Support tickets are a joke

[xtridence]

Wow... so mature

Your graph is irrelevant, as it is based on standard support services.
Game support is completely different.

Erm... no. Not really.

You have obviously never worked a day in your life on 1st line support. As you wouldn't be basing your views on "averages" and expecting every company (any service) to fit those averages. Support service response times depend on the service in question.

I totally agree with you. I've never worked as 1stLvl Helpdesk-Support / CSR, nor 2nd or 3rd. I'm sorry about that. The only thing I can rely, is having been working as Business Development Manager for quite a few companies already - and had the chance to evaluate the performance our CSRT brought to our customers.

That said, 400 tickets in 7 hours? Makeable. Catch -> Forward / Terminate / Hold. Problem?

 

[telperion]

The average handling time to respond on a ticket is approx. 48 seconds. Time enough to decide if you're going to put in a textblock or just forward it to a superior / different department.
I don't know how you guys do this, but we usually employ people with skills like speed reading.

And this is the problem. There is no ticket handling, or at least nothing visible to the customer which gives the impression that you're simply being ignored, irrespective of whether you are or not.

Most tickets will take a very short amount of time to respond to, most require very little in the way of resolution (stock replies, credit refunds etc.) and this is why I find it frustrating. What should be a simple process which has been refined over decades seems to be being completely ignored by Frontier. I understand that they're understaffed but that doesn't mean that having to wait more than a month for even a stock response to your ticket is acceptable.

 

[Flappers]

Erm... no. Not really.

Let me give you an example.
I work in a company where there are 4 service desks, each providing support for different services.
Each service desk has different SLA's (Service Level Agreements - which are agree'd with the client before operations).
You know why there are different SLA's? Because each service is different and requires different processes.

These processes are calculated before service operations begin. They calculate based on previous services, how long it should take for a response and a resolution. Different priority tickets have different response/ resolution times. High priority will have a faster time than a low priority.

This is standard ITIL, which is not compulsory in every company. It's "best practice" meaning that it is a companies decision to adopt such practices, as it can make them stand out more to clients which do not adopt such services.

In game support, the only SLA's are set by the company themselves. They do not confer with the players to establish a reasonable response time. Because the players do not have realistic expectations.

FD in this case, are free to write whatever SLA they see fit, depending on their resources, and capacity.

Since you do not know what their resources or capacity limits are, your determination on how fast they should respond to tickets are completely invalid.

*edit* not to mention your graphs are completely out of date. Research was done in 2009

 

[babelfisch]

http://www.supportindustry.com/researchinsight_AHT.htm

Mmmmh... Suck... it... up... Babelfisch...

You mean the 10-15 minutes handle time? Yes this pretty much proofs what I try to tell you.

 

[Gogster]

This is like arguing with my daughter.

Seriously, xtridence, grow up.

 

[Lestenio]

Erm... no. Not really.

erm yes really.
If I told my guys I expected them to solve 400 tickets each before they went home today I'd be looking for a new team.
Unless you have 400 tickets asking you if its raining, it will take you significantly longer to answer them.

 

[xtridence]

erm yes really.
If I told my guys I expected them to solve 400 tickets each before they went home today I'd be looking for a new team.
Unless you have 400 tickets asking you if its raining, it will take you significantly longer to answer them.

No no, Sir. We weren't talking about "resolving" them, right?

 

[[VR] Frank_G]

Do people really file tickets for losing things due to bugs? Really?

No wonder it takes so much time to answer tickets. Because I'm not sure that's what support is there for. Support is there for people who have problems running or playing the game, and for bug reporting, not crying for your lost credits.

It's a video game, if you lose something, bug or not, just sit on it and keep playing.

When reading the thread title and thought about answering, i was preparing to kick soneone in th a^^ in the most politest way i could think of, because FD is really doing a job here... But as i read the OP i can only say thank you.

I would probably be upset when losing a ship to a bug... But yes, please let FD concentrate on those bugs and not on returning some ingame posessions that can be easily earned back by the players themselves. It only costs time that could be used to make the game better. Actually i havent encountered such caring behavior before by any other company. So, another thanks to FD here, and if you ever come upon a ticket of mine, please just go for the bug, i can take it

 

[Gogster]

No no, Sir. We weren't talking about "resolving" them, right?

Ah, so what you're complaining about is the lack of "we have your ticket and we're looking into it" followed by "we're still looking into your problem" etc.

You desire canned responses, when so many do not.

 

[Whiterose]

Sigh.....Another thread that has developed to handbags at nine paces. We are better than this, we are Elite.

 

[Phyl]

My experience of support - 1 ticket raised, response received with a few hours - issue being handled to my satisfaction so ticket closed... one happy camper... Good work FD support.

 

[Flappers]

Erm... no. Not really.



I totally agree with you. I've never worked as 1stLvl Helpdesk-Support / CSR, nor 2nd or 3rd. I'm sorry about that. The only thing I can rely, is having been working as Business Development Manager for quite a few companies already - and had the chance to evaluate the performance our CSRT brought to our customers.

That said, 400 tickets in 7 hours? Makeable. Catch -> Forward / Terminate / Hold. Problem?

My god, you literally don't have a clue about what you're talking about.

For someone who apparently worked as a "Business Development Manager"... I really feel sorry for those companies you ever provided your services to, if your knowledge is that limited.

But then again, you are probably lying, since

a) Your wording like

Mmmmh... Suck... it... up... Babelfisch...

is as if it was written by a teenager with no maturity to match.
b) You write:

I'm just posting on these forums for my own amusement, because I love to harass E|D / FD fanboys

I don't like to talk with people who flat out lie about their positions in order to try and establish their points of view.

Good luck "harassing" other people on these forums. I think we're done here.

 

[Gogster]

They could just write an automated answer like 'we received your ticket and are working on it'. That explains the answer times of less then 5 seconds in this 'statistic'. But it doesnt solve anyones problems...

Exactly and I did receive a "we have received your ticket..." email, have others not?

 

[knowles2]

Okay, let's strip this.

50 tickets per hour (1 hour has 60 minutes) = 0.8 tickets per minute?
Aha. Tell me more, please.

The average handling time to respond on a ticket is approx. 48 seconds. Time enough to decide if you're going to put in a textblock or just forward it to a superior / different department.
I don't know how you guys do this, but we usually employ people with skills like speed reading.

I know at my old IT company we actually employed support staff that can actually fix the issues the customer was having that day, our customers were running a business after all and didn't have time for the support staff to send it up the chain they want it solved there and then so that what they provided and that what they were trained to do.

They average about 10 minutes per customer per issue or just below that, the longest, why I work there took about 2 hours for the issues to be resolved. That proper customer support, not simply acting as a glorified secretary taking messages and sending you on to another department.

 

[Slovakia]

Okay, let's strip this.

50 tickets per hour (1 hour has 60 minutes) = 0.8 tickets per minute?
Aha. Tell me more, please.

The average handling time to respond on a ticket is approx. 48 seconds. Time enough to decide if you're going to put in a textblock or just forward it to a superior / different department.
I don't know how you guys do this, but we usually employ people with skills like speed reading.

Wow, 10 people are able to forward or textblock 80.000 tickets per month.

Forwarded tickets are not solved. Also, what percentage of remaining tickets can be solved by simply textblocking?

 

[babelfisch]

Just ignore him. He already stated that he is not here for the discussion but for the harassment of others. He is clearly a troll.

 

[Galactic Midden]

This is just a friendly reminder to please keep the discussion civil thanks.
Poor conduct in contravention of the forum rules is not tolerated.
Please note that new rules are in effect 20th February 2015.

Thank you

 

[MikeSnos]

This is just a friendly reminder to please keep the discussion civil thanks.
Poor conduct in contravention of the forum rules is not tolerated.
Please note that new rules are in effect 20th February 2015.

Thank you

I was about to mention the mass infraction potential in this thread...

Anyway, with regard to the tickets... there's thousands being raised on many different topics... each ticket relates to a bug or a complaint.... all the bugs take time to

• a. find
• b. analyse
• c. fix
• d. test and
• e. approve for release....

You can't seriously expect FD to update EVERY single ticket with every single action that takes place in relation to that ticket. Plus, many 'bugs' are due to circumstances beyond FDs control (such as video driver issues etc).... These issues take time to weed out as well...

In essence what I'm saying is be nice, report the issue and don't complain if you feel you're not getting a personal response because YOU think you're the most important person and feel you're impacted most by the issue where the lens flare is intrusive... (little tip here... clean your monitor!)

 

[telperion]

In essence what I'm saying is be nice, report the issue and don't complain if you feel you're not getting a personal response because YOU think you're the most important person and feel you're impacted most by the issue where the lens flare is intrusive... (little tip here... clean your monitor!)

My issues are all regarding exploding for no reason. The cost in insurance is about an evening's trading (1.3mill) so every time it happens I lose an evening's play due to the game being released with bugs in it. It would take ED seconds to refund those bug related costs which would keep the customers happy whilst they work out why it's happening and fix it. we've paid for a game which is no longer in beta and yet we're still suffering beta style bugs.

It might not be important to you but wasting entire evenings because the game bugs out is annoying to me. What's more annoying is the fact that Frontier don't care that this is happening and consider the effect of losing an evening's play time to one of their bugs a perfectly ok thing to happen to their customers. Even if they simply acknowledged that the ticket had been read with a stock comment "Bug report received - thank you" or "Your refund request has been accepted" or "Your refund request has been rejected" or other stock phrases it would help to alleviate the issue of the support ticket system appearing to simply not being used by FD.

I've just reached my frustration boiling point and I've come onto the forum to complain as is my privilege as a customer. I doubt it will make any difference and I doubt anyone from FD will even care but it was at least a cathartic process for me.

 

[babelfisch]

My issues are all regarding exploding for no reason. The cost in insurance is about an evening's trading (1.3mill) so every time it happens I lose an evening's play due to the game being released with bugs in it. It would take ED seconds to refund those bug related costs which would keep the customers happy whilst they work out why it's happening and fix it. we've paid for a game which is no longer in beta and yet we're still suffering beta style bugs.

It might not be important to you but wasting entire evenings because the game bugs out is annoying to me. What's more annoying is the fact that Frontier don't care that this is happening and consider the effect of losing an evening's play time to one of their bugs a perfectly ok thing to happen to their customers. Even if they simply acknowledged that the ticket had been read with a stock comment "Bug report received - thank you" or "Your refund request has been accepted" or "Your refund request has been rejected" or other stock phrases it would help to alleviate the issue of the support ticket system appearing to simply not being used by FD.

I've just reached my frustration boiling point and I've come onto the forum to complain as is my privilege as a customer. I doubt it will make any difference and I doubt anyone from FD will even care but it was at least a cathartic process for me.

This is happening. People get refunds for exploding ships. But it is not the most stressing concern. There are people who can't even start the game.

BTW If your ships explodes every evening there is something fishy going on. Have you tried to reinstall the game? I know that this can happen sometimes, but my ship didn't explode once in 200 hours.