Coming your way soon: new Support Portal [UPDATE]
Monday, May 21st, 2007 at 3:20 AM by: cynlinden[Update] Bug reports and abuse reports do not fall under the purview of support and are unaffected by these changes. Estate managers may submit requests for rollbacks and regions down through the ticket submission system.
Thanks everyone for the great feedback as always. I am going to answer a few questions and give you a bit more detail about the new services.
Earlier communication: A few of you expressed that you wished we had communicated earlier what we were going to do. Erring on the side of prudence, we didn’t feel we wanted to make an announcement about our specific plans while they were still in flux. We would much prefer to make more general announcements about changes than reveal specifics that may have to change and then disappoint or confuse the community.
Additional services and support levels: Several of you asked about different service levels, paying per support ticket, etc. As stated, we will evaluate the need for more support levels and services, and put them in place as necessary according to demand and what we think is scalable for us internally. We won’t know what these new levels are and what makes sense to implement until we have lived with the new system for a little while, so bear with us while we collect some data. Part of that data collection means talking to residents as well, so look for some meeting announcements in the weeks after we implement the new system if you are interested in participating.
New system implementation: We are looking to push this live this week, barring any last minute issues. Please recognize that this is all new to us, and the testing environment is not nearly as robust as the real world 
There may be problems, we might run into issues we are not expecting. I suspect a lot of people will want to try the new system out, and that might cause difficulties. Please be patient and reserve judgment until we have had a chance to work the kinks out.
New tools
Improved Knowledge Base and new Solution Finder: The new system has new tools that you will be able to use to get the help you need. Primary among them is the Solution Finder and Knowledge Base. We have taken the best of the old Knowledge Base and thrown out the outdated information, and revamped the whole thing. The solution finder is a pretty nifty new thing. Although the Knowledge Base is extremely searchable, the Solution Finder allows you to quickly get the facts on specific issues.
If you are a premium or concierge level resident, you also get these new features:
Webform Based Ticket submission: Emailing the support team is no longer. Why? We want to be able to respond to you efficiently, and to do so we must evaluate your issues for content as they come in. The new ticket submission allows you to submit a support ticket that you can then track in the My Support page. Better tools on our end will get you better response times, and with the My Support pages feature you can look back to see previous answers and read Live Text Chat conversations as well.
Live Text Chat: Initially available to you during business hours (9am-6pm), this module replaces the phone service we used to have. We believe that with Live Text Chat we will be able to provide you with better response time and more valuable answers, since they will be permanently available for you to reference from the My Support page. To some extent this also replaces the Live Help/Help Request group in world, but in a much more sensible way. Rather than the free for all of an open IM channel, this allows us to target agents who can help you with your specific question. We expect this to be a popular feature, and as such may have heavy traffic initially, bear with us while we get our feet under us on this one.
Phone Service: Concierge level customers will continue to have phone support via the Concierge line. If you are not in possession of this information, please contact the concierge team via email (concierge@lindenlab.com) until the launch, and after the launch, please submit a support request.
Thank you again for your attention and support. If I have not addressed your question specifically this time around, I will do so in another update.
May 21st, 2007 at 3:29 AM
A very good scaling move. Also a justification for upgrading to a Premium account. Keep up the good work!
May 21st, 2007 at 3:43 AM
Thanks for the update. This does clarify things better. I didn’t see meniton though about Abuse Reports and Bug Reports so I’m hoping this means those aren’t classifed as ’support tickets’ and are still open to all people. Also what about Estate Managers who aren’t concierge level paying residents?
May 21st, 2007 at 3:47 AM
Now all we need are the non-cc methods of payment for debit card holders around the world who don’t have credit cards and we might be able to move to premium, or become even more second class citizens than we are….
May 21st, 2007 at 3:47 AM
Good luck with the new system(s)!
One question, what is the policy around US public holidays? Does that mean some levels of support will be closed?
May 21st, 2007 at 3:56 AM
Awesome! I’ll be happy to keep the tickets flowing.
Just kidding, thanks again and can’t wait to see it.
.fox
May 21st, 2007 at 4:01 AM
By the way (oh for an edit button) when can we expect to see actual responses instead of automated replies? We reported some prim litter on an adjacent property due to an absentee landowner, and got a ‘completed’ reply from Michael Linden - but the junk is still there.
If you’re going to ignore a request, at least let us know, so we can respond appropriately using other methods available instead of sitting in hope that one day something might get done.
The land is the residential property next to the Stratics sandbox in Rosieri, by the road, if you’d like to check the billing status of the landowner for possible reclaimation and resale.
Broccoli
May 21st, 2007 at 4:06 AM
could you plz consider the estates managers as consierge ? if not every thing will hang on the sim owners
Thank you for bringing live help back at least for the premium/consierge members
Yay for LL
May 21st, 2007 at 4:07 AM
Whilst I agree with the sentiments of not announcing something too early, the real problem was that you removed the existing support options without announcing the replacement. It may have been better to have delayed removing existing support until you were ready to announce and roll out the new support.
Removing the existing support prematurely, just supported the view that LL doesn’t care about supporting its paying customers.
Also, whilst this is hopefully a step in the right direction, clever systems such as ticket tracking and live chat will only work if you have the staff to support them! LL need to accept that they are offering a global 24/7 service in a world where if a customer who pays for global service which is available around the clock, expects to get support around the clock. The whole llGiveInventoryFolder bug fiasco (”hi, there’s a bug, we’re off home for the weekend now, see you Monday, bye…”) just illustrates that LL current offer minimal support at SL’s most busiest times!
May 21st, 2007 at 4:26 AM
While this Announcment gave clarification and adresses some of the real serious issues, where is still at least one thing important what you forgot.
While a Sim is open 24/7 and may maybe cause trouble 24/7, a single human being can’t be available 24/7 may have some sleep in real life, a Firstlife maybe and maybe even may go on vacation for a week or two or even 3 Weeks.
What exactly is while Providers do not have a support Agent in their Company but a suppor Team…if one is on vacation, the other may not go and nect time otherway round…
As do the Sim Owners have Estate Managers to take Care in their name for the Land Owners and residents….
If those are and this often happens are no Premium Account holders, these Estate Managers are completely blocked out of any support like every Free Account holder is….
Do you think of giving Estate managers also the Support access of Sim Owners or do you realy think you may give Sim Owners the full Support they need and their representatives no support at all….
Btw, this would make the Estate Owner useless in all cases of Serious Trouble what can not be solved wiothout the support…..please think of giving one or better two representatives of the sim owners what have Estate manager Status inWorld the same Support Access as the Sim Owner forself
This is in my eyes and the eyes of some Sim Owners i know a serious gap in your thaughts.
May 21st, 2007 at 4:31 AM
Please don’t. I don’t want my tenant estate managers calling in and making requests that would cost me money.
May 21st, 2007 at 4:55 AM
Wow! Improved support is a great idea. Especially as I’ve been waiting since Friday 11th May for a reply to the email I sent to support. They are still ignoring me, despite a reminder email sent about 6 days ago!!! Pull your socks up Linden Lab!
May 21st, 2007 at 5:23 AM
Oh, goodie…. so maybe my next door (absentee) neighbor’s bushes in my bedroom will be taken care of now? I have called twice and left messages with “support”. But I have heard not even a peep from a Linden.
Both my (not absentee) landlord and I have tried to contact him with no luck. Dare I hope that the new support system will be able to figure out how to fix the issue?
Sign me, Renter with Premium Account aka money maker for Linden Labs.
P.S. So the link to a Support Page below my comment here is to something that doesn’t work?
May 21st, 2007 at 5:43 AM
I hope all residence, basic or premium, can continue to handle the billing issues by email or electronically. I just had the case that my land peak usage was simply incorrect, and Linden were about to charge me for land I didnt own anymore. This was solved in a couple of days by email. It would have been very annoying if I would have had to pay for expensive transatlantic phonecalls just to have this problem fixed.
May 21st, 2007 at 5:44 AM
Live text 9am-6pm …. great …. 9-6 in WHAT time zone??
If it replaces phone support does that mean we lose any phone support outside the USA and only have a text option in one of your many time zones? Which one? The same as SL I have to guess.
LL talks about how great it is having Euro customers but it’s very much US SL.
May 21st, 2007 at 5:44 AM
Cyn, thanks for keeping us updated. I would join the chorus of people asking for Estate Managers to be able to contact Concierge as well; in my former dealings with the Concierge team, I saw that for almost all cases they never failed to reply to a contact from an Estate Manager, but it would be nice if you wrote this explicitly to make sure that 100-sim estates will not rely upon a single person to call support
I’m also intrigued with the notion of “Live Text Chat” replacing phone calls. From the brief description, I’m assuming this will be web based and not in-world, is that correct? It would also be nice if you could move it in-world somehow, although, with some tricks, it might be possible to develop a HUD to do that (saving the last X lines of text on hover text or even using a XyText), unless you’re deploying one of those closed, proprietary Java applets that are impossible to interface with.
To what extent will this “replacement” be effective? I’ve lost an account in September, due to the password change, and since then, I’ve never managed to contact support on the phone since that day. Obviously, if the password was changed, I’m assuming I won’t be able to use Live Text; and since this was a Basic account, I’m probably not qualified to call support on the phone. So how will these cases get addressed?
May 21st, 2007 at 5:48 AM
Will the Knowledge Base re-write include updates to the Macintosh-specific information? Looking forward to all this.
May 21st, 2007 at 5:48 AM
Gwyneth… presumably the idea for having some things on ‘traditional web’ is that, if SL is completely belly up for you, how can you get in to use the function like HUD based chat?
It’s like the old Windows message of “No keyboard detected, press any key to continue”…
Broccoli
May 21st, 2007 at 5:49 AM
strike my last comment… I can see the problems with making the managers consierge / premium … but we do however need them to get a hold of LL if anything happens while the simowner isnt available so her is an idea:
Set up an island / sim that only allows people in from the concierge group nad the lindens…. make sure that invites are sendt out to all new sim owners and let them know they have to ask for their managers to be included in the concierge group…. make some kind of system on the sim (concierge/linden sim) that enables people to get a hold of you. this way the managers do not have to be premium members if they dont want to but they can still do their job.
The diff members from the consierge groub can meet there to, and as time goes maybe expanding the sim.
Does that sound ok? just an idea that might make it easier
May 21st, 2007 at 6:01 AM
Hummmm…. Not sure if anyone has picked up on this, but acording to the April 2007 Key Metrics the population was 5,973,301. The number of premium accounts was 83,063. So, from Aprils figures 5,890,230 would not qualify for full support, making the total amount of residents that qualify for full support only 1.38% of the population. Obviously the the figures will differ slightly now as the population has changed, but i expect it to be around the same percentage.
btw, i am one of the 98.62% that does not have a premium account, yet in the past 45 days i have spent more then $200usd on l$, yet i wont be able to get full support. The reason i dont have a premium account is that i live on a private sim and dont actually need a premium account to live there.
Adelle.
May 21st, 2007 at 6:12 AM
I’ve seen this “web based” CS before… shall we all start brushing up on our Hindi now? In and of itself, this isn’t a problem, but from my experience, the CS reps are given a script from which they may NOT vary making them, in essence, a “live canned response”… not a big change…
May 21st, 2007 at 6:30 AM
Well, i hope it will be the right step into the right way.But i hope too, that you fix all issues which came with last updates before you place another new update with another new issues.i think not only the community will be confused by it. Yourself confuse yourself with it
I know that an update cant take away all issues….but most of them.And it would be a great help for the whole community if you may place general updates not every week.The last weeks it looks like that.
Now i hope the New Help will be a great help for all.
May 21st, 2007 at 7:02 AM
@ 16 > “btw, i am one of the 98.62% that does not have a premium account, yet in the past 45 days i have spent more then $200usd on l$, yet i wont be able to get full support. The reason i dont have a premium account is that i live on a private sim and dont actually need a premium account to live there.”
Full Support = Premium Membership. Full Support is one of the benefits that Premium Membership offers.
If you value the benefits of full support then you will become a premium member. If you are already paying $200USD per 45 days, then surely an extra $6USD per month will not put a hole in your pocket.
May 21st, 2007 at 7:06 AM
#16 Said:
“Not sure if anyone has picked up on this, but acording to the April 2007 Key Metrics the population was 5,973,301. The number of premium accounts was 83,063. So, from Aprils figures 5,890,230 would not qualify for full support, making the total amount of residents that qualify for full support only 1.38% of the population.”
Well, let’s take a look at Linux, shall we? What it the total installed base for Linux? Compare that to the “Paid” install base, from those using RedHat or some other paid-support version. Betcha the percentage of “Support-Available” installs is lower than even SL.
You get what you pay for, folks. TANSTAAFL.
May 21st, 2007 at 7:21 AM
this is a great plan, and I think it should help a great deal. Looking forward to testing it.
May 21st, 2007 at 7:32 AM
This all looks like a great plan, Cyn. And thanks for a very “human” post, with a lot of honest explanation of the situation, and why you decided to delay a detailed announcement until now. Posts like this are very much appreciated.
I’m looking forward to seeing how this works out!
May 21st, 2007 at 8:05 AM
When are you going to fix the reactivation mechanism chadrick posted here:
http://blog.secondlife.com/2007/05/16/a-fix-worth-a-thousand-logins/
It seems to have broken almost instantly. Chadrick said to come back in an hour. 4 DAYS ago. My account has been disabled for 11 days and counting now.
No reply from support at all. no help from anywhere. That account has 7 months of work in it. IT is irreplaceabel. I NEED it back.
I’m pretty sure everyone else you’ve disabled feels the same way too. Please fix this so we can actually update our contact info,
May 21st, 2007 at 8:41 AM
Thank you for the clarification on Abuse Reports and Bug Reports not being a part of what is in this new Support system. I am greatly relieved that Abuse Reports and Bug Reports can continue to be submitted by all members, regardless of payment status. So I guess if we have griefers or a TOS violation to deal with, we do that with an AR, and hope the new triage system for AR submissions catches it and responds.
However, if Bug Reports all have to be submitted via the JIRA database (and gods knows when, or if, anyone will consider acting on them), and if a problem arises that requires immediate attention yet where there is no clear person to AR, how do we proceed?
For example, if I am in a sim, and I can see that inventory will not rez there? Or if I am in a sim and can’t teleport out of it? Submitting a bug report doesn’t sound like something that would get any sort of immediate resolution, yet the sim isn’t “down”, per se… And might not even be a sim that I am associated with personally. I am just there, and am concerned because there is a clear and present problem…
It would help a lot if we had a clear list of the sort of things that are acceptable to submit to this Support System, versus things that LL fees should just be submitted as bug reports.
As a Basic Member who is often assigned duties as an Estate manager for multiple clients, I will echo the request that an Estate Manager should also be on the Concierge-tier access to support, with regard to the Estates that they manage. We act on behalf of the sim owner when they are not on-line. We can’t do that without full concierge access.
May 21st, 2007 at 8:44 AM
What about those who paid US$225.00 Lifetime membership?
if we have a problem can we call Linden Labs?
Will we be treated like premium members?
May 21st, 2007 at 8:49 AM
First of all thanks for this development, its a great step forward if the plan works - and with all of our help it CAN work.
Secondly, thanks for posting this blog at 3.20am PDT giving us on the other side of the world a chance to make some comment before your 100-comments limit gets closed off.
And finally, yes you guessed it because its already been mentioned a couple of times here already, given that more than two thirds of your business is from users outside of the USA when are you going to upgrade to a 24/7 service?
Apart from that, keep up the good work!
May 21st, 2007 at 8:55 AM
I can’t wait for the new systems in place.
We all expect a bug here and there, but I know you’re going to do well with this.
May 21st, 2007 at 9:16 AM
I have to join in with the many who have stated that Estate Managers need the same access as Estate Owners. My husband and I own an island, but we can’t both be the estate owner. We both need the same access. Mind you I have paid for premium membership, so I suppose I’m good to go! But many people have not done the same thing. I would think Estate Managers need equal rights in this case!
May 21st, 2007 at 9:16 AM
“and the testing environment is not nearly as robust as the real world”
Oh!? U-oh! Oooh!
Is that possible? Unbelievable!
May 21st, 2007 at 9:24 AM
Yay, now even more people can get shafted when LL screws up your account and bans you for no reason.
May 21st, 2007 at 9:46 AM
Wonderful progress, lets make this part of it work!
But WOW! 5,890,230 people wandering around without any visible support (16). Ok so perhaps 75% of them have already worked out how to survive. Of the remainder most are just passing through (10% retention from new sign ups remember) but thats still a lot of people who will not know about or read the blog and wouldn’t know a bug if it orbited them. Abuse reports. na, they are new, so everything is normal and they didn’t read and understand the TOS anyway.
This new system is long overdue and I fully support it, but who’s handling the confusion on the ground. Greeters, volunteers, mentors whats their role , if any, in all this. Or are they no longer needed now?
If LL wants to retain new sign ups then the ‘induction’ does not stop at leaving the Help Island. In world support needs to be visible and obvious, and reporting abuse needs to have a visible effect. (Perhaps a bolt of LL lightening frying the odd griefer would be a start. At least there would be the illusion of order instead of the reality of anarchy.)
People are here to play, not debug software or report the transgressions of others. Its easier to just walk away as 90% seem to do already.
BTW. how does anyone report verbal (speech) abuse when that arrives. Speech leaves no evidence.
May 21st, 2007 at 9:53 AM
Ok, on the description, this portal is most everything I could ask for in a support system for SL, though I personally rarely need such support. I like the bolt of lightening idea in comment 27 though. However, I suspect such a system would take a monster overhaul of the backend, plus some viewer changes. I’ll settle for a Linden being able to show up quickly to deal with cagers and the like when a property owner or high level group member on group land is not available.
May 21st, 2007 at 10:00 AM
That answered a lot of questions
If this was answered can you please tell me where?
“What about Lifetime US$ 225.00 Accounts?
Where do they fall?”
and if not, what is the answer?
May 21st, 2007 at 10:09 AM
I am soooo glad that finally other estate managers are chiming in. Many of us managers do not own land and therefore have no access to concierge service (altho in the distant past we did). Not all of us have active owner participation. And WE are the ones responsible for keeping the sim moving and dealing with emergencies.
This has been a very sore point for months now and if this portal goes into effect, there will be many more than just me hurting.
May 21st, 2007 at 11:26 AM
Why has my comment (number 11) not been approved when there was nothing derogatory in it? I simply stated the truth: that technical support have taken more than 10 days to reply to my email and still have not? Why are you guys ignoring me?! If it is because I have a free account then you are not doing much to encourage me to pay for one!!!
May 21st, 2007 at 11:31 AM
k this is good but can u guys FIX THE INVENTORY BUG PLEEEEEEASE
May 21st, 2007 at 12:36 PM
First, let me say, good job Linden Labs. I really feel this is a step in the right direction, and hopefully this will allow you to resolve serious matters in a more timely manner, as well as handle the influx of support questions you must deal with day-to-day.
Thank you for offering the concierge status to estate owners, but I do have a single concern:
Estate managers — in particular those lacking a premium account or large land holdings of their own — may now have difficulty requesting your assistance in case of serious regions issues, such as dealing with grey goo, region crashers, and other such major griefer attacks. The estate owner, after all, cannot be here all the time. Just as they rely upon the estate managers, so estate managers need to be able to contact Linden Labs in case of emergency. Please consider offering estate managers — regardless of their payment status — a direct line to Linden Labs to be used solely for serious region-related issues.
Thank you for considering this, and thank you very much for all you’ve done to help keep improving Second Life. Keep up the good work.
May 27th, 2007 at 11:42 AM
Dear Support:
My problem.is :i was short 23 usd,instaed of paying from my lindens,i went and updated the visa infos(not knowink what was awaiting me)the visa allows me to enter my card number and expiration’s date only.
the information that comes after submit,is jsut a blank tall erea.
plaese ll any a dvice is appreciated.
fahad mahfouz
May 30th, 2007 at 4:57 AM
Since the main Support Portal entry is closed for responses, I’ll have to dump it here:
Parature’s system is nice and has promise, and I especially liked the idea of rating entries and leaving comments to suggest improvements….
…only it doesn’t seem to work.
After posting a comment, I got the following mail (header only):
>Unknown user: LindenLabs@parature.com
>
>RCPT TO generated following response:
>550 unknown user
>
>Original message follows.
This does not look like a feature, guys…
June 14th, 2007 at 7:01 AM
I am a premium resident who owns land in excess of that specified for a concierge account however I cannot seem to log into that service. I have sent an email to the concierge@linden.com and it was bounced back to me. How can I resolve this???? HELP
August 30th, 2007 at 3:06 AM
…….
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