Customer Service/QOL Disappointment

/Arcanaville

If you want happy customers, you should be asking the bigger question: why isn't your customer service empowered to make customers happy?

The CS rep should have said, "Hey, this is working as intended, we'll pass the suggestion on... but I've put 3 catalysts in your email box you can claim. Thanks for being a customer."

I had my own CS nightmare recently with CoH support. Back when freedom went live I bought several $.99 accounts, since I figured having a bunch of extra premium accounts would be worthwhile. I recently decided to use them to PL some alts and xfer them to other servers, and when I logged into them for the first time (after buying them back in.. November?) I didn't have a transfer token. I put in a ticket (actually, 3 tickets, one for each account), and felt like I was getting autoresponses from a script. It took like 4 posts and a screenshot to even make my point. Eventually, they did get me the missing transfer tokens (which apparently rely on you logging onto your account each month, which is a disclaimer stated...nowhere. And sure enough, I have a friend who has been subbing as a VIP since freedom launch who hasn't logged in the whole time. Got him to log in, he had 1 token instead of 6).

The teeth-grinding experience of having someone tell you "working as intended" over something like that really makes you want to think twice about feeding the beast more money. It doesn't really matter what's "right" or intended, or whatever. What matters is that when someone is hovering over the "buy points" button, if they hesitate because they had a bad CS experience, you already failed. And we're ultimately talking about customer satisfaction which costs you nothing, because you're giving bits away.

I'll point out also, because I've done some management work in this area, that the cost of having a CS person answer 2-3 more customer replies in a thread rather than satisfying the request on the first contact with the customer not only costs you customer goodwill, it costs money. The only part of this which isn't free is the time of your CS reps. So if they spend 4 replies with a customer, there's a good chance you already wasted on payroll what you were saving by not just immediately giving the customer what they wanted. (Especially when that's something as minor as some catalysts.)

Obviously I posted a big rant before, but this is exactly my point - you do not want customers to think this. You want them to always feel safe buying from you.

Very much this.

This thought along ecapsulates my opinion perfectly, Plasma! Thank you.

This is true and brilliant, but not relevant to the topic at all.

No company in the world can save themselves from people who buy things they don't understand. If you buy a car and it's a lemon, you want to feel safe you can get a new one. But if you buy a car and ram it into a tree because you THOUGHT you understood the pedal system you do not go blaming the car company.

That's why the store says ALL SALES ARE FINAL. You buy it, it's yours to use, squander or destroy. They are not liable for a person's poor decisions and buying/claiming/using something They didn't understand was a poor decision unless made experimentally. They are not liable for a person's mistakes, and thinking they understood it was their mistake.

Customer service should not even be in the conversation. You can't tunnel vision on just this one person. If CS took those kinds of requests and alterations after people bought things that's all CS would do. Their queue would fill with "woops can I exchange this costume part...", "oops wrong character...", "Um I picked the wrong server can I move my character again for free PLZ PLZ PLZ"... that is, if it already isn't.

>.>






Yes. Every item should have a tool tip.
Yes. Customer service is important.
No. This guy is not an exception to the sales are final rule.

Sure they can! They can provide adequate information so that normal people understand what it is they're getting and how it works. There's not a black-and-white line that separates "that's okay" from "that's vague," but in my opinion, in this particular case, there's enough of a gray area that Customer Service should do something to make right by it.

Part of that "do something" is, as Zwillinger indicated, making it more clear how things work, and when you're about to do something that has permanent consequences. That's all fine and good, and it's highly needed. However, it doesn't change the fact that if that's all they do, this particular user was hosed out of something because it wasn't clear enough to begin with. That's why I feel that the "do something" should also entail transferring the thingamabob for him.

It's my understanding and belief that this is an extraordinarily easy thing for them to do, just click a few buttons or type a few words, and it's done. The hard part, I would think, is getting approval to bypass whatever safeguards, whether technical or administrative, that are in place that keep unscrupulous people from transferring virtual goods all willy-nilly. Still, I don't think it's that big a deal. Get someone to sign off on it and make it happen, problem solved, loyal customer happy, CS people praised publicly, everyone wins.

That's all I was asking for to begin with. There was nothing seperating it from the "this is given to this character alone (that can sell, trade, or do whatever with)" vs "this is given to this character alone (and that's it, no take-backs in any capacity!)" I think the destinction is worth some degree of recognition that doesn't currently exist in game.

I'd be happy if the Enhancement Catylist is returned to my Character Email Inbox and deleted out of the current character's salvage tray.

The thing is at the same time, I understand why they (the GM's) couldn't, but see this as a problem inherent in the system that needs to be examined. It's one thing if "all the proper warnings are given and ignored, and then they can't help". It's quite another when "there's not enough proper warning, then the user is screwed because of it" happens. I have given up on any 'fix' to my issue. It's future issues with other player's I'm looking at here.

While I was hoping from that at the beginning, and think it should be part of the status quo, it's not. I'm... okay with that too, I suppose. There's a difference between Paragon Studios and NCsoft's support structure. I can understand why they can't combine (I'm looking at the current Dev Digest concerning such matters) but at the same time (and this is one coming from a 'service industry') that erring on the side of customer goodwill is often the best course taken.

I didn't want to start this as a complaint to get 'free' stuff or anything else. By the time I posted this, the final decision had been made, I accepted it, didn't agree with it, and wanted to put my disappointment out there to let them know, and warn others about it.

At the end of the day, I don't expect or want, anything for this post, other than "don't be this guy, yourself". I think players should feel more protected than that, but there are instances where this is not the case and "Caveat Emptor" is applied, and I feel players have a right to know, which is what got this thread created to begin with.

In this vein, telling me to 'shut up' is the same as telling me 'I don't care I might get screwed, let me get screwed on my own without any forewarning... and you might even be a jerk for trying to warn me about it'.

I've already let it go, and took the 2nd of my 3 Enhancement Catalysts on one of my character's that plan on using the Catalysts. To respond to an earlier post: That's great, in concept, but I have BAD alt-itis. I'm happy with his build/iTrial configuration, and the ammount of work it would take to add in anything new is worthless. I have far too many other characters to work on now that I have him figured out to bother with.

The inclusion of one more set to add ATIO's, for the ammount of time and inf I've spent on him currently is pointless as far as I'm concered for what 3+% that imight be added to his build, and will never be done. I have, currently, a half dozen alts at 50+ (and no, I don't PL one bit, they're all well-earned) that I'm hoping to incarnate at some point, and will take priority to that one character's build.

But Lyc, There was a warning, and you quoted it in your first post.

Now I'm not trying to offend you but when I see a warning like that I don't say to myself, "Well even though items X, Y, and Z are character bound that warning didn't apply to items A, B, and C. So I'll just claim it and assume it works like A, B, and C." What I do is leave it unclaimed until I've checked out if it can be transferred or not.

That's what I did with the ATO's I got from the Super Packs I bought. I assumed they were character bound until I confirmed otherwise. Then I only claimed 1 on a character that could use it and tested to see if it was character bound by placing it in base storage. When that worked I took it to the market and tried selling it. When that also worked I claimed all the others.


I do agree with Arcanavilles' idea.

But knowing how often people choose to ignore information provided and blindly click without reading I don't expect it to solve the problem. Some will read it and most won't.

I go one step further and just don't claim anything I'm not about to use (unslotters, catalysts, ATOs, etc...). Things there definitely do not work in a consistent manner so I'm timid about it.

This is a good idea. I was lazy and read threads to find out. =)

What if the person claiming it has never seen a Catalyst before? They won't know. That's a flat argument and you know it.

It is not a flat argument, it's common sense and you know it.

If you don't know what something is or how it works don't claim it until you've done some research first. (I.E. Asked your friends in the game or in Help, Check the forums, Look it up on the Wiki)

Not offended one bit, and I probably should have checked. Admitted that off the bat and called it a 'live and learn'. It just didn't even occur to me at the time that it might be character bound.

However, like I asked in the same post, "Should we have to do the homework, and/or rely on 3rd party sources for this kind of infomation?" That was the intended goal of the OP at any rate.

I just see this as an issue that should be fixed on their end. By the time I posted, I'd already given up on getting anything out of it. I just wanted to draw attention to it hoping they'd set up more specific warnings or something, and hopefully prevent other players from making the same mistake. Yes, they have the one warning, but that's tied to everything in that list, most of which is tradeable, sellable, etc. It just means it's going to that one character alone.

I completely agree with Arcanaville's idea about giving more information in the text box. Sure there'll still be folks who won't read it, but at least the game can't say that they weren't sufficiently warned.

Also as someone else mentioned, and I thought was a great idea, Enhancement Catalysts should be account bound instead, which would put it more in line with the rest of the ATIO system anyway (ATIO's can be sold and traded freely, ATIO's that have had a Catalyst used on them become account bound) especially if they'll be random drops in the new DA content.

Zwillinger actually acknowleged this thread so hopefully something will come of it either way.