German customer service and naming regulations

[ZuMe]

Dear community manager(s), dear moderators, dear members of the customer service team,

this is a translation of the feedback thread i started in the german forums about the difficulties we currently experience with customer support. By translating it i intend to reach a broader variety of possible responsible people.
After collecting feedback of the german player community for the last four weeks, I see the next logical step in publicly addressing the issues so that this feedback can reach the responsible people.

First of all, basically the german com is happy to have a german customer support in this free-to-play game. But simultaneously, there are significant issues i would like to address here. Most of all, the communication of responsibilities of the customer service is pretty poor and needs an immediate improvement.
As far as i know there was no official statement on the following themes since the leaving of Codemasters as german customer support (3 years ago!).

1 - Communication

Still, many players are unsure which help themes are to be given to customer service at all - and which are not. Many requests are closed with the reply to give the request to accounting, the bugtracker tool or some other place.
Surely it is clear to everyone that customer service cannot manage or complete every single request, equally of which nature it may be.
Nevertheless, it would be desirable that the customer support could relay requests which are described with all needed details to the right contact by themselves and give the player a feedback about the action undertaken.
After all, a request made in game is not available for the player if he logs out. Therefore, all details have to be re-collected and assembled by him again, if his in-game request is closed.

In addition to this, there are cases where a contact that was referenced to by customer service replies to the player with a note that the player should contact customer service about his issue.
Requests which are not described in enough details to be forwarded by customer service could be supplied with a note that fact X or Y should be added before the player forwards his request to the proper contact.
In conclusion, any clarification on these issues would relieve customer support as well as any other contact in charge.

Likewise it is a nuisance to the player community that a request which was closed by one GM without further action taken, will have a chance (by re-posting it) to be handled by another GM, this time handled properly and well cared for. For the players, this results in the impression that their requests are handled at the whim of each single GM.
So, as far as there aren't any guidelines to this, there should be a clear rule for all GMs in which cases they are to help and in which not. If this is not possible, checking the players' recent ticket history should be a standard procedure of customer support. For example, I have a concrete case here of a player whose request was answered positively by one GM. The GM then told him to make more request tickets for his other concerned chars. When the player did, he got the answer of another GM that there will be no help at all in this case.

2 - Time until handling of a ticket and ticket closure

In average, i estimate of the feedback that has reached me an average handling time of 3 to 5 hours for a ticket request in german language. Basically, this is okay. Clearly, it has to be noted that
a) a processing of a ticket made with the english client version seems to be handled faster and often undergoes different criteria
b) this average time obviously results of the fact that tickets on naming violations are handled within minutes. Requests that refer to gaming issues (for example if you are stuck in a quest) will take a whole lot longer until they are handled. They should be explicitly prioritised against naming violation tickets, where a handling time of 5, 12 or 24 hours does not really matter anyhow.

Predominantly, tickets are getting closed with the note that the requesting player is offline and therefore they cannot be helped. At first sight, this seems logical, but it seems to be that most of the ticket handling obviously takes part at 3 to 5 AM german time. It surely is understandable that a player who reported a problem at the main playing time of 6 pm to 11 pm german time will not be there at 3 am german time in the morning, no matter how pestering or legitimate his request originally was.
On top of this, some tickets got handled with this answer while the servers were experiencing login or routing difficulties. So how is a player thought to stay in game for a ticket request if the server itself is not reachable at all?

To the players, the prefabricated text blocks and the described reply behaviour gives the impression that the request should only be gotten rid of pretty fat, a true concern about the players' request seems not to be the main issue to the support.
So a prioritisation by category would be probably helpful for support as well as for the players. Maybe it is possible to flag a player request as critical in terms of time, to reach such a priortisation.

3 - Naming regulations

Relating to the naming rules which apply to the german servers, there is no clear communication and a true legal limbo. Quite often a request which got closed by one GM will be pursuited by another GM on a re-report. But an avengement on naming violations got very rare since the overtaking of customer support by Turbine from Codemasters. For many players the impression has arisen that there is hardly any consequence of the usage of an offending or insulting name.
As well, it is totally unclear if character names which are trademarked (like "Nutella") or names that refer to things (like "Shower Curtain") are included to avengement. This is also the case for names with puns or names made of words spelled wrong on purpose (like "Emperoar") and names that are obviously in english (like "Hunterkiller") on a german server.
A clear communication to players on this topic - and clear and obliging rules for the GMs to follow - are past due. This also includes a regulation for the roleplay server Belegaer, where naming regulations once were said to be handled with increasing astringence to not disturb immersion of the (roleplaying) players into their games world.

A list of names which were reported by the german player community in this correlation i have given to the player council, to the german community manager Filerania and to the german mods.

Another difficulty arises of the built-in naming filter that verifies the names at character creation. Because of this naming filter, the creation of a char named, for example, "Sirann" is not possible because it includes an english title ("Sir"). Names that include german titles, like for example "Kaiserbär" ("emperorbear") are not recognized by the tool and will not be avenged by customer support.
For the german player community, the impression that arises out of this is that their own language and culture is not thought as important as the english one.

I hope this posting will reach the appropriate persons (and i do very much hope that my english is understandable... o.O). I am looking forward to an official reaction on this. For the german player community it would be a great relief to have an open and constructive communication with customer support representatives to enhance the support in the future.

Yours,
Suse

[Yula_the_Mighty]

You just described how English language support works. It is comforting to know that Turbine treats English and German customers the same. I love to see a review of French support to see what they get.

[Rapunzel666]

since reading and understanding so much text might be difficult, here are two topics which are different for the german users.

- replies to tickets on german servers have slower response time than on english servers

- lack of language-specific filtering:
german names get filtered by using english elements, like Sir, disallowing names like Sirann which are totally valid on a german server because the syllable 'Sir' means totally nothing in german. Opposed to that, the word 'kaiser' (=emperor) CAN be used, which would be inappropriate on a german server.

So english and german speakers are treated differently..

Of course, GM-dependant behaviour of tickets applies to all, with everyone suffering at a non-predictable treatment, encouraging multiple tickets concerning the same topic, increasing the probably already nig load on the GM's (judging by their response times).

[Rainith]

You just described how English language support works. It is comforting to know that Turbine treats English and German customers the same. I love to see a review of French support to see what they get.

My guess is that the French support is the same, just with a snooty attitude and a bit more condescension (or maybe they get free wine and cheese with their tickets).

[Easca]

My guess is that the French support is the same, just with a snooty attitude and a bit more condescension (or maybe they get free wine and cheese with their tickets).

From my experience on Sirannon I can attest that all players submitting a ticket are aided by a fat, pipe-smoking gendarme with a moustache and are offered free wine, cheese and salted snails afterwards, and for only 10 euros you can get a very nice Italian pizza too.
Also, the German servers get to have a Currywürst with a beer every time they log in, and the Americans a free hamburger with fries and a diet cola.

But to respond to ZuMe: I have noticed this situation with the relocation of the German and French community support members to Turbine itself rather than still at Codemasters. This has the additional downside to it that those community support employees will be at work at a different time than when the Europeans play, which means that the response is almost never at the right time for the German and French players. Although I myself have found out that this can be the case for people Down Under, here in New Zealand, since we're usually on at different times than the average American playerbase, we have the same problems. However, considering the exceptional localized nature of especially the German language, I think that the German servers ought to have a team available for them at the appropriate time. I would very much like to see both for myself and for my brother on Gwaihir if it is possible that there can be conversation about this, as the situation at this moment, especially with European localized servers, is extraordinarily tenable.

[Yula_the_Mighty]

- replies to tickets on german servers have slower response time than on english servers

I find this statement hard to believe given the extremely slow response time for English language tickets. It is not uncommon that a ticket takes hours to get handled. Or Turbine waits until the character logs out. Immediately closes the ticket with character off line. I rarely use in game support any more because it is a waste of valuable game play time.

- lack of language-specific filtering:
german names get filtered by using english elements, like Sir, disallowing names like Sirann which are totally valid on a german server because the syllable 'Sir' means totally nothing in german. Opposed to that, the word 'kaiser' (=emperor) CAN be used, which would be inappropriate on a german server.

The only reason that Turbine has French and German servers is because they inherited them from Codemasters. Turbine never wanted to support any language other than English. According to this statement, Turbine did not get the Codemasters language specific filters. Turbine is not going to spend the dollars to develop this functionality given their financial problems. You are correct this is a German or French specific you will have to live with. Similar to the poor quality of the German language pack for the client.

Of course, GM-dependant behaviour of tickets applies to all, with everyone suffering at a non-predictable treatment, encouraging multiple tickets concerning the same topic, increasing the probably already nig load on the GM's (judging by their response times).

I've never had this experience. What occurs to me and my friends is that the second ticket is closed with a response stating that this issue has already been resolved. The third ticket often gets a - Warning - you will punished for abuse of the ticket system if you continue.

If you are polite in the second ticket - ask for a senior game master - assuming you did not talk to one the first time - you can get the initial result reviewed. Every time I have talked to a senior game master. I've gotten the answer that regular game master gave me. Typically, if I get a regular game master and I do not like the answer - I ask immediately for escalation to a senior game master. If the first responder is a senior game master there is no recourse.

What I have seen is that Friend A puts in a ticket on problem 134. Gets a different result than Friend B gets for problem 134. It all depends on external factors like - how busy are the game masters - which game master responded - did you get a senior game master to start with who more knowledge and capability - how good are you at explaining your problem - how polite is your request. There is nothing inherently unusual about this kind of behavior. Anytime an American interacts with a police officer, judge in a court room, customer service person - it depends on who is the decision maker - are they in a good mood - are you making them upset.

I remember from living in Germany that German decision makers tend to be provide a fixed response. They are much less flexible or variable than American decision makers. I found it easier to navigate people interactions in Germany because of the common level of service or disservice.

[ZuMe]

... there are senior game masters...?
Hmm... Never heard of that. So i would just need to write in my ticket 'I want this escalated to a senior game master!' ...? And this really works?

Don't get me wrong, but i worked at customer service for a big german cell phone provider once. When customers wanted to talk to the superior of supporter X, the supporter just muted the client and asked around his colleages who'd be free at the moment to take a 'superior' call. Then the client was transferred to colleague Y of supporter X, who happend to not have a call in the moment.
The client, in thinking that this was X's superior, complained a while and Y nodded and did as if taking notes about X's behaviour and all.
When the client hung up, very satisfied that he was handled as a VIP and all his complaints would have been noted, Y and X together threw the 'notes' in the trash and left to have a smoking break.... and next time, X will take the 'superior' call of Y, as he owes him one.
I was a 'superior' every other day of the week there...

yours
Suse

[maartena]

- lack of language-specific filtering:
german names get filtered by using english elements, like Sir, disallowing names like Sirann which are totally valid on a german server because the syllable 'Sir' means totally nothing in german. Opposed to that, the word 'kaiser' (=emperor) CAN be used, which would be inappropriate on a german server.

So english and german speakers are treated differently..

There is a problem with this though..... I guess one could change the database with non-allowed words to be changed so that offensive German words can no longer be used. But I doubt that they will change it so that words that are offensive in English (or otherwise inappropriate to the content) to be used on German servers. Titles such as Sir, MAY or MAY NOT become a title in future expansions..... (e.g we have titles for moors, they may introduce some things for other content or achievements at some point, which is why i am guessing they are reserving titles like Sir). So I think the only alternative to solve this, is to add German to the list of non-allowed words to German servers.

I have the same issue on English servers though..... I have a toon called Postmortem, and wanted the surname Analysis. I cannot use that perfectly fine word, because it contains the word Anal. And they really cannot make exceptions for every word that people find that may be perfectly appropriate, because they would fight that battle over every clever formation of letters one might find. I know this, so I didn't even try, and went with the surname Examination instead.

I also don't think German speakers are treated differently. The ticket response times seem to be similar to what one expects on English speaking servers, and I believe it is a great gesture that they have hired German and French speakers in Boston, willing to work late, so that they can help out with native speakers of those countries. Many other games, you have to learn English or not play.

I don't think there is anything that can be done about the naming regulation, and quite frankly.... I think turbine has many many more important issues to address.

[Sapience]

I'll pass this along to customer service.

[maartena]

... there are senior game masters...?

I would imagine that, just like in any other profession, there are those with several years of experience with supporting this game, and others that only got hired 3 months ago and just got their training done......

[Easca]

I'll pass this along to customer service.

Awesome! Thanks!

[Yula_the_Mighty]

... there are senior game masters...?
Hmm... Never heard of that. So i would just need to write in my ticket 'I want this escalated to a senior game master!' ...? And this really works?

...

yours
Suse

You can tell by the name.
Game Master +Sapience
Senior Game Master +Sapience+
Seniors always have two "+" symbols one on each end.

You can always ask a regular game master +GM for the a senior game master +GM+ if you do not like the answer. You go back in the queue in this situation. You have to wait for a senior game master to become available. I suppose there may be some times when there is no senior game master availability gone on break, eating or some other thing. There should be a lot more regular game masters than senior game masters on duty at any one time.

[Paragnosis]

Sometimes I wish there was a way for us to provide some feedback on the experiences we had with a particular request or a particular GM. For example, I recently submitted a ticket for a particular problem. A GM responded that he was unable to fix the problem but would forward the information for further review, and suggested that I submit a bug report. The next day the problem was fixed! I would like to be able to thank that GM for good service. On the other hand, there are times I wish I could give negative rep to a GM that just seems a bit lazy or disinterested in doing their job. In many business there is a way to provide feedback on the service the customer experienced on a specific call. Perhaps Turbine should consider this as well.