important communication medium, but a great deal of priority is put on allowing gamers to chat with each other while keeping it safe. For that reason, safety alerts are always at the top of the queue, resolved within five minutes.
The demographics of each user base are unique. Are there support channels within your industry that meet resistance from the customer? If so, how did you reduce resistance or accommodate the specific needs of your customers? How important is a chat support channel to your customer base?
4 Responses to “What to do when your customers don’t trust customer support”
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[...] this page was mentioned by Dusty Monk (@dlangar), Ian Wilson (@uid0), josh laughner (@joshlaughner), John Perez (@jmp48), Parature (@parature) and others. [...]
Hi all;
I have some relevant data from a survey of over a thousand consumers we did a while back. When asked, “When it comes to product support, I would prefer to learn from other users than the product’s manufacturer/service provider,” the younger the demographic, the more they agreed with the statement. In fact, 55% of under 18 respondents agreed.
I hear from SSPA members frequently that their tech support reps pretend to be customers when helping forum or twitter users, as customers prefer peer support to corporate support. Maybe that’s the case, but lying about your identify is a horrible thing to do to customers. Sooner or later you will get caught, and all credibility goes out the window.
–John
This is a great read. The odd thing is that I believe everyone has a problem admitting they do not know something.
The difference between kids and adults is that adults are not afraid to ask questions, and be emotional about it, too.
Customer support is many things. Our company supports several different products. The most successful way to do support is to be truthful. If you know a server is going to be down and hour tell the customer it will be down an hour.
What do you feel will make a client more upset?
Telling them the server will be right back up when it wont or telling them it will be an hour?
You should apologize on the front end and tell the truth, not fudge the answer and hope they don’t call back.
With bad support techniques word of mouth and forum postings can kill your business. It’s been my experience that people will pay a little more for good support.