F.A.Q. on Customer Support Service (Part 1）
Soldiers!
Undoubtedly customer support is an essential part of any online game — and Warface is not an exception. So, today we would like to answer some frequently asked questions about the work of our customer support. “What’s the use of going to this support, only bots are answering there” — does this look familiar? If you don’t believe that customer service is an effective way to solve in-game problems or don’t understand the way it works, we suggest reading this article to the end. We have collected the most popular questions and did our best to answer them!
This is the first part of the article, we will answer more questions in the nearest future.
How do customer support and developers respond to bug reports?
First of all, we should make the difference between customer support operators and developers clear for everybody. The support operators are qualified specialists, who respond to different reports and investigate each specific situation. If the problem exists on the player’s side, the operator will send the recommendations on how to solve the problem. In case the problem is on the side of the game, we collect various diagnostics data to send it to the dev team.
After the data is collected, it’s time for the devs, Blackwood Games, to tackle the problem. Developers start fixing the issues they discovered. Later we can see fixes landing on our battle servers in a form of a hotfix update.
Answers to the most popular questions from our players
So, here it is — the most interesting part of the article. Here we have collected all your popular questions about customer support service. Click on the question and read carefully in order not to miss a thing!
Templates can save some time while answering the tickets. You can come up with 100 different answers for 100 identical questions — but players will have to wait for a very long time. Support specialists can often see tickets with the same problems and have a typical solution for it. We recommend you follow the provided instructions. If the problem remains unsolved after following the recommendations, please inform the support team — they will do their best to help.
In case you didn’t get a response within a day or two after the system has processed your ticket and put it in a queue — there is neither no need to panic, nor to create a new ticket, nor add more responses into an already existing one. It won’t help you solve the problem. If you don’t get a response — it is definitely not because of the fact that customer support has forgotten about you. Sometimes a specialist needs time to investigate the case, sometimes they need to contact other departments of the company (QA, developers, system administrators). Also, another reason for this happening can stem from submitting a ticket at the moment when the support service is very busy — for example, when the game faces serious technical problems.
There is no need to do it. Really. All requests are considered one by one and can’t be ignored or forgotten. What would happen if you submit one more ticket? Right, it will go to the end of the queue and won’t be answered before the first ticket. You will also slow down ticket processing at the same time. Please, believe us: your ticket isn’t lost or ignored, and the support specialists will definitely leave a response within the stated time.
Please be patient. The average time for processing a ticket is from 2 to 4 working days. If your ticket is already “In the queue”, another request won’t increase the processing speed, but you can still provide some additional information if there is any. Thus, you will save some time for the operator, as they won’t need to get back to you to confirm the details.
Mostly, technical problems can be solved immediately by providing the player with guidelines and instructions. Other types of tickets need additional investigation or help from other departments. Apart from that, technical support specialists can’t change the game code by themselves in case of an individual or massive problems, connected with the game client. Due to your reports, we can promptly collect all relevant data and send it to the dev team. Developers, in they turn, will release a hotfix update, which will later be installed on the servers.
In case there aren’t any guidelines for the problem you have encountered, your ticket can be forwarded to another specialist, who has access to a wider range of instruments for a more detailed investigation. In some cases your ticket can be forwarded to another specialist if your ticket was moved to another section — all the information you provided is correct, but you’ve chosen the wrong section for your ticket.
When the ticket remains “Answered” for a long time, the system will automatically assign it a “Closed” status. Tickets, which do not contain any relevant information, such as spam-tickets or duplicates, are also marked as “Closed”. You should remember that a lot of tickets from one player can slow down the overall processing. In case a player creates a lot of duplicates, the specialist will close all later requests. Sometimes tickets can be closed (with the thanks for providing the information) if all the relevant data is already collected and sent to the development team for fixing — in that case, there is no need to keep it opened, as we don’t know when exactly the problem gets fixed.
This type of communication will slow down the overall processing because of a large number of uninformative requests, arguing, leaving the chat or similar happenings. Moreover, the majority of technical problems can’t be solved “Online”.
However, some “mobile” projects are already featuring online-chat working in a test mode on social media. There is still a possibility that Warface will one day open an online-chat for solving minor problems or consulting.
The operator would watch a video if they need more information and the prior tools cannot provide enough data. Quite often support specialists process a lot of tickets with the same problem at the same time, so the relevant information or a video showcasing the problem gets collected from another ticket, maybe even found in server logs — in that case there is no need to watch the attached video file. It is still very important to attach a video, so that your ticket can be processed faster.
We possess several automatized systems, which can carry out processing and help support specialists get as much relevant information as possible. This system is also used in cases of emergency and massive problems when we need to inform lots of players at the same time.
We hope you won’t be offended by our specialists, if they use templates while answering your ticket and ignore some additional questions — this may be a bot but it is working hard!
A large amount of data can seem unreasonable, but according to our experience, we can collect a lot of important information immediately with no need to ask lots of additional questions. Thus, the time of processing a ticket is reduced, and our support specialists can work more effectively.
You can submit a ticket in a section, which is not matching your problem, but is pretty close to it. For example, your character’s skin became green, and your weapon is shooting with soap bubbles. This problem can be solved in an “In-game issues” section by creating a ticket in a “Game mechanics issues” sub-section. If you didn’t find any suitable section, you can create a ticket in the “I have a different issue” section.
If the size of the attached video is too big, you can upload it on YouTube, or use any cloud storage and attach a link to your ticket.
Why do new problems appear in the game?
We are constantly getting tickets, which do not have any information on the problem — players say that “the game is not working properly”, “the battle pass is broken”, etc. In fact, the game can be “broken” or “not working properly” in hundred of different ways. Unfortunately, our specialists won’t be able to properly process this type of tickets.
For us to find the fastest and most effective solution, the player should describe the problem with as many details as possible, Attach as many videos, screenshots and diagnostic data as you can. If you don’t do it yourself, an operator will likely ask you to do it, so the time required for your ticket to be processed will be much longer. The developer can’t fix the problem, when we don’t know why it is appearing and the way to reproduce it.
While creating a ticket, please, provide us with all the important and relevant information, and attach all the files which can be helpful for the developers.
Why do players encounter problems while reporting?
Warface is constantly getting better. The game we are playing now is very different from the one we were playing a year ago. Developers are always improving the systems which already exist and create new ones. This applies to all parts of the project — from level design to the in-game interface.
Let’s discuss an example, to make it clear. Let’s say that the developers have improved the protection system and some of its levels, which provided good results, and installed the update for the game. The technically complex update may lead to an overload of some configurations of PC and negatively influence the game process.
What happens in this case? Due to your reports the customer support can promptly collect all relevant data, developers would be able to release a hotfix, which would reduce a load on players’ PCs, but will save all new content at the same time.
That concludes the first part of our large FAQ on customer support service. We hope you can now better understand how our support service works, and why some parts of the process have been put in place. Please make sure to leave your feedback and look forward to the second part of customer support service FAQ, which will come out in the coming days.
See you in game!
