I could live with the response time if they actually read the goddamn questions. I just don't understand how anyone cares that little. It must be a horrible support environment and a terrible company (or at least department) to work in.
Seriously, they need to fire some people over there.
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As an ex support employee (not Steam though) I can tell you, the people there have targets to make. Which means X number of cases 'handlds' in Y amount of time.
And from a managing pov that's logical. Maybe 7 out of 10 tickets get handled correctly by doing easy and fast standard answer while only reading the first couple of lines, but if that takes half as long as to be sure to have a right answer the first time, that's still a huge economical benefit timewise.
My tip for support is to do the opposite of what seems logical to you. Normally you tell your story, and recap everythjing in once sentence at the end. For support, do it the other way around. Start with your recap/resume (don't really know the correct english word in this context) and explain afterwards. As support just reads the first couple of lines, thinks "ahh, this is the issue" and sends out an (preferable standard) answer accordingly.
I know it is better for customer experience to feel 'heard' but better accept the way support works (if you need it) and adjust accordingly.
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This just makes me want to write a long story that does not explain anything about any problem and then put the small summary at the end so they have to read the entire thing... if everyone did that then their "economical" approach would no longer work and they would have to fix it rather than just bumming the easy way out.
I wouldn't want to get anyone fired for not meeting goals but i mean damn support structures all need to change because its complete horse shit the way they are now.
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I have always done this, in everything, ever. This is how you write anything that you are told to write in school. Basic essay structure starts with an introduction of the topic at hand.
I still only get copy and past bullshit from steam support. When I contact support, my first bit is always talking about not giving me a copy and paste bullshit response. That works maybe one in ten, because companies do not care about this side of customer service.
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I've had a couple of pleasant experiences with Steam support though.They've actually made a couple of exceptions in their policies for me multiple times due to certain circumstances.Have yet to see another support do that.
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They just need better managers, supervisors, and quality assurance. Well probably the whole package, but the lowly workers answering the support tickets probably are on a crappy quota and have to crunch to get shit done. I know all about support and what it can take.
They probably need to hire more support reps to answer the e-mails too I bet. But they don't want to pay the cost, it's an uphill battle for sure.
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The thing that is telling is how bad the management is. If they were half paying attention, they could cut workload and increase efficiency exponentially and in short order, too.
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Yeah. Agreed. The crazy thing is that they might save money AND not piss off clients if they had some rudimentary phone support.
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They don't copy paste answers. They have bots that do that. (Probably the same bots that are responsible for the Dota mute system ;D)
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They name their bots? Lol.
Also, then their algorithm writers need to be fired. Either that or I need to learn to write my support questions like an angry 13-year-old. Maybe.
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Their bots aren't that complex. The mute system is currently made like this:
if(Player.getNumberOfReports()>=2){
mutePlayer(ID);
}
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I assume they do. My experience with working at support is that you have standard answers, which you can adjust if neccesary. To be fair, they can be usefull (starting and closing are already done), the rest really is a matter of management. Often people on support will be willing to help you better, but management wants you to handle the tickets as fast as possible. In fact, that's the reason why I got laid off.
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I think of The IT Crowd and Roy's automatic answering machine FAQ everytime a Steam Support "agent" C&P's me a nonsensical response to a question.
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Yeah, im having one problem with steam currently, something glitches and i cant buy anything, the answer from support(which is always some generic c/p and 2 days apart from previous) is for me to take pics and post them of pretty much every single personal document i have. I've kindly told them to fyck off and go and search into their logs to find whatever they are trying to verify, im not doing something like that for an issue they caused themselves.
On the other side, my only encounter with amazon support went like this
me: hey, i wasnt paying attention and i clicked on the wrong thing, can this be fixed
them, half an hour later : sure, here you go
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Well i had a glitch with a purchase, i've contacted steam support, and sent all informations with images and all. They were just copy pasting responses to me. I had screenshoted at least 10 pictures until i went aggressive and putted some subtitles on the pictures for him to understand (as i've previous warned him what each picture was for). Also i needed to contact the paysafecard support to help me and they had intimidated them to finish the transition and to give me the games or at least to refund me. At last they gave in and did game me the games, also the bot/guy was offended by my aggressive text (as i've tried to take calm and try to explain them the best i could with the necessary info). At all i took 20 pictures for him to see that he had the info for the first time to solve the problem. Yes they are a pain in the but, they need a better formation.
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Yeah. Similar situation here. Unfortunately, my purchase came out of Steam Wallet, so I had no real recourse, and no game. I have now discontinued adding funds to Steam Wallet so that I can dispute charges if/when this happens again. It's a shame it has to come to that for support to actually pay attention. Money talks.
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I had the steam walled option and payed the rest with paysafecard. I've forgot to mention, but at least my games were added as they should be. I hope that will work the best, as from what i've read your reply, you were "scammed" by a steam bug -.-'
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I had a small problem with them just a few days ago. A DLC wasn't showing up as purchased in the Steam Store and they just C&P a completely shitty answer. When told them that that their answer didn't fix my problem, they game me the usual "We know about this and are fixing this problem."
Gave me the same answer when I sent in a support ticket regarding the 1.2M hours a bug gave me for Sins of a Solar Rebellion. "We know about this...we're fixing this." That was more than a month ago and the hours are still there..:D
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Two days wait time isn't very punctual in almost any other customer support universe. But I'm glad they've been helpful to you.
I do not believe I've ever had a single issue resolved in 4-5 tries.
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Riiiight. Because the volume of tickets means that Valve can't either a) hire more help, or b) be more efficient and cognizant of the job they're doing.
I think that's quite a nice excuse for a very large company being very bad at what they do.
Any 3P digital providers I use at work either have a telephone number I can call and get resolution (or at least real traction on finding a solution) or chat/forms that get back to me with a real comprehension of the problem (or at least a clarification via questioning) within hours.
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I hear ya. I'm glad for you. I'm just saying that two days isn't "punctual" by many definitions.
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pretty much thats the case, it is like they don't even read the questions properly
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Lol, this reminds me of the support ticket I created a week or 2 ago, in short I asked them why steam keeps showing me as logged out when I click a link on steamtrades/gifts to someones steam profile 5 outta 10 times while i'm still logged in on another tab.
Their copy/paste answer basically just said that i should troubleshoot my internet connection but that's obviously not the problem.
So i just sighed and closed steam support never to return again.
So yeah I totally get your point OP, if i'm not mistaken their first support line is through zendesk (automated support) so i guess they just expect you too complain if you're not being helped properly, but that's no way to run a support i.m.o.
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I didn't have much problems with them, Thank God, but I didn't even need that much help tho. But I don't think it's that much up to those who reply to you, it's about their bosses who tell them what to do, they are forced to use only few texts that they have and that's it.
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I think two days is at least tolerable. But when they don't read the question and then you wait another two days for them to C&P an unrelated response, and then wait another four days for a response to that...well, you get the idea.
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They responded to me after a week with an automated response that didn't solve my problem. EA's Origin support gave me a live chat after 5 minutes of me submitting a problem and they took the time to read and understand my p[roblem and solve it in a few minutes. You know what is worse than Steam support? Not many things ;)
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This is why Origin's existence is important to those of us that are primarily Steam users. Steam has a de facto monopoly position, and it's clear that Gaben has behaved like the head of a monopoly in skimping on quality because no one else was there to do it better.
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As was pointed out in that other thread - they have several million customers (over 25 million 3 years ago). I actually have some experience with this and can tell you that half a million customers can generate over 7k email contacts alone in a week, not to mention the additional phone calls and chat support if available. This isn't even a large part of the customer base either, just routine stuff from a portion of it. I wouldn't even want to know the volume of contacts that a base of over 25 million could generate - coming from all corners of the globe even... Toss in the fact that every little hiccup that impacts multiple customers means that the number of contacts jumps considerably - more than triple in my own experience.
It is a thankless job and guess what - they'll never be able to staff enough people to answer everyone in a timely fashion - not if they want to actually make a profit still. It sucks, but it is the reality - however, I will say that for that very reason whoever manages their QA program and the actual agents answering those tickets, needs to make sure that the agents read first and reply with a meaningful and appropriate response after.
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And as I tried to respond and have reiterated here, they would have less than half the workload if they'd actually try and address the question the first time. Right now, my ticket has a total of nine replies and three Steam responses. They could've handled it in one response.
I understand thankless jobs, believe me. Been there. But there's no excuse for the kind of tripe they continue to offer up as support.
And yes, I agree that management is primarily to blame for this. But it doesn't take a brain surgeon to figure out that your efficiency increases if you don't have to keep coming back to the same tickets repeatedly.
It's a little glimpse into a corporate culture that must be just awful. I wonder where Valve is headquartered. Companies that treat their employees poorly tend to struggle to find workers here. Perhaps not there.
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they would have less than half the workload if they'd actually try and address the question the first time
I doubt that, see my earlier response.
What they would gain though, is better customer experience. But they probably have their workload pretty much optimized, how happy we are about that is a different story.
Oh and for finding workers, it might be outsourced, might not be. But with this kind of work, the efflux (?) is pretty high. Which means there are not a lot of people who stay for longer times at the same job and that there are new employees regularly.
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I probably used the wrong language there.
What I mean to say is that they'd be more efficient per ticket if they'd address the question the first time. It would reduce/eliminate ongoing open tickets that take weeks or months to resolve.
They may not care, but if evaluations were based on average time per ticket resolved, then it would be a more productive and realistic metric. Top down management might not give a damn, though.
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Yes, they usually have a number for that too, how much of first contacts are solved with their first reply. So if you get a bad reply, and don't respond to it, or open a new ticket for it, it goes into statistics as 'solved'. :P In one of the contact centers I worked, that was called 'First Contact Fixed', which is usually 100% minues the percentage of people who get back to support after being handled by you.
So if you want to let them know (at least statistical wise) it is not solved, the worst thing to do is actually to give up hope and not respond/close the ticket. :P
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That's kind of what I figured. There's a reason my ticket is still open and I continue to respond. I'm trying to work the system as best I can. Sorry to the CSR(s) that I'm hammering, but if they'd read it the first time, we wouldn't be here.
I see how that works, though. You roll the dice on not being able to solve a problem by just regurgitating some nonsensical C&P in the hopes that the customer becomes frustrated or gives up and the ticket closes.
Of course, you roll the dice that way, too, as some punk like me keeps writing you back over and over again.
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Pretty much, but usually after a certain number of replys they start looking into it better, as you know for sure (as CSR) that when somebody gets back to you for a 7th time, standard answer definitely isn't gonna help anymore and the person is gonna come back for a 8th time. But well, that's my experience, every contact center can off course work differently.
Anyway, good luck with it. ;)
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Yeah, not sure how their center is setup, but usually an agent that gives a damn points out that a customer hasn't really been helped or it comes up because of a random QA monitor - or they have the ability to track repeat issues and/or trends. At that point someone in management sees what is going on and depending on their level of "care" they do something about it.
You will get this to varying levels with any company - some people swear by Amazon, others by Zappos, but it doesn't matter as long as you have humans involved - we're all different and some of us simply want the paycheck without ever having to give a shit.
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It's always best to assume that Steam has no support, in using the service you effectively agree to absolve them of any and all responsibility should you encounter any issues with the client, the service or purchases.
They have no interest, and possibly no ability to resolve any issues. You can chase them for months about the simplest things and get nowhere.
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I think you're probably correct, sadly.
It's one of the big problems I have with most big businesses. They get big enough to no longer care about their own sources of revenue.
In most cases, it eventually bites them in the ass. But I see no viable alternative to Steam at this juncture (Amazon could be if they so chose). When there is, however, Valve best figure it out quickly.
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Yup. The Steam helpdesk is apparently staffed entirely by chimpanzees recovering from grievous cranial injuries.
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No. No it won't. I'm not alone in this. Again, it's good you've had good experiences, but my last ticket was crystal clear. Even if it wasn't, there was no line of questioning to clarify the problem on their end. Just a C&P that had nothing to do with the problem.
After providing numerous screen shots and URLs, they repeated a C&P of something completely different (and unrelated).
Being clear is futile with these folks.
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I hate answers like this, it just proves how little thought you actually put into this discussion. Your experiences are not the standard by which all experiences are measured. Just because someone had a bad experience with a customer service representative does not mean that they did not fully explain the situation, or that they were not clear in their explanation. Get off your high horse, because not every CSR ( even the same wonderful reps that handled your cases ) handles every case with the same level of attention.
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I just explained to you that I went into detail and was crystal clear.
I also provided considerable documentation and support for my problem.
Obviously, it's your right to call me a liar, but in this case, you'd be wrong.
I received three separate C&Ps from support that had absolutely nothing to do with my problem. My ticket was clearly not read. Had it been a problem of understanding, the CSR easily could've asked clarifying questions.
I certainly trust and believe you that you had a good experience.
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Ah. So as my post in the other thread said...I should act like a semi-literate 13-year-old and I'd get better results.
Example: U SCAMED me Steam! U suk! Give me my game back or my $$$!
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Unfortunately, it nearly comes down to that yes. And I really do know how bad it can be. I got sacked for being too thorough (which they would call handling too few tickets per hour) ;)
Mostly because I wanted to always give the right answer. Which meant longer reading times, longer reply times by typing full answer instead of ##keyactivation##... :(
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Wow. Just wow. So the system is a breeding ground for idiots, slackers and assholes.
Just unreal that this is considered "business".
I don't know why I'm surprised, but it's a nice reality check on how bad a company Valve probably really is.
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Yes they are. Just not enough data. However, multiple anecdotes do eventually turn into viable data.
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+1 my account got hacked once and they resolved it very quickly
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Okay,
Let's try again, since that still active thread three months old was taking up the same amount of space as me starting a new thread. :eyeroll:
Steam Support would save themselves TONS of time if they'd actually read the question the first time and answer accordingly.
They may be slammed, but they make their own work exponentially longer by C&Ping the wrong answer to every two questions. If they'd pay attention the first time, then workload would lighten and tickets would get closed more efficiently.
Their management in support is just downright awful.
Related dead thread: Steam Support (Fresh Kill)
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