Update: Customer Service Improvements
Friday, January 19th, 2007 at 4:44 PM by: Robin LindenWe’ve been promising improvements to customer service, which we know has been painfully slow in recent weeks. Many of the early stages of the changes we’re making aren’t all that obvious. But in fact, since the last time I posted in this blog about customer service, we’ve made some progress toward a new, improved service.
- We held a series of small group discussions with interested Residents to get feedback on our plans and to get additional ideas for improvement.
From those discussions we learned:
-there’s a strong desire to see the volunteer programs improved from recruiting to training and recognition. People are especially frustrated with the length of time it takes to hear about an application to become a volunteer. Also, those who have been participating in Live Help/Help Request acknowledge that the program isn’t scaling.
- ideas presented for improving Live Help/Help Request include triaging requests to specialists, possibly through a web form; allowing Helpers to focus on their specialties, rather than having to deal with “tech support”, possibly through a system of routing IMs similar to a ticket system; doing a better job of routing people with questions to solutions for known problems so the same question isn’t repeatedly asked.
- there was general agreement that a tiered system of support tied to account type is a fair and reasonable way to improve response times.
- there’s an assumption that many new Residents come into Second Life as Basic members while they decide if it’s for them. A system that routes Basic members into self-help channels such as the Knowledge Base needs to be very comprehensive and easy to use because new Residents are the likeliest users.
- new users are most affected by support overloads, and it was recommended that we consider improving the infohubs to provide more information and be better staffed with volunteers; having a way to search for help in groups by entering queries such as “member of the scripters of SL group who speaks spanish”; implementing a better education system (on the theory that there’s a high correlation between support needs and a lack of education), organizing Help Islands by language.
- We’ve started a restructure of the liaison team, with Linden liaisons organizing into specialized teams for more focused in-world support. Initially the teams will include Volunteer Coordinators, Estate Services, In-World Experience Team, International specialists, and First Responders (to address significant griefing problems). Stay tuned for more specifics about these roles and how their help will be available to the residents. By the time we’re finished, we’ll have about 50 Liaisons (up from the current 25) working in these groups.
- We’ve added 6 members to the Concierge Team.
- We’ve nearly completed the process of purchasing and planning for the implementation of a new integrated software system that will allow people to more successfully help themselves with common questions and known problems, including finding information about bug status. This should help to free our agents to focus on the more serious difficulties. Our goal is to have this system implemented over the next 10-12 weeks.
- We’ve made some changes to the Help menu in-world to highlight F1 help and the Knowledge Base, and to move the bug reporter so it isn’t mistaken as a way to file support tickets.
- We’re working closely with our support partner to add staff, improve training, and expand hours of support.
- We have added a communications Monkey role for better information flow to Residents during downtime
-We have expanded Concierge’s role in grid maintenance, increasing response time for downed regions
-We have added an on-call Concierge role, enabling better weekend coverage for down regions and rollbacks
- We have closed the Land Forum and are assessing those questions through support, where more eyes can see those requests
- Torley is working hard to improve the current Knowledge Base while we look for a Technical Editor who will take responsibility for both writing and accepting articles.
- We have recognized that Linden Answers is no longer scalable, and are in the process of converting the question/answer format for the Knowledge Base. We’ll be looking for representative questions that need permanent articles in the KB, as well as for article ideas from Residents which we can include (more about that in a separate blog post).
- We have additional support positions available: Technical Writer, Billing CSR, Billing Manager,Support supervisor, Tech Support Manager and Liaisons. If you or someone you know is qualified, please let us know!
I know that support has fallen behind our growth over the last six months, and I apologize to those of you who have been frustrated while trying to get an answer to your problems. It will take a few more months, but I believe the changes we’re working on should ultimately result in an easier to use and more responsive system. Thank you so much for your patience in the meantime.
January 19th, 2007 at 4:55 PM
Glad to hear you folks are putting a bunch of effort into this! Ty!!
January 19th, 2007 at 5:02 PM
It is good to know that you are working so hard to improve the support you provide, it is greately appreciated.
January 19th, 2007 at 5:03 PM
Thanks for your concerns about new people. I am one of the newer residents, and I am evaluating the SL experience before I commit to purchasing land or upgrading my membership. The Help people have been very responsive, so far, and I hope that the “ticket” program that you suggest, does not make it difficult for us newer Basic members to get help. So far, if the new release glitches resolve, I hopw to become a paying member.
January 19th, 2007 at 5:07 PM
thanks for trying so hard…but I been crashing all nite…its so fast that i crash before anything is rezzed.How many crash reports do you want from me tonight?LOL thanks
January 19th, 2007 at 5:07 PM
Glad to hear some efforts being made! Looking forward to seeing the improvements
January 19th, 2007 at 5:10 PM
I would like to commend you all for your contiuing efforts to improve Second Life as a whole. And I for one can attest to the facts that the very first day I came inworld was the most frieghtning experience I ever had. Coming inworld thru Orientation Island was not a pleasant experience as a whole. I wasn’t able to ckick on the green hands to read the notes there or even know how to even use FLY or Teleports. It was to say the least one of the most scariest moments in my RL as I tried to even use the IM system when a resident was trying to help me get thru those first crucial hours of SL. And let me futher explain that point, those first few minutes after downloading the client is in fact the most crucial, demanding minutes and even into several hours afer you log in the first time, I say this becauseof the very basic facts that new residents are not familiar with the system and how it works, they are scared, they are confused, they don’t know where they are at, they are as I was totally unprepared for the first few minutes of coming inworld. It is my belief that based on all the comments I read these past few months that Second Life is on the way to being better than it presently is, and I would really, really encourage that in the near future that there would be some sort of easy to understand system from the very first moment to getting new people started in the right direction. This of course would mean that as they enter SL for the first time that there would be someone there to meet and greet as there is now, showing them how to TP to different landmarks, how to click on notecards, how to get to a welcome center, help island, and so on.
This is my challenge to Linden Labs; instead of degrading the system as it is now with all the problems, let me see a complete overhaul, let the ones who been in Second Life see it also, let the new residents see a world thatyou say; Your World, Your Imagination and I will bet that you will see it too, soon….
January 19th, 2007 at 5:39 PM
Hopefully the new Orientation Islands will address some of the problems you faced as a new Resident, Vickie.
Keep up the good work Linden Labs!
January 19th, 2007 at 5:39 PM
good news
January 19th, 2007 at 6:07 PM
Thanks for the update and for letting us know you’re still trying to improve support.
You revealed in your post that you outsource support. Very bad choice. Google around for the Gartner study/report on outsourcing tech-support.
Their summary (paraphrased) is basically covered in these bullets:
o You lose touch with your customers and the feedback they’re trying to provide because outsource companies are horrible at moving communication upstream. Their whole existence revolves around downstream communication (from the client, to the trainers, to the reps, to the end users.) They don’t do two-way-street well, if at all.
o No matter how closely you try to follow the productivity of an outsourced team, it is almost impossible to get a real idea of their productivity. You only know what you’re told by the outsource company.
o You’re not saving money, you’re losing it. Customer product/service abandonment skyrockets when support is outsourced. Any sufficiently complex product cannot be supported by inexperienced support reps who are willing to work for dirt cheap. Supporting complex products requires knowledge and experience, so an outsourcer still has to pay more to get reps to support the complex products they take on. So, because of their additional overhead, they’re charging you more per rep per hour than you’d be paying support staff in-house, even including the cost of health care and equipment (in most cases.) Otherwise, chances are the reps trying to help your users aren’t skilled enough or knowledgeable to actually troubleshoot, all they can do is read the scripts you send them. (And yes, I know it is expensive to live in The City. I lived there for 9 years, doing tech support for ISPs.)
o Outsource employees don’t feel a sense of ownership in the product and so don’t strive to actually solve problems for end-users, or communicate upstream about the problems they hear about the most. Nor do they pass along suggestions or ideas they themselves might have while spending 40+ hours a week communicating with your users. Their focus is on their call/email stats only, not on helping customers. The goal in any outsource environment is stats and cost control first, customers second.
Needless to say this results in bad support, which results in a bad reputation for the product and company and results in customers abandoning your product in droves, who would have stuck around if they’d spoken with a support rep who actually feels a sense of ownership in the product because they work for the company who built the product and work with the people who built it, which makes them want to help people use it and makes them want to help improve it. A much different customer service experience than talking to someone who cares only about keeping their call time short so they don’t get fired.
Bring support in-house. It would send a big message that you really do think of customer service as a vital part of SL, not just an unfortunate side-effect chore that has to be dealt with like taking out the trash. (not saying that’s your approach, just saying that outsourcing sends that message.)
[Oh, and btw, if you've given up on trying to answer questions in the Linden Answers forum, could you please close the damned thing instead of leaving it open, making us think we're supposed to get answers that we're never going to get? (I've noticed that while questions aren't being answered you're still finding the time to delete the rants people post after failing to get answers after multiple attempts. incredibly lame to police it for rants but fail to give answers.)]
January 19th, 2007 at 6:09 PM
IMHO, an integrated, tiered, and progressive ‘educational system’ needs to be created, so people can LEARN… sort of like kindergarten, then the six grades of elementary school, then junior high, then high school, then BA, then MA, et cetera. It needs to be tracked, but folks who have decided to take a Texture Path can turn back and take a Building Path or a Scripting Path or even (gasp!) an Escort Path, or whatever. Learning WHAT to learn, and HOW to learn is not easy in Second Life. The wikis and other resources are great at providing technical details… BUT the overview of the intermediate steps required to master a discipline are missing…. Second Life is like rural Africa or South America. There are huge masses of ‘lost souls’ and an elite of the super-educated, and no clear roadmap for the masses on how they can move from category A to category B.
January 19th, 2007 at 6:11 PM
Linden Answers isn’t scalable with 16 moderators?? There aren’t THAT Many questions asked a day. I don’t understand what is meant by “question answer format”
#1 does this mean that the Linden Answers forum is going to be closedd?
#2 will there be a place on the official website where residents can bring up topics and ask questions? My personal opinion is that the Knowledge base is difficult to navigate. In the LA forum someone was told to search the Knowledge base for posts on “LAG” I searched for Lag and got ZERO hits…Linden answers would be effective and scalable if there were people assigned to answer the questions daily, but when they go a week without answering any questions then of course it gets out of hand.
I am deeply concerned that there won’t be any way for residents to reach an actual person at LL. Support e-mail has been proven to very often not respond, people don’t get call backs from the support telephone line, and most of the linden employees don’t have a published e-mail address. If the linden answers forum is closed how will anyone be sure that their requests for help are actually being recieved unless they are one of the lucky few to get an answer.
I STRONLY URGE YOU TO KEEP THE LINDEN ANSWERS FORUM OPEN UNTIL YOUR NEW FORMAT IS OPEN AND PROVEN TO WORK BETTER THAN THE FORUM!!!!
January 19th, 2007 at 6:12 PM
When I heard about customer support improvements I thought we were talking about the phone and e-mail response. Not much being improved in that area from what I see here.
- We’re working closely with our support partner to add staff, improve training, and expand hours of support.
- We have closed the Land Forum and are assessing those questions through support, where more eyes can see those requests.
Seems there is no increase in phone support and all the people that used the Land Forum to seek answers will now start picking up the phone.
And what was not addressed was the overwhelming Influx of new accounts when Linden Lab is informed that a press piece hyping second life will be released in a community that has not been exposed to SL before.There is no preparation beforehand or during such a onslaught. The Greeter team sits silently by while chaos erupts all over the grid. There is no response plan in place and no acknowledgment of what is taking place from Lindens. I hope that something can be done to make these incidents pleasant for the paying customers and the new players.
January 19th, 2007 at 6:13 PM
As a vast and broad population of Second Life residents learn, they can be mobilized to assist each other (much as elementary school kids learn about computers in school). No cadre of super-knowledgable Lindens will ever be able to provide the customer service desired by residents. Only an organized body of volunteer facilitators/educators mobilized by the Lindens can ever hope to fill the gap…
January 19th, 2007 at 6:22 PM
New residents sorted onto Help Islands by language is a wonderful idea! Guess I need to brush up on my Spanish so I can be of some use when that part gets organized.
January 19th, 2007 at 6:32 PM
Your “support” right now seems to be geared more for spin management than actual problem resolution. In that event, I suggest more resources to prevent problems in the first place if you are unable or unwilling to assist people who experience them.
Yes, referring, yet again, to the endless run-around I have received on my issue of vaporized inventory. No, I will not stop referring to it until you either recover that inventory, reimburse the cost of replacing it, or explain in detail how it is that a company in the business of data storage and retrieval hopes to exist for long when it is unable to protect that data from their own glitchy system.
Yes, posting again here because no other avenue has proved effective. Yes, I’m prepared to be ignored again or told to email X.
January 19th, 2007 at 6:36 PM
Who do we contact when we have problems with support we get? What are the official complaint channels beyond first tier support.
January 19th, 2007 at 6:51 PM
music, If the nightmarish readablity of the blog and its narrow text area is any signs better CS then we area all in deep! I feel the same the linden answers are the next to be dumped off..More and More we are left to deal with issues on our own. Griefting, problems with account issues, land issues, etc…..SL these days is a like a snake shadding its skin. Each new skin they (LLABS) just dumps off (us) off like its just gets bigger and bigger.Mind you there are still a handful of good lindens doing work.
January 19th, 2007 at 7:24 PM
I can add to the list of things that would be helpful: Language Translation built into the client.
Why isn’t something like Max Case’s Babbler/De-Babbler part of the client? His tool works very well for something that (as I understand it) he apparently cobbled together in a short time, but then stopped developing. Surely a better, more accurate tool can be made as part of the client itself?
January 19th, 2007 at 7:29 PM
The ONLY reason I got help as fast as I did when a japanese font character that I had put in my title would not allow me to log in to SL was because live help existed. Without live help I would probably still be unable to log in. When I first came here two years ago Lindins were more than willing to help you. And that made me want to buy land and buy items in game. Now…I can’t attach the items half the time because of bugs, I don’t want to buy land because of horrendous lag everywhere, even on perfectly empty lots…There’s a thousand reasons why I will never EVER be a paying customer again. But the biggest one is that live help no longer exists.
January 19th, 2007 at 7:30 PM
Also, I too got a useless answer when I reported that several thousand L$ of no copy items dissappeared from my inventory. I got a cookie-cutter response (go to web page…) from Data Linden, and when I tried to explain that I had done all the “usual” things to try to get it back, including searching nearby prims (what the hey, it could happen), he closed the help dialog on me without any response.
So, many RL$ of stuff gone, no answers, no hope.
As I seem to say so often nowadays, this sucks. I’d use stronger language, but I want my comments to be posted!
January 19th, 2007 at 7:39 PM
And one more thing: I have created three alts and my “primary” account in the last year, and I have NEVER seen a Linden, and only once a “help staff” person at a welcome island. Each alt I’ve created, I’ve spent some time after first rez helping the newbies with basic information - like how to actually get more information! I’ve seen other alts from experienced users helping, but only once a “real” help staff member.
It’s no wonder that the VAST majority of the 2,741,055 “residents” of SL never seem to make a second appearance, and I’d blame that mostly on the inability to get timely assistance.
I’ve noticed that LL has never published data on how many “residents” log on again after the first week. I’d bet it’s not a tenth. After all, the daily “online now” number is less than one percent of the total “residents”.
All you have to do is look at the numbers to see that something is really, really wrong with the system.
January 19th, 2007 at 7:49 PM
The only thing that LL takes a true active interest in helping with is the value of the $L and that is ONLY because they are making money off it!
January 19th, 2007 at 8:38 PM
Well it appears random that the mentors and greeter. Are nolonger taking people in. I wonder if this is part of the grand plan of redoing the whole system. It also appears HELP HELPERS are nolong groups showing intheir titles. Something is up and i wonder what is going on
January 19th, 2007 at 11:43 PM
So it’s around 11pm SL time and I ask for a help request. No response. Fine, it says wait times might be longer during peak hours. 11pm isn’t a peak hour but fine, I’ll go with it. 20 minutes later, no response. I type in a simple “hello?” and get a message saying I’m the only one involved in the conversation and that my text isn’t being recorded.
So you close down Linden Answers forums. You never answer in technical questions on the forum. Help support isn’t answering. You tell people to go to Linden Village but no one is there. You guys are doing a bang up job with this customer support.
January 20th, 2007 at 12:56 AM
@Robin
Great to see these improvements in the works.
One day I found a chap sitting in a nice little gazebo in the centre of a fairly land-locked sim. I started chatting to him, and realised he had been sitting there for some time, and wasn’t aware of the map, search, or landmark/teleport system. The poor fellow thought the one sim he was in, was ALL that there was to Second Life! It took me just a few minutes to explain those basic things to him, and he set off happily exploring
This led me to think there would be a lot of new residents who aren’t aware that they can just walk up to any other resident for basic help. Maybe the person they walk up to won’t be willing or able to give help, but I reckon often a knowledgeable resident might be not far away and be willing to help.
Think of a Real-World comparison.. anyone who has travelled overseas can relate to the initial overwhelming feeling of “this is all so unusual and confusing”. Often that one piece of vital information you need (eg. finding a supermarket) can be given by someone you pass in the street, without needing to find an Information Centre or something.
As moderately experienced SL users, we can choose to join “help newbie” groups, or become guides, mentors etc.
Maybe another option could be to make a bit more use of the “Interests” tab in our avatar profile. There are already selection boxes for “Skills”, possibly this could be expanded with a new group of boxes “Things I can provide help for”, with basic topics being Flying, Teleporting, Using $L, Map Searching, Inventory Help, Building, etc. etc.
Then certain types of help requests could be forwarded by a Linden or mentor, straight on to everyone who has selected that particular area of assistance in their profile. Each user who receives a help request can decline if busy, or accept the request and automatically teleport to the help requester. When one or two people accept the request, it’s recalled from the other users’ screens. If this process could be automated as much as possible, the person in need would get someone with experience on the spot fairly quickly.
If this system became annoying for the experienced user, they can just deselect the various boxes in their profile to stop receiving help requests.
When I’m in the mood, I like to help as many newbies as possible, and I reckon a lot of people are the same. Maybe this system could be a positive, complimentary branch of the existing support channels.
Peace
January 20th, 2007 at 6:35 AM
@25 Well the mentors groups these days lacks dearly. These days there are some ex griefter that are inthe mentor group. The LH well….I only deal with Lindens in LH. These days I see more and more misguilded unknowing and totally lost newbies then ever before! Mind you there arre some wonderful mentors inthe group. But others .Its nowonder there are so so many confused and totally preplexed new people. Its so so sad.
January 20th, 2007 at 6:42 AM
Robin Linden
Categories such as this were created for that reason.
January 20th, 2007 at 7:50 AM
Vickie, I’m in 100% agreement with you. My first minutes of SL experience almost convinced me that I didn’t want to be here. After struggling with the controls I just logged off. Fortunately, I’m a persistent person and after thinking it over I tried again. I’ve met so many people new to SL who haven’t a clue how to do things that most of us who have been here for awhile just take for granted. They really are frightened of the complexity they’re facing, even in the user interface and the plethora of menu selections they see available — to say nothing of the task of trying to figure out what to set in Preferences. Don’t even mention the Debug menus to them, even though some incredibly useful tools that shouldn’t be buried there is available in the Client menu.
I haven’t spent hours helping out newbies. I’ve spent days … literally. Well, not all at one sitting, but an hour or two here and there, patiently walking someone through the paces, showing them how to get around, pointing them to places to get free stuff — that adds up in a hurry, especially if you’re willing to let any newb who asks bend your ear.
I so vividly remember my first several hours on the Grid that I will *never* deny a request from someone for help, and there are a lot of people who are wandering around in a daze all the time — just because they can’t figure things out. Give them a few pointers and they’re on the way, finally happy, rather than just merely bewildered. I recall my entry point into SL only too well. It was no help to me at all. I figured out on my own how to work Search and sought out a place that looked like it might be interesting, and then just played with the controls. It would have been so much easier if someone … anyone … had been there to say things like “No … you have to do that this way,” or “Hey, didn’t you know there’s an easier way to do that?”
Click and learn vendors aren’t the best way for a lot of people to learn things. Most of us learn by doing … not by reading. At some point you have to actually exercise your knowledge, and when you’re doing this around a bunch of other people, most of them as clueless as you are, it doesn’t help. You look foolish. It’s embarrassing. Nobody can offer any advice, because they’re looking as foolish and are as embarrassed as you are.
We desperately need more experienced residents who can help newbies — not Lindens, not mentors … just people who are willing to help first timers over that first big hump. There should be a group to which people can belong. There should be a one-click access to that group for first timers. Click and say “Help!” and anyone in that group can respond. I’d do it. TP that newb away from Help Island, or wherever, and to a friendly, lag-free sim. Spend some quality time with that person, explaining the user interface, how to avoid accidentally bumping people, what “camping” is, why they’re 7′6″ tall and don’t know it, and what to do when you get “Ruthed”. There are people who helped me like this when I was new, but I had to just find them by accident, and felt totally lost until I did. What we need is a sort of “unofficial” mentoring community. I’d volunteer in a heartbeat if LL would make it simple (*and obvious*) how to get in touch with such people.
Simondo outlined an excellent system for automating such “resident help” for people who need it, but it wouldn’t work for a rank newb who might not even know what a profile is. It’s still an idea that could be implemented, but we need some sort of “help is a click away” system for people who may be only a few minutes old.
January 20th, 2007 at 8:30 AM
I have been waiting for support since 11 january regardings my account.
Would love some help asap.
January 20th, 2007 at 11:49 AM
Re: Categories such as this were created for that reason.
How do wiki categories help the inworld group search system?
January 20th, 2007 at 11:53 AM
Linden Village could use a makeover. All those columns block the view.
January 20th, 2007 at 11:55 AM
The e-mail support should be improved i find, have send 3 mails in 1.5 week, no responds.
).
And this while it is to ask why my account is disabled and how to enable it back when the account page + forum doesn’t works (phoning would cost me money
January 20th, 2007 at 1:39 PM
Wow they claim they have improved customer service. closing linden answers and never helping people there. Phone lines that never get any one. You leave a message and they never even call back. In world service, aka live help. That they only respond to help friends and griefers. WOW great improvements. Maybe you lindnes should go investigate what true customer service is.
January 20th, 2007 at 2:27 PM
@ Sue: Google.
@ Pieter: Last I checked, the phone support was toll-free.
January 20th, 2007 at 2:43 PM
@SignpostMarv : Not everyone is in USA, it would cost me a bunch also since i am in another country that doesn’t have a toll-free number.
January 20th, 2007 at 4:18 PM
@Marv - oh, they’ve got Google searching the inworld group charters now? That’s news.
January 21st, 2007 at 12:32 AM
I think SL should take the blogs down too, no point to creating extra work for them. Why on earth would they need to communicate anything to us poor dumb users.
January 21st, 2007 at 5:34 AM
“Customer service”, does that mean that if something goes wrong, that the lindens will try and correct it?
Well I am just a sl citzen and maybe my thoughts are not quite the way sl feel’s. but please read this before you throw in the trash.there is a place in sl called “The blue note” and some crazy glich happen and wiped the blue off the face of the gameand ther eis a lot of people like myself that do go there.Well the linden labs have refused to do ANYTHING AT ALL LIIKE A ROLL BACK TO REPLACE,THIS SEEMS LIKE THE RIGHT THING TO ME TO DO.but of course I am Just one of the little people.I think if you took care of the business’s you have now it might draw the big guys when ythey look at the game to invest, I could be wrong.I doin’t think if i had 1 million dollars to put into something of this nature,if i saw where it would be wiped away for no reason and the people that could do something about it did nothing , lol i think i would look elsewhere. But jusdt my opion.THEY ARE LIKE MANY, EVERYONE HAS ONE.
THANK YOU FOR READING.
Bob(rl) or Jerryone (sl)
January 21st, 2007 at 6:09 AM
I found it easy enough to get started in SL and never had any questions that couldn’t be answered by some web research until I owned land. It is quite normal that one starts out in an online world with nothing but a manual explaining the first steps; the better ones have tutorials like SL’s orientation islands in addition. This part works all just fine in SL, imho.
It’s the paying customer who later has serious support issues and is let down by the current system. “How do I walk around” is explained on orientation island, the answer to “Why is the hair I bought just a box on my hand” can be given by any resident in close proximity or by the seller of the object, and “How do I set up my first vendor” can be asked on the forums.
But “Why are the wrong objects returned when my land is full” or “why does my sim keep crashing” can only be answered by customer service representatives. That’s the point where the current system doesn’t seem to work, now less than ever since the Linden Answers forum was closed.
January 21st, 2007 at 6:17 AM
@Sue, no, but you could do google queries for both scripters & spanish speakers.
January 21st, 2007 at 8:08 AM
Almost 3 million customers, 50 people working customer service; do the math.
January 21st, 2007 at 9:29 AM
Improved Service my ass! I sent e-mailed support A WEEK ago and I still haven’t gotten a response. And your knowledge base is crap.
You’re just going down hill.
But you have millions of customers, why care about an individual?
Jerks!
January 21st, 2007 at 11:21 AM
I really hope that Linden Lab can help us that have problems pretty soon, since this is starting to get annoying.
But i don’t think i will see any help in the next few weeks unless i call an expensive number maybe.
January 21st, 2007 at 12:34 PM
Good to hear its finally getting somewhere
January 22nd, 2007 at 11:25 PM
When public dialog between a company and it customers begins to deteriorate to level it has of late, then something of course must be done, otherwise it could negatively impact growth.
The two most obvious solutions are to either:
1) Expend effort in the proper places and attempt to recover a reasonable Customer Satisfaction Level, or
2) Remove the ability for prospective customers/investors to determine the level of satisfaction.
It is very clear that what LL is attempting by systematically shutting down all forms of publicly viewed dialog between residents and LL is to hide from its prospective customers and investors the extremely low level of customer satisfaction. Censorship historically has never worked more than short term to keep people from learning the truth.
LB
January 23rd, 2007 at 1:17 AM
NOW I know what NOT to expect after reading all the comments here. I have been trying to reach support by all methods to no avail, and wondering what to do next and where to go with the problem. Thanks to all whose comments have enlightened me to the facts: 1. that help is NOT there 2. that it is pretty fruitless to expect help and 3. that SL is going down the tubes in customer service very quickly. All I want to know is how to get the hundreds of annoying pop-ups from crowding my screen at login, how to delete those repeated landmarks (the same one as the pop-up) from my Inventory Landmarks and map page Landmarks. Can’t find an answer in anything I’ve come across so far, unless it could me that I don’t undersatnd some of the terminology. NOTHING WORKS! ARRRH! By the way, when I was “born” to SL 2 months ago, no one was there to greet me and if I wasn’t the stubborn sort that I am I would have logged off and never come back to such a cold chaotic world. I hope that things get better real soon because I can no longer do anything in SL except try repeatedly to discard those pop-ups from my screen. Five minutes of that goes a long way!
January 23rd, 2007 at 7:23 AM
The customer service is a sham anyway. There paid to help but they do the complete opposite
January 23rd, 2007 at 7:40 AM
Forser I Know What You Mean Ive Been Waiting Since 1st November For Some Answers They Banned Me , Banned My Computer From Access , Banned My Friends , Banned My Secondlife Partner Even Though Theyve Done Nothing Neither Have i To Warrent A Ban And When i Do Get Someone To Answer The Support Phones They Say ” Oh We Cannot Reveal Any Infomation About This Account” And That We Should Contact The Abuse Manager , Did The Day We Got Banned Its Been What Just Under 3 Months Not Even a Single Email From Him Or Support And Being As I Was A Inworld Mentor , I Knew The Rules
January 23rd, 2007 at 8:42 PM
I notice the changes in the volunteering programs and miss the link on the web page makeover. I am not sure why changes seem to always be made when my waiting time comes near the hours for review. One note of praise I will make to Live Help with a griefing event; I was impressed in the speed of results. I missed your support and approval as a SL Teacher due to changes by the reorganization; I waited so long to be approved as a SL Mentor and look like that will not happen so I think with your approval. What would happen I applied for a hired position? I would have appreciated an email for the change in administration of the Volunteer Program lying to rest my anticipation of being approved by the Linden Organization. Remember the common courtesy it goes a long way with users and customers. Thank you for the space and the post my concern and quell my curiosity
January 27th, 2007 at 9:59 AM
I dont see a “We have made a place where you can actually get answers to bugs you reported 6 months ago” or a place to actually talk to someone with answers. i feel like everything that people say is bouncing off a wall. And I might have missed the call but when did you have this “series of small group discussions with interested Residents” ? I am interested and seem to have missed my invitation. How about this as something to add to your list. Any known issue that has been on the list for over 30 days becomes a showstopper
January 27th, 2007 at 2:22 PM
@Iveran: Bug reports are picked up by a different group who reproduce it if possible, and then hand off for fixing. They don’t, however, respond to you directly. When you have a specific problem you need help with, please email support@lindenlab.com. I know we’ve been behind, but we’ve added staff and you should find response times to be improving.
I asked people who were interested in discussing Customer Service to let me know if they wanted to attend small group discussions in this blog post: http://blog.secondlife.com/2006/11/26/changes-coming-to-customer-service/ I’m sorry if you missed the meetings, but please feel free to stop by and let me know what you think the next time I have scheduled office hours in Second Life (8:30AM, Tuesday, 1/30).
January 28th, 2007 at 3:26 PM
@Forser:
Use Skype. I’ve had to when my phone provider was being an ass.
February 7th, 2007 at 4:29 AM
Hi Robin,
As there are some Law Enforcement groups in SL who want to make a real serious job out of it to help ppl when they are abused ur harrassed I would suggest Linden to back up this groups. I know two groups who are being very serious to help ppl in SL and to work for them within Linden Community Standards as good as they can. These are SL Federal Bureau of Investigations and SL County Sheriff’s Department. They can be and are willing to be Lindens eyes and ears in SL to deal with criminal activities and offends. So I like to discuss this with Lindens inworld and via Linden cooperation to set up official Law Enforcement Agencies backed by Linden. I know that many ppl have a wish to have this sort of help, because I get many help requests and emergency calls as SLC Sheriff’s Dept. Sgt. I like to know what Linden thinks about this, and I have more ppl who support me in this.
February 19th, 2007 at 6:02 PM
CONCIERGE REQUEST: This all sounds great. In addition to the 24 hour concierge role (and bless you for that) can you please do something to make sure that all the island owners who should have concierge access, do in fact have it? I’ve heard rumours of a concierge group, a dedicated concierge phone number, etc, but I’ve never had any information regarding any of these streamed to me in any way. If this is where I’m supposed to go for support, can you give me the information I need to get there?
Thank you!
February 19th, 2007 at 6:14 PM
Hmm. Also, reading back through all these comments, I have to say - I’ve had consistantly excellent support since they fixed the office phone system to be compatible with overseas VoIP. Sometimes I have better luck with the phone or with Live Help, but I’ve never been left stranded. I had to wait 30 minutes today (a US holiday) to get a Live Help answer, but I did - and my issue was solved in 5 minutes by Mia Linden.
I don’t mind waiting if I know I will be helped eventually, and so far, I always have been.
March 16th, 2007 at 3:15 PM
I purchased an island on Feb. 16th and finally got it delivered on March 15. I called the SL concierge several times and left messages and sent several e-mails during this time, not one of which was ever answered. There phone message says your message will be treated like a real phone call and they will get back to you. That never happened. So the only way I was able to get help was talking to a live person, but each time I did, they assured me the island would be up “that day.” After several days of hearing that, I was starting to get a little frustrated. When my island was finally delivered, they sent the notification to the wrong e-mail address, which I had changed on my account and specifically discussed with them regarding the notification of my island. One of the things I was specifically waiting for was the Estate Guide. The Estate Guide has very little useful information in it. If I had known this, I could have been researching the information I wanted to know about owning land while waiting for it, instead of waiting for the Estate Guide, finding out it was not very helpful, and having to figure most things out on my own. I don’t know what others’ experiences have been, but now that I am a regular land paying customer, I am a little concerned about the level of service I am going to get from here on out. You would think since I am paying a decent monthly fee, that they would make some effort to respond to me. Anyone have any suggestions of what I might do to get help if I need it in the future? Am I missing something here?
April 17th, 2007 at 2:04 AM
[...] but wait, that’s not all! Be sure to see Robin’s recent post: “Update: Customer Service Improvements“. Next week, I’ll be posting a clear list of our communications venues, so you have a [...]
April 18th, 2007 at 4:01 PM
[...] the overall improvements being made to Customer Support, elaborated on in Robin’s blog post here. In order to prevent a delay in the release of the new ticketed support system, Liaison [...]
April 18th, 2007 at 5:30 PM
[...] the overall improvements being made to Customer Support, elaborated on in Robin’s blog post here. In order to prevent a delay in the release of the new ticketed support system, Liaison [...]
April 24th, 2007 at 12:20 PM
[...] the overall improvements being made to Customer Support, elaborated on in Robin’s blog post here. In order to prevent a delay in the release of the new ticketed support system, Liaison Specialists [...]
May 14th, 2007 at 6:57 PM
you need to make it to be able to run on windows vista! plz!
May 22nd, 2008 at 10:31 PM
We are what we repeatedly do.