Introducing Liaison Specialist Teams
Thursday, April 26th, 2007 at 2:56 PM by: Robin LindenSince Help Request was removed from the Help menu in the Second Life viewer on Wednesday, several Residents have expressed their concern to me that no immediate help will be available for urgent problems on the grid, primarily griefing attacks and region downtime.
We had two significant problems with Help Request: one was asking volunteers to take on a task that was extraordinarily difficult as the grid population skyrocketed, and the other was the inefficiency of IMs as a communication option for support questions. Trying to respond one-to-one to each question became a herculean task. Worse, the system made no distinction between urgent problems affecting many, and questions from individual Residents requiring a less immediate response.
Yesterday Cyn Linden blogged about how to contact support in the absence of the Help Request line, and I thought I would elaborate on a key change which will make this new system work: Liaison Specialist Teams.Liaisons have been at the core of customer support since the early days, starting with Char Linden. They were always there when we needed them to answer questions, deal with standards violations, and help newcomers. As we’ve grown though, it’s become apparent that this system needs some reconfiguring. We don’t want to lose the value the liaisons bring, but we also can’t scale the team indefinitely (one calculation had us hiring nearly 800 liaisons by the end of 2008!).
Our solution has been to create several specialist teams within the liaison group. Ultimately we will build to about 50 total staff, nearly twice the current number. A few of these teams are already available 24/7; the goal will be to provide 24/7 coverage within the next few months in all of these areas. These individuals will work in teams focused on the following specialties:
- volunteers (helping and supporting the many volunteers on the Help Islands and InfoHubs, managing volunteer applications, training, and communication with Linden Lab)
- concierge (responding to concierge customer support requests)
- first responders (monitor the grid for large scale violations of the community standards, report on trends and potential trouble areas, monitor abuse reports)
- international (support non-English speaking Residents to help them get acclimated and find others who speak their language)
- in-world experience (monitor and respond to technical problems, plus assisting with scripting, building, group and land tools; coordinate with gridmonkey on grid health issues; coordinate with other Lindens to respond to grid attacks)
- recruits (new liaisons learning the ropes)
It’s important to keep in mind that removing Help Request does not mean that no one is available or paying attention. It means only that the teams of people responsible for answering questions and helping newbies, or monitoring the grid and responding to attacks will be using more sophisticated tools to do their jobs and will be able to respond more quickly, especially to urgent issues.
April 26th, 2007 at 3:01 PM
Thanks, guys, this sounds great and I think it’s a good move!
April 26th, 2007 at 3:04 PM
How do we contact those teams, for urgent problems on the grid, primarily griefing attacks and region downtime?
the other ways of contacting support such as phone support, tech support and other support emails is not an option for dealing with urgent problems on the grid, primarily griefing attacks and region downtime.
Exactly what are we supposed to do when urgent problems occur?
April 26th, 2007 at 3:09 PM
The future looks bright but a quick concern? If we get a particle attack and need the emitter removed, who do we contact? It used to be an in world Linden who would come and take away the emitters.
April 26th, 2007 at 3:10 PM
so….how do we try and contact someone now when we need help?
April 26th, 2007 at 3:10 PM
Dnali, Abuse Reporting will work much like HR used to for that, since they’re triaging calls now for faster responding.
April 26th, 2007 at 3:11 PM
The Blog post on Support from yesterday addresses all of these questions/concerns.
April 26th, 2007 at 3:11 PM
Hey,
great idea… but a short (and little) question concerning the different teams: how to reach the different teams (especially “in-world experience”
now or in the next month?! 
Regards
Cedric
April 26th, 2007 at 3:11 PM
Why not give chosen volunteers linden-esque powers for policing the community in general. They could be granted some key powers, like object control on lands, kicking trouble some people, etc. But not unnecessary god powers, like taking ownership of land, or grabbing full perms copies of stuff.
with such a large community, there’s only so long you can afford to pay people to maintain socail aspects. Eventually, I predict volunteer admins will become a necessity.
April 26th, 2007 at 3:12 PM
Thanks for the info but theres been instructions on how to contact these Volunteers when needed.
Please advise further…
April 26th, 2007 at 3:19 PM
That’s great news, really, I’m very excited for all of you. But you’ll have to excuse me that my excitement is cut short by the fact that since the upgrade I haven’t been able to do anything but issue a bug report and call you directly to leave a voicemail about the issue with the friend’s list.
I have cleared cache restarted blah blah blah but this is a known bug on the bug list and it’s showing unresolved. I know you have your hands full but this is a majorly critical issues for everyone that I’ve talked to. So could you please maybe perhaps update us where you are on that so we can focus on celebrating your advances in help?
Mmm, kay thanks.
April 26th, 2007 at 3:19 PM
Umm, how do we call them?
April 26th, 2007 at 3:20 PM
I volunteered for help request, but it was turned down….3 times, so, dont tell me that your having trouble recruiting volunteers.
In addition: Theres going to be more greifing attacks due to this move. Normally I support you guys, but this was, im not going to lie, a VERY bad move.
April 26th, 2007 at 3:21 PM
My concern is more with outside help im in australia and still cant get into world and nothing is helping great time to take live help as friends that are in world cant get help for me either and toll free calls go to voicemail and ones i pay for wont accept push button responses and the unerving thing is you are saying the issue is done ? its not done I know 3 other accoutns unable to get in and this is killing me work wise
April 26th, 2007 at 3:22 PM
To call look at the support page near the bottom, it rolls to voicemail but leave one, at least your voice will be heard then. I should hope.
April 26th, 2007 at 3:24 PM
A concern with this will be how will we get in contact with a linden when help is needed? That isnt covered by this you have people monitoring but how exactly will someone be contacted if you need help. For instance I needed to use live help the other day to ask a question. Trying to contact one individually often doesnt go well and when you have a very specific problem regarding you or your sim or the area you own or rent land in how will that really be handled without a system to contact someone directly.
Unless a new system will be put in place to contact said team directly…. Sometimes things need a prompt response where you can cover this type of thing directly and not have to go about emailing them and waiting for them to sift through the mounds and mounds of emails that they will get. You need a system in that sense to work out who they need to contact and thats a system that needs to be in world.
You need some type of system where one on one cases are handled still or things that demand a response will fall lapse and support will seem to fail worse then it is now. To be brutally honest i understand how it becomes a strain to keep up a system like that but to some degree its necessary for immediate responses which is why I am asking how will we get in touch with someone if an immediate response is needed when a system like that is removed?
Will there be a list to contact specific teams directly or what will happen? You definitely need something in place to deal with things such as that. If the linden’s only monitor the broad spectrum of things they may not detect a problem that needs an immediate response and that may be a problem for both sides if things degrade in a certain area. Say you own land on the mainland and something happens that demands the linden’s attention right off what will happen?
April 26th, 2007 at 3:25 PM
“Our solution has been to create several specialist teams within the liaison group.”
I think this is a great idea. You might also add an option on the menu for contacting these teams. It would make it convenient to report problems and get help.
April 26th, 2007 at 3:26 PM
Yes I have done so 3 times in last 2 hours and running out of business hours time as its only 830am here and still nothing but the email support gave me a number *sighs* I love LL i do but this update taking live help at same time is painful at least if someone was able to say hey Sasy I swear we are fixing it id be ok still crying but ok
April 26th, 2007 at 3:27 PM
While you say it covers the concerns when a ticket needs to be put through it often takes time to respond and there are just some things that require immediate attention rather then putting a ticket through.
April 26th, 2007 at 3:28 PM
I agree with WarKirby Magojiro on parts. I think there should be a Live help option but with some modifications that would make it a lot more efficient, plus making Live Help better means less staff LL needs to operate. I think there should be a Live Help system where the users have to fill out a form as to what there issue is and depending on the issue would assign it a priority level. Doing thing would ensure that when someone went to Live Help they were entering a question and they would know which needed answering first. Also giving a select trusted few some power would make life for the liaisons and other players much easier and stress free. I think there should be a modified god mode for a select few, the god mode would prevent them from being attacked pushed, shot, bumped, killed. I think giving them the option to kick is to much power, what I think they should get is the freeze power that liaison have. This would allow them to STOP the trouble maker and freeze them until a Linden could respond to the issue and deal with it correctly, as well as being able to disable Sim scripts and colliders. To stop physics object attacking / harassment. Also the report abuse email you get when it is solved should be changed. I know they wont tell anyone what specific actions were taken BUT, it would make people feel better, and they would know for the future if what they reported really was considered against the rules. The change would be to add a line to the email that would say something like “The report you sent it was a violation of the rules and the appropriate actions were taken” or “The report you sent was not a violation of the rules, and no action was taken.” I think these changes would make second life better, and lower the work load on LL. Finally it would better support the community.
April 26th, 2007 at 3:30 PM
hmm looks good… but linden you got some more isues going here.
After 3 houres i finnaly got back int he grid to see myself being a ruth and now sl launches a second screen along with the game when i start it up…some kind of cmd screen that seems to show me the command lines of sl
April 26th, 2007 at 3:31 PM
The potential for abuse of such powers by residents is too great; LL will never give residents god powers. It’s been discussed repeatedly and denied. As a Live Helper/mentor, I am sad to lose HR because I enjoyed doing it (as I am insane) but the volume of calls to the number of active Helpers wasn’t feasible. LL is working on specializing and improving service with these changes and I, for one, am interested to see how it, and changes to the Volunteer program, pan out.
April 26th, 2007 at 3:32 PM
WHAT A JOKE!!!!!
So I just tried calling the main number so I could get the 800 number for conceirge.
After being told my hold time would be 10 minutes….I was then told that no one was available to answer my call.
So I stated my user name…pressed 1.
I stated my real name and phone number…. pressed 1.
I stated my email addy…spelling it out…pressed 1.
I THEN GOT ROUTED BACK TO THE START OF THE VOICE MAIL!!!!!
WTF!!!?? So ….no real person and no way to leave a message….yeah…..that’s MUCH better…… not!
April 26th, 2007 at 3:38 PM
How do I report technicals issues like the missing SL Library in the inv? inworld-problems via direct e-mail? Bug report? This new system is more confusing than helping.
April 26th, 2007 at 3:39 PM
“Worse, the system made no distinction between urgent problems affecting many, and questions from individual Residents requiring a less immediate response.”
The reason the system didn’t make any distinction between urgent and personal problems is solely LL’s fault. People with urgent problems simply had nowhere to go other than Help Request and they did so knowing fully well it wasn’t the proper support channel, but they simply had no other option available.
Retiring Help Request for a few weeks until people get used to the - currently non-existant - ticketing system for problems that require Linden intervention and then bringing it back, manned by volunteers, to deal with the day-to-day problems residents run into should be a solution that benefits all.
That would address both the need for immediate, sometimes trivial help, help that can be done by fellow residents, and would make any new support system far more effective because it means Lindens spend far less time dealing with things that don’t realy require Linden attention.
April 26th, 2007 at 3:40 PM
Im kinda dissapointed since once again another update comes around and i cant get on either grid without crashing my whole computer when i didnt see the live help I called yesterday and was on hold for one hour till I gave up trying
And yet I still cant get on without crashing
April 26th, 2007 at 3:46 PM
I applied to be a mentor several months ago - I often get asked for help and give help so thought it would be a good way of giving something back to the community. I still haven’t heard anything. I know we are talking help requests here however mentors are good ways of avoiding some help calls and freeing others up to deal with them. I’m in-world on a frequent basis (my husband might say too frequent - :-)) so would be around to help quite a bit. I’m not sure what is happening if people are offering help and it isn’t being taken up.
April 26th, 2007 at 3:46 PM
So does that mean the turn around time for concierge services will be less than 3 weeks now?
April 26th, 2007 at 3:48 PM
A big thank you to the Lindens - I had my first experience with the new support teams this morning when my sim was down, and I must say that the response was very fast from a ticket placed on the proper web page, and my fears of not being able to contact live help any more are gone.
April 26th, 2007 at 3:51 PM
Very much like guides and GMs in games like everquest ( and i assume WoW) and other MMORPGs a system ive seen work well. Great job thank you
April 26th, 2007 at 3:54 PM
Ok.
Rollllllll back to the FIRST set of the friggin firstlooks. There was one in there that had very few issues. You guys took it down for some kind of terrain problem. Very few even saw it. BRING THAT BACK. Until you got somethin that works? I forgot the version, I will go through the blogs to figure it out, and post back.
The current client, and current support is rediculous. There is still no way to contact live help. Calling is a joke.
April 26th, 2007 at 3:55 PM
If y’all would just start fixing the problems instead of rolling out new stuff that causes even more problems, the playing experience would be far richer. Making Help harder to contact makes sense when the problems start snowballing!
April 26th, 2007 at 3:56 PM
I am amazed that comments were allowed on this post. I doubt that you want them but here is my 2 bits worth.
Have it all nicely laid out ahead of time. So that we could have an idea of what it was all about, what it means and how it will work in RL not theory.
This new change in addition to parts of the forum closing shows a trend towards isolation. Yesterday with update when there were issues, not a tender helping post in the blog for over an hour. All comments on all postings shut down of course. Makes one wonder.
It is great that these teams are on hand to solve our issues. Who can get my sims restarted? They have been hanging over the past week one day for 6 hours. Now if I am not around then can an officer get them restarted? Before a call to help would get a message to a linden and all be well.
We are having massive issues with for example; “objects not being delivered after being paid for”. Seems that the current system can not track if things are big issues or small. With the new system all should be more visible. So will bugs like this get dealt wth any faster?
I can understand that having so many residents can make a system hard to manage but the loss of help I think is a big mistake. To have a friendly person on call was a mighty fine thing.
I never met one of the help personel who wasn’t, um … helpful, polite and reasuring. Now calling never works. email is replied too a week later and we will see what the new reporting system is like. I for one am not holding my breath and am worried that my sim might go down while I am on vacation and that be that.
April 26th, 2007 at 3:56 PM
I like the idea, although I’m not a smart individual, so I won’t be volenteering.
April 26th, 2007 at 3:59 PM
Okay, I’m really upset now. if there was a blog post on why the friend’s list isn’t working and what you are doing to correct that then *maybe* I wouldn’t be so upset. But I am and I’m not the only one. So please please address the issue in a post.
April 26th, 2007 at 4:09 PM
Well, your new support system is already NOT working…I was told 10 minutes on hold…so I wait 10 minutes, only to be put into some answering system queue.
I have a business here…I can’t sit on hold all day long, or wait for a callback. You’d think that my $600US every month would warrant 5 minutes of phone support.
Well, let me tell you Lindens…you have SERIOUS problems with this new version. DOES ANYONE TEST THIS PROGRAM FROM THE CLIENT SIDE?
The previous version rendered my laptop inoperable (Centrino + ATI video), and this version has rendered my desktop inoperable (Pentium D + GeForce 7600 GS). Obviously, both systems fall within specified parameters, and are toward the top of the scale.
BTW, how can I explain the problem to you if I can’t contact you via phone or email? The current version just seems to disconnect me from the grid whenever I access the asset servers - no crash, no prompt for a report.
April 26th, 2007 at 4:20 PM
Well that’s nice and all….Now, who’s going to fix email-to-object and email-to-user that has stopped working, downing most vendors? Or the borking AOs have received? Or the minor things, like the fact that somebody seems to have dumped 2000 Flushes into the water, and blown up the sun?
April 26th, 2007 at 4:22 PM
Great move LL.. Sometimes we need help out there .
April 26th, 2007 at 4:35 PM
This might be a stupid question to the citizens at large, but, if people want to help, why doesn’t someone create a GROUP for SL Questions, where each member of the group can answer questions in Group IM?
It wouldn’t be helpful for “HELP! My Island was erased by kamakazi land-bot griefers!” type of situations, but for simple questions like “How do I make a prim spin?” or “How do I contact the Lindens if my island is erased by kamakazi land-bot griefers?” it would be perfect for.
But then, I’ve never formed a Group, so I may be just talking out my azz.
And now for some DEEP THOUGHTS with Jack Handy:
“…one of the early signs that your radarscope is
wearing out is something I call *image fuzz-out.*
But I’ve never seen a radarscope, so I wouldn’t
totally go by what I’ve just said here.”
April 26th, 2007 at 4:36 PM
I am very glad to see this kind of move to teams in which each has their specialty! I felt that some of the support problems stem from trying to have a Linden do too many things at once!
Now, just have one that specializes in answering phones and you’re golden!
April 26th, 2007 at 4:37 PM
to Linden.. u need look more into web page and groups..
why do i say that look for ur self :
مركز بوابة العرب التعليمي - ناويها …- [ Translate this page ]Second Copy 2000 Beta 2 Build 20 Name: TheBrabo s/n: 123456FDA-7170 Second Copy 2000 Build 6.0.0.23 … SUN IPlanet Directory Server V4.12 S/N،G724-6689-01 …
edu.arabsgate.com/showthread.php?t=280296 - 436k
i hope the best of u guys because i every likeSecond life…
April 26th, 2007 at 4:38 PM
Gahhhh. This is bad Ju Ju. As a commercial Venture grows and expands it is necessary that it’s number of working staff also increase with the scale of the project. Now I am not saying that you go right ahead and hire 800 new Liaison, but in the real world LL you are going to have to increase your staff eventually. Splitting them up into specialist teams was a good move. However your good move fell by the wayside when you removed the ability to have tangible customer support right there at the residents fingertips.
I hate to say it but now the vast Majority of SL residents are going to to feel all “Cold and Alone” so to speak when it comes to technical difficulties that require immediate hands on attention.
Normally if this were a standard MMOG I would say yes this was a good move. Hovever this is not a game that can run seemlessly with GM’s invisible in the background tweaking the program on an occasional basis. This is a Virtual Environment and a revolutionary (if not sometimes unstable) experience.
Therefore your customer support needs to be seen to have the same face as those people that inhabit your worlds. I fear that removing live help from the equation all together will cause more harm than help to the Second Life community overall.
A better solution might have been to implement a series of tools that allow Liaisons to remain in world and have the questions directed to them individually (or as a team) via a selection of filters that allocate customer service inquiries based upon the actual wording of the IM put forth by the resident.
April 26th, 2007 at 4:58 PM
@ Dnali - If there are problems with attacks, please file an abuse report. If there are people with you they should also file them. We have a team monitoring the reports as they come in. For more information, please see Daniel Linden’s post from 4/18: http://blog.secondlife.com/2007/04/18/changes-in-abuse-report-resolution/.
@Cedric - please use the various contact options that Cyn talked about in her post yesterday. http://blog.secondlife.com/2007/04/25/support-update/
@WarKirby - while we don’t plan to give Residents Linden powers, we are improving the tools that land owners have to manage problems on their estates. These tools range from a web form to report downed regions to access to abuse reports for island estates.
http://blog.secondlife.com/2007/04/24/new-region-down-form-added-to-the-website/
http://blog.secondlife.com/2007/04/20/introducing-estate-level-governance/
@Alex1 - we know there’s a backlog of applications for volunteers. It’s one of the first jobs the volunteer specialist team will tackle.
@Lina - please use the communication tools Cyn described in her post. The liaison teams will be monitoring these tools and will get back to you.
Am still reading comments, and will respond again later.
April 26th, 2007 at 4:59 PM
I just got through with another phone call to support, in which I was told that the wait was 10 minutes. After waiting for 10 minutes, I was told no one was available, and to leave a voice ticket (again).
I was in the process of leaving the voice ticket, when the system hung up on me.
Good Job!!!!
April 26th, 2007 at 5:02 PM
My problem is that I purchased land on April 22nd, and then the sim crashed, and I no longer own the land although over eighteen THOUSAND Linden dollars were removed from my account and my tier increased. No one at LL seems to want to help me.
April 26th, 2007 at 5:13 PM
That’s great for Linden Labs, it would appear to make life more bearable for all of you there. My own joy at the release of this ‘new improved version’ is limited however by the fact that since the upgrade I haven’t been able to do anything but access outdated fixes on the Known Issues, call you directly to leave a voicemail about the issue and get a “ticket”. And even on the voice mail, I am told to try Live Help - um thanks a lot.
I have no need to update drivers they are up to date.
I have cleared cache, defragged, restarted and tried to use the ‘fix’ for last time which was to reinstall the previous version. http://secondlife.com/knowledgebase/article.php?id=443
NOW when I try that fix, I am FORCED to install 1.15 Everyone I talk to is having issues with their friends list too. I would just like to be able to use the version that worked. I’d like that fixed so I could access it and then maybe I could share in your joy and reverie of the new ‘help’ and support, which right now are not very helpful or supportive.
April 26th, 2007 at 5:18 PM
I’m not enthralled (which is a step down). In the past I’ve been supportive and understanding. I see the reorganization as moving the garnish from one side of the plate to the other - I see no real attempt to address issues that are at the core, and which have been brought up ad infinitum and ad nauseam.
That said, perhaps this new system - with pattern recognition and whatever other technological wonders - will provide the necessary crutch for actually understanding the issues which residents have long been speaking of. That would be a step in the right direction.
What has been a step in the wrong direction has been the removal of human contact. This abstraction can cause varying levels of indirection, and seems about as friendly and impersonal as a smile at McDonalds. It is unavoidable that this should happen, I suppose, as there are more and more residents online. But is Linden Lab actually leveraging the residents? I do not believe so. When a community is created based on interaction, decreasing that interaction does not bode well.
Because of past experience with the Abuse Report system, I am less likely to write an abuse report. Why? Simply because I have no insight into what constitutes an abuse anymore. Certainly, the ‘Police Blotter’ can be pointed at - but there is no public precedent. Reading the police blotter is about as informative as reading tea leaves. What was done wrong? How was it judged? Did someone get special treatment because they were new? Was a timely intervention done such that money was not lost by affected parties? These things we do not know; the community cannot properly judge. What shall be done with that? Shall Linden Lab continue to look away from this issue in the hope that pattern recognition will assist in finding problems which exist to them only if reported?
And how do we know it is effective? What is our metric, the metric for the community? This, of course, leads back to precedents or, more properly, the lack of them.
How can we tell Linden Lab that they are doing something better, or worse?
It seems that these changes largely ignore the community itself, and instead become a scientific study of the known instead of the unknown - certainly contradictory to science, but are scientific techniques effective when used in unscientific contexts?
But am I right about all of this? Am I wrong?
That is the point. I cannot validate what I say with any metrics. Where are the metrics that formed the basis of these decisions?
Is this indeed ‘Our World, Our Imagination’? Some transparency into the decisions related to how the community is handled would allow effective discussion about whether the community believes that this is the right move, or if there are more ideas, or what have you.
And why are there volunteers? Certainly, people should be encouraged to volunteer, but if they are providing a service to the community - should they not be paid? Who should pay? Well, if we pay Linden Labs for a service bound in a contract based on the vague Terms of Service and Community Standards (further obfuscated with lack of clear precedents) and these volunteers provide service to the community along these lines - should they not see recompense? Or is this an elaborate way to avoid paying people who help others when Linden Lab employees are unavailable?
So often I have read that Linden Lab is hiring. So often I hear of restructuring. So little I hear of restructuring to hire from within the community (outside of a small geographical area) and dealing with issues which are apparent in EVERY place but the SecondLife website and major media, which apparently has not clued into the fact that SecondLife is first and foremost about community… and the people it is made up of.
Frankly, I worry that the vision of SecondLife has become more outstripped by the bureaucracy which it has created. This worry continues to be validated. Can Linden Lab pick up on that in an abuse report system with pattern recognition?
I think not.
April 26th, 2007 at 5:29 PM
Finding a group for comments and help isn’t always easy when search is borked and anyway a lot of people are grouped out.
Plus, although Friends is working now, everytime I try to post to a group message I get an error or I have lack or permission…
But I’ll agree with others. If you take away channels, people will use, and overload, other ones. Basically, there is no way around employing proper staff - be they programmers and network specialists who know what they’re doing, or help and support staff….
April 26th, 2007 at 5:31 PM
Hey,
@ Robin Linden
I’m from germany - so the only way i’ll get support from linden lab would be to:
a) call a over-sea support hotline for a lot of money and being on hold
b) send a support request to support@secondlife.com and waiting for a response (the last took about over =four= weeks)
Is this correct? If so -> you can’t be serious, are you?
Regards
Cedric
April 26th, 2007 at 5:32 PM
WHY WAS I BANNED I DIDNT DO ANYTHING THE USPPORT ISNT DOING THEIR JOB?! I TRIED 2 LOG ON 2 SL 2DAY AND IT SAID MY ACCNT WAS DISABLED THIS IS STUPID! I WASN’T GETTING POCKETLOSS OR ANYTHING SO DONT TRY TO TELL ME THAT PLZ FIX IT!
April 26th, 2007 at 5:38 PM
I personally don’t like the idea of live help being removed from the client. However, if it was possible to make sure that people could still recieve help on time (not hours later), I would be fine with it. By the way, I’ve sent at least 25+ crash reports dealing with this new update. I can no longer open sl without it taking out my graphics card and windows at the same time…
Needless to say, I’m very sad. And I kinda liked this new update too…just not the part that makes my comp crash..
April 26th, 2007 at 5:47 PM
@ 45 live help was ok, no idea how it will work now.
same like me: crash reports i send and nothing is better.
was waiting 24 hours to log in after the new update.
i am now a small ugly naked avatar, nothing is loading just my pc crashing.
this is now more than sad
April 26th, 2007 at 5:49 PM
What can I say, they break more than they fix. Welcome to the “new, improved, and updated” Second Life.
April 26th, 2007 at 5:50 PM
Terrible.
Yet again less functionality, less service while LL makes more and more money and prepares to go public with an IPO. You write “the system made no distinction between urgent problems affecting many, and questions from individual Residents requiring a less immediate response.” How about reading the help requests and figuring out which ones are urgent? Triage of a sort. It’s not hard. There are occasions when in-world help has been essential. Telephone or email reports of malfunctions (e.g., on the mainland involving serious rendering or other like 3D problems — which has happened — and was fixed on the spot by a Linden) or massive griefer attacks bringing down a sim, etc. are not practical. As we all know, the phones are not answered, and email responses take weeks.
April 26th, 2007 at 6:34 PM
Well, that’s all fine and dandy, but you should try to actually ‘answer’ the support requests then, shouldn’t you? Billing and account info are fucked on a general basis and I can’t seem to make it work any way for more than perhaps 5 mins, if I’m lucky and the wind comes from the right direction and it’s a new moon. *sighs*
I’d rather not lose my land because your system is messed up. And yes, I’ve done every little single thing you’ve suggest in the ‘knowledge base’. And it’s not on my side it’s wrong. B ecause well, it obviously works SOME times… and my card issuer hasn’t rejected ANY requests from Linden Labs, even if I continually am being told so on the Secondlife.com website.
So just… you know, fix the problems instead of playing around with organisational trivialities
April 26th, 2007 at 6:53 PM
I was on hold for quite some time today waiting for SL assistance via telephone and heard a recorded promo (repeatedly) for the online Help Request option. If this was removed with the latest update, why is it still being promoted?
April 26th, 2007 at 7:22 PM
@ Robin “while we don’t plan to give Residents Linden powers, we are improving the tools that land owners have to manage problems on their estates. These tools range from a web form to report downed regions to access to abuse reports for island estates.”
The vast majority of help requests received in LiveHelp that were related to this sort of abuse were not from landowners that had issues with objects or harassment taking place on their own land. Parcel/Estate owners already possess the ability to remove these offending items. Legitimate Help requests (where outside intervention was clearly necessary) were from neighboring parcel owners who had no power to remove or block offending objects, particles, sounds etc when the landowner was not present or reachable.
If you are referring to creating more tools to help estate owners manage this sort of abuse, I am curious as to what those tools might be as there seem to be adequate tools in place already, either by deeding land to a group and attributing powers to certain roles or adding trusted residents as estate managers. Increasing or delimiting the number of residents that may be added to the banlist and/or giving estate owners the ability to manage their estates without actually being present on the estate would of course be very helpful. The ability to add a resident to the banlist via e-mail would be super handy as well.
The addition of estate managers on mainland sims is not an option and there are users who would prefer not to set or deed their parcels to a group. Even if a parcel is set to a group with several people in charge of managing that parcel, it does not guarantee that those residents will always be available to deal with a situation should it arise. If you have an event planned and scheduled for that time and you have exhausted all possiblities of contacting the persons responsible for managing the parcel, you pretty much need a Linden’s intervention. If you are unable to resolve the situation in a timely manner, your event is ruined, your patrons leave, you lose any investment monies you may have spent to obtain a performer or piece of artwork for a showing etc. You end up with a disgruntled resident that probably won’t stay in SL too much longer if they don’t have a thick skin. Help Requests of this type, I believe were well served via LiveHelp. Many residents did not think to contact the parcel owner for help or did not know that they could resolve it in this manner and a suggestion from LiveHelp to do so could sometimes resolve those situations quickly.
And of course there is the issue of language barriers. Will the abuse forms be available in several languages?
Dirk
April 26th, 2007 at 7:39 PM
My problem has been fixed thanks to the work of Dell Linden in Billing. Thank you so much Dell.
April 26th, 2007 at 7:41 PM
And also thanks to Natria Linden who fixed my problem and took the time to write me a nice email about it.
April 26th, 2007 at 7:42 PM
I lost about 800 items out of my inventory and I don’t know who to contact so I’m sorry I do it offtopic in here…
I need help please.. my nick ingame is “Sayhan Turas”.
April 26th, 2007 at 8:03 PM
Robin linden, you missed my post.
i looked at the other options for contacting support. .
those methods you keep pointing us to is insufficient to deal with urgent problems on the grid, primarily griefing attacks and region downtime, And in world help for newbies.And what if a land owner needs a linden to assist with greifing emergencies, or region performance issues?
April 26th, 2007 at 8:12 PM
my only concern is the feeling of concern i will have and have now when trying to get resolution to a problem. In this system there will be absolutely no feedback no human acknowledgment that i can see that will calm the concerns of the resident. once you hit enter on a web form or email, thats it, its over, and all we can do is hope and pray that we did it right that some one will see it with no guarantee of any of that. I know you all will be working hard behind the scenes and that it will be imposable to reply to every one but some times it helps greatly to just have someone a person and not a computer auto responder to say OK Crucial we will check that out. i know also that this is for the better of all of SL but i felt an urge to comment. btw Robin thank you for leaving comments open it is getting harder and harder to find any place to publicly comment on issues that we feel strongly about.
April 26th, 2007 at 8:27 PM
Alot of People applied on this Job to be one of those “popular” Liasions. Linden Lab seems to like people without experience. International is more as one joke here. For example, german liasions gettin hired, standing afk in the welcome area or Village or just ignore each message/question they get. Honestly why we have them as Liasion ?
Next Example, after many grid problems and contacting Life Help, Liasion joined us, told to deed a script to group and left. errrr ? no we dont play SL since 2 years and its a new bug feature to deed now objects to a group just to open your OWN script ?
and now finaly this statement here : “It’s important to keep in mind that removing Help Request does not mean that no one is available or paying attention.”
Yes this is right, 4 people contacting Life Help and Support per Email and still no answer. not to mention 20.000 Items lost from the Inventory, but hey, clear cache and it works right ? *giggles*
Seriously, Linden Labs has to change something, pick People with Skill, Experience and not those that telling you to deed a damn script to a group, when you like to open your OWN scripts
April 26th, 2007 at 8:30 PM
As others have said, I too have applied to help out. I’m not sure if I’m knowledgeable enough in all areas for Live Help, but I would be able to help out new people or with general issues. Of course, my application is still “in process….” so I don’t know what the problem is with getting volunteers if they just ignore anyone who tries to help.
And I’m completely confused by the help system now. Live help had it’s problems, and I understand that with the volume of users, it’s hard to keep up, but an in-world system is NEEDED, 100 percent. Keep in mind it’s not 5 million users….look at the number that have logged in lately, and the usual average of online users. Of course, it is still a lot. But something has got to be implemented, I feel like I have nothing to do or no one to contact if someone goes wrong. I wouldn’t even try calling or sending an email…we all know how those usually turn out, and waiting 5 weeks to be contacted by email isn’t even worth the trouble.
On a random note, why in the world was the feature that let you click edit on objects and see who the creator was, how many prims it had, etc, disabled? It was useful in so many ways…and need’s to be brought back! What in the world? And by the way, this lets griefers have a much easier time..now you can’t click on items they shoot at you or use to bug you and find out who the owner is..so if you find yourself in a cage or being followed by annoying devices, have fun trying to figure out who they’re from!
April 26th, 2007 at 9:06 PM
I think Linden Labs should create a live help chat client on there support page… my internet has this and although they can not deal with billing issues they can deal with everything else that is technical through this live help chat… issues involving non billing problems can be addressed and help to those that need it…. especially to some that can not call this 1-800 number due to being out of the country or can not wait 4 weeks for a reply because they have a serious issue that needs fixed!
April 26th, 2007 at 10:32 PM
While the description of this is nice, it’s not terribly comforting to know I need to file a report regarding, say, grid attacks - after all, it took half an hour for a grid-wide blue notice to populate out yesterday! - how can we be sure the report actually GOES THROUGH to someone?
Getting a lot of auto-replies and then hearing nothing else beyond “we can’t tell you what we did but we’re closing this ticket” messages is NOT TERRIBLY COMFORTING and is one of the many reasons residents feel that their complaints aren’t being heard.
April 26th, 2007 at 10:35 PM
Hello,
Support at our fingertips didn’t last long. Your math is interesting. 50 total help people which is twice what you have (25), and going on six million residents. Hmmm. Sounds like your not wanting to provide support to me. So it will be 50 per roughly 6 million?
Look, I’ve wrote in to support@, Concierge@, and filed numerous requests for assistance. Today, I have two homes under my sim and our sims continue to eat our prim and throw them to 0,0,0.
Nothing has been done. At all. I’ve requested a rollback and the rollback was correct. Immediately after the rollback the inventory goes off world and the sim eats the inventory.
This would be considered an emergency need no? With the help at my finger button, I had people that I could at least report the issues to as they happened. Now you have made it more difficult and in fact have done nothing to fix the sims issues as of this hour.
50 per six million. You know, 800 per six million still sounds minute to me in terms of the number to serve and assist ratio.
April 26th, 2007 at 10:44 PM
PS,
Just as an additional comment, 300 USD per month per sim times all the users whom own them deserves support. When paying this kind of money per server, it’s a given it should be a managed server and service. Thus, support is needed. Without access to backup our own work, data, etc.. And without being able to download such to ourselves for backup purposes, this also mandates the need for support.
Administrating your own server for a much lesser amount would be one thing, but for the costs paid and as already mentioned, support for the service is paramount, an absolute necessity.
April 26th, 2007 at 10:59 PM
Sorry for the off topic post, but THANK YOU LL for making a linked object in inventory appear as a “linked” object, instead of a “single” box. It makes it SOOOO much easier to differentiate between single objects and linked ones; THANK you once again
April 26th, 2007 at 11:27 PM
Why to do simple when complicates works fine ?
April 26th, 2007 at 11:31 PM
this is very nice
but
I just transferred 15000 L to slex, trans# 286047719
they never made it, transaction timed out but indeed they are not in my account anymore
who do I talk to and how?
April 26th, 2007 at 11:33 PM
Guys. I love SL am a concierge client spending nearly 1000US$ per month. But lets make one point that Ive not seen made elsewhere. The concurrent users online at one time is not increasing now. That means that newbies joining stay a while then do not return. Secondly, it’s your buggy system that is generating the support requests. Sort out your system and you can reduce the support requests. Seems very simple to me.
April 27th, 2007 at 12:27 AM
“If you are referring to creating more tools to help estate owners manage this sort of abuse, I am curious as to what those tools might be as there seem to be adequate tools in place already, either by deeding land to a group and attributing powers to certain roles or adding trusted residents as estate managers.”
@Dirk,
All of the actions being performed and advertised right now at SL just looks like Linden is passing off the buck on those that operate the sim. Don’t increase support and provide better service by any means, but rather pass off your job to those that operate the sims. Who asked the sim operators if they wanted to be more involved in managing the abuse on “LINDEN LABS” servers? See it’s much easier to manipulate words, say you are the sim owner, and force users to comply via continued changes to policy. The fact is, LINDEN is responsible for the abuse and or/illegal activity on their servers and within their service. But it’s much easier to force someone else to be the one responsible for what is happening on the server. Until the theory blows up.
Same with support. Take away even more service provided. This is all I have seen for the last several posted updates. Less service and more responsibility on the end user. This is not an acceptable practice for most. I would have preferred a broad and more detailed discussion about all of the changes in these matters prior to any decisions being made. Why should I want the responsibility and not get paid for it?
Why is it a sim operator leasing virtual space from Linden be responsible for the abuse on a sim? Or need more tools to what?
It’s obvious to a majority I’m sure that abuse tickets always came beck resolved and seldom resolved. But why should the abuse have anything whatsoever to do with the server/sim admin who has no control over Linden Lab policy?
Most of what I am seeing makes little or no sense. I have a hard time believing that Linden would really believe that removing support features and adding abuse tools to an estate will be looked at as anything less than “You take care of it, we are going golfing” in the eyes of the majority. Another way to pocket another buck and keep the operations costs at minimal while those paying for the service suffer.
I have seen better support on a 10 dollar a month shared host.
I know I sound angry. That is because I am. I don’t like what I see
happening at all.
April 27th, 2007 at 1:56 AM
Politically worded, but let’s be honest and get the message straight out: not everyone’s issues can be resolved. If effort could be spent on each person’s issue, there’d be very little additional effort to respond to the IM. So the honest truth is that our problems likely WON’T be addressed unless they pose a largescale problem for more than just an individual.
If this weren’t the case, we could just have additional information to enter when making a help request, so that it could be sorted into the right bucket and addressed more efficiently. But that’s not being done.
April 27th, 2007 at 2:47 AM
What an utter waste of blog space. Support was never much use, now you’ve all but withdrawn it, and at a time when SL is less reliable and more buggy than ever.
Why not just pull the plug altogether and have done with it?
I’m sick of LL play-acting and public posturing while things continue to fall apart.
April 27th, 2007 at 2:58 AM
Ahhh…… another example of LL stifling the noise of the many. Take away the help tools - bug reports will be next (they are mainly ignored anyway). Already gone is the forum for discussing problems and many of the blog entries that one would like to comment on are “closed for discussion”. Phone calls are sent straight to /dev/null so basically… if you have a problem - tough…. If you need help…. tough.
So the forums were getting too large to be managed properly… lets see at the time there were less than 1m users I believe…. Blizzard Entertainment manages to keep their forums running and they have over 8m users….
Help requests were getting to hard to manage (and you would have to emply 800 new staff?) - again Blizzard Entertainment manages to operate a very good Ticket system. In fact I used there system just the other day at 2am and had a GM contact me within the hour regarding it - pretty good I think. But you just “remove them”.
SL is a ground breaking system - I think we would all agree on that - but the trend is undeniable. As SL has grown (and grown and grown - basically because of Philip’s world view of cramming as many people into the system as possible with little or no thought for scalability) its seams have started to tear. Who has not seen an increase of lag, grid problems, inventory issues to name just a few. There are two ways to deal with these problems, listen to the comments of users and do something about them - or cut off the lines of communication so that users CANNOT comment about them.
I think the problem is that by taking so many new users on and not ensuring that the system is truly scalable LL have simply bitten off more than they can chew and leaving support tools like help available cause problems because the solution to the problems people are wanting help with are not known.
LL, a word or two of advice. People are getting fed up with being treated like idiots. At the moment you are in a pretty safe position -people wont leave (at least not enough to concern you) because there is no alternative product. However that will change. Someday someone will create another system as good or better than SL and then you will find people leaving and going there. Start employing people to SOLVE these problems - if that means employing more developers then DO that. Sure your profit margins will go down - but the alternative is for you to end up loosing a large proportion of your population because people are too frustrated with the service.
Emply people to do the work needed
Work on making your customers feel like “customers” and treat them with the respect that a customer deserves - give them tools to ask for help.
Stop removing things from the system just because you dont want to listen anymore
I used to enjoy my time in SL - but now its a mightmare. Everywhere I go takes about 2 mins to rez - I often cant even walk because the lag is soo bad. Inventory is often wrong, doesnt search or items just go missing.
So PLEASE think again and put the tools BACK in the client.
And yes… I AM angry.
April 27th, 2007 at 3:40 AM
@Tracy
I feel that LL is quite right in making estate owners accountable for handling abuse on their regions. The tools are in place to make this possible, they just need a little tweaking here and there. Estate owners have made a promise to serve the needs of their residents at the same level or better than LL might be able and the estate owners should make good on that by always having someone available to respond to these needs.
After all, if I lease a server to maintain and operate web sites, I am responsible for seeing to it that the needs of the customers that I have solicited are met and that rules regarding proper conduct are followed. That responsibilty does not fall back on the company where I am leasing the server. I as well as my customers are bound to adhere to the terms of service that the leasing company has implemented and I may impose additional terms of service as long as they are not in conflict with my provider. (These additional terms of service would be regarded as our covenant with Linden Lab of course being the provider)
If someone abuses, harasses, posts viruses, hacking tools or copyrighted material on the server that I am leasing, I am responsible for removing the material in question and dealing with my customer. Granted, if a traceroute is run to the NOC, a complaining party can contact them for removal of the material but in turn I am going to be held accountable. I am going to receive a letter or phonecall from the NOC that says, “Hey buddy, you appear to be raking in some pretty nice cash thanks to our lease but you need to pay attention and screen your clients more carefully. If we catch one more web site distributing warez on your server, you are history.”
I will grant you that there is a big difference here in that when leasing web space, the user is known to you and the data that they are posting is going to be in a known directory on the server. You generally do not have random users posting offensive materials all over the web site as they can only look at the web site, they cannot interact with it in a way that is going to keep other users from enjoying the experience because they do not have permissions to execute. Forums and other interactive messaging systems are another story but if you have a blog or a forum, you generally remove the offensive posts or blog entries yourself. You do not jump on the phone to the web host and ask them to do that for you. In terms of Second Life, residents CAN interact with the environment (sometimes) because landowners have left the ability to execute certain actions open to them. (building, running scripts etc). You can do this on your web site as well although it is not generally recommended. However, unless the covenant or terms of service forbids the owner from having these abilities turned on, there is the chance that a random resident may execute something unsavory.
Now if this were a web site that I hosted, would I be obligated to act? No, not really. If one of my clients uploads a script that is unsecure and they get hacked, I will certainly work to restore any lost data but since it would not be a failure on the part of my service or the company from whom I lease the server I may charge a fee, unless I wanna be a really nice guy about it.
In Second Life restoring such data is not so easy because many regions are divided into parcels, some which may not have been affected by any loss that you may have incurred on YOUR parcel. Restoring the region or rolling it back inconveniences and affects everyone else that owns a parcel in that region.
I believe it is anomalies such as these (those gray areas where SL is not exactly the same as a web hosting provider) that LL is working to address.
My question to Robin was really aimed more towards concerns regarding the mainland as mainland regions do not have owners or estate managers that can access the estate tools. All of those reports will fall into the laps of the Lindens. Obviously making estate owners accountable for handling abuse within their regions will reduce a sizeable portion of that load. But, if estate owners start banning abusive residents from their regions in numbers, it is to the mainland those residents will run. Opening e-mail after e-mail and then making sure the e-mail is legitimate (as the abuse form can also be abused) is my concern. In the LiveHelp chat environment, you could weed those out fairly well. In fact, there were attempts to upset the efforts of LiveHelp on a few instances that I am aware of. A radio station broadcasting in a club was one culprit. They attempted to play a prank on LiveHelp to bring a Linden out to the club. There were residents present at that event that popped into LiveHelp to alert us of this and the time that would have been wasted responding to that call was avoided. We were most thankful for that immediate information.
April 27th, 2007 at 3:53 AM
congratulations LL you have found a way around the need to hire more live help people to match the growing PAYING customer base, and further increase your bottom line at the same time. let’s give them a round of applause!
i know i always enjoy seeing companies take my money and keep wedging degrees of separation between themselves and the customer.
way to go!
April 27th, 2007 at 4:52 AM
Great, so now when griefers strike were reduced to the long dead abuse report form and a wait and see if anything gets done. When something goes wrong with my account I have to …… phone the ‘nobody there’ customer support numbers? what about when a sim needs a restart or or or or ……
Customer support is dead, so why haven’t membership fee’s gone down?
April 27th, 2007 at 4:53 AM
“@Tracy
I feel that LL is quite right in making estate owners accountable for handling abuse on their regions. The tools are in place to make this possible, they just need a little tweaking here and there. Estate owners have made a promise to serve the needs of their residents at the same level or better than LL might be able and the estate owners should make good on that by always having someone available to respond to these needs.”
I disagree with this completely. How in the heck am I supposed to provide better service to my clients than Linden Labs supports to me?
Look, I have a degree and 20 years in this. You cannot provide a service better the the entity in which you use to give it. Period. And with all the issues in SL at the moment, the lack of support etc… You provide nothing more to your clients than a “Well Linden is having issues at the moment” statements because you have no control whatsoever over the services you sell. None. You might provide a nice atmosphere, you might provide quality support to your end user in helping with issues within your power, but you do not have access at a level that would even allow your own self to give such a service
You simply cannot give which thou hast not.. Bottom line.
Look I disagree with you. I did not agree to provide better support to anyone than what is provided by Linden Labs. What am I supposed to do? I cannot even get good support myself for prim crashing under
neath the sims. So when this happens and it’s a renters home and all of his data is under the sim… What exactly am I going to do to provide better service to my client than I was given?
And no, we should not be responsible for abuse on the servers. I have hosted in a data center as the company owner with racks of servers. The terms of service is always the same. You as the “SERVICE PROVIDER” are the responsible party. Not the end user. You are saying that we are the service provider because we lease space to others.. This is inaccurate completely. I am no co-locating in the Linden Labs datacenter, I am doing no more than re-sell hosting
with the assumption that I will be able to provide decent service to the client given to me by Linden Labs. No more, no less.
We don’t even own the merchandise that we purchase with real USD on these servers. If we do, I want a mysql backup of all of my data,
access to unix root, access to the raw log files, and access to Support
that I can pass down to my clients.
We have a right to disagree. I hope you feel we are doing this agreeably.
Thank you,
Tracy
April 27th, 2007 at 4:55 AM
See… the problem is this:
Linden labs CAN’T … EVER … OFFER … SUPPORT FOR THIS!
It’s just not possible anymore, because SL has grown too much.
By retreating more and more from support they only do what’s necessary for them to somewhat survive.
@LL
Give the users as much control as possible and try and provide servers and offer as much support as you possibly can, but tell everyone when things are broken.
Admit when something is broken, and do so fast. That’s all I want from you.