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Player Quotes

"My real life wife got jealous of my in-game wife, and deleted my main. I was hoping you could restore him?"

Anonymous UO Player

Support Decision: Character restoration and a warning about account security.

WTF Factor: 7.7

Welcome.

Greetings all, and welcome to the November installment of mmoToday, the industry’s premier source of MMO Customer Support news and information. This week, we’ll be talking about Key Performance Indicators and how you might want to implement them, as well as the option of implementing an At-Home Agent program to save on costs. We also have some introductions to make and job opportunities to discuss.

So, pull up a chair, relax, and enjoy.

Home sourcing

One of the latest trends in the Customer Service industry, and one of the last to be adapted in the MMO service model is that of the At-Home Agent. A number of high profile businesses have already implemented this model with significant ROI, with names like Jet Blue, Office Depot, and General Electric. It’s somewhat surprising therefore, that the MMO industry has yet to adapt this practice, considering the perfect fit it seems to have. The primary pool of candidates that an MMO publisher would draw on to staff their call centers are young, educated gamers who can be counted on to be computer savvy and to own a powerful gaming rig with always-on internet connectivity. That’s one half of the At-Home Agent equation that can be basically taken for granted. The other half is finding the right tools to monitor, QA, and train the agent, which can be taken for granted as well, if you find the right group to manage it for you (hint, hint).

There are a number of benefits to this model, beyond the obvious overhead costs. MMOs being what they are, it is often advantageous for publishers to launch them in as many territories as possible. The wrench comes in supporting all of these territories; since you want to give the best support possible you want agents who are native speakers of whatever language you have the game localized in. Unfortunately, with the traditional call center approach you only have two options. One, hire native speakers local to your call center’s location, or two, open a call center in the country you’re supporting.

The issue with the former is the limited applicant pool. While there are seemingly an endless number of qualified English speaking gamers who want into the industry in any given locale, finding a large enough pool of native speakers (of whatever language) in your location who also happen to be gamers can be a daunting, if not impossible task.

The issue with the latter, of course, is the extremely prohibitive cost.

With the At-Home option, this problem largely disappears. While your particular location might be short on native French speakers who happen to be gamers, the US is not. Suddenly, that tiny applicant pool you sat staring at, poking your stick into, expands enormously and you have more native French speaking gamers than you could possibly have a big enough net to catch.

Another problem that home sourcing has been shown to solve, and a problem that call centers tend to have in general, is employee churn. Especially in the MMO sphere, where training a new agent is not a trivial task, it can be depressing to watch a hardened veteran leave to be replaced with a soft-bellied greenhorn. Though we can’t throw numbers out specific to our industry, the customer service industry as a whole has a turnover rate very close to 40%. This incredibly high churn has been the bane of call centers everywhere, and despite incentive programs, improved benefit packages, and sundry attempts at morale boosting, this churn rate remains steady. Companies who have moved to an At-Home process however, have reported an improvement in their churn to as low as 10%. As I’m sure you can see, when servicing an MMO where having a core group of solid veterans is invaluable, a turnover rate of 10% has the sheen of a golden apple.

The fellows here at Game Center Group have done all the leg work necessary to manage your at home needs. We have the expertise, we have the tools, we have the people. Why reinvent the wheel? Contact us today.

Two New Heroes.

Game Center Group is pleased to announce the entrance of two more stalwart heroes into their fold: Mervin Lee Kwai III, aka Khrolan, the fiery visionary who does not know the meaning of "barrier," and Jeffrey Bard, aka Synchronic, the contemplative whose wisdom annihilates such things as "excuses." Together they bring a frighteningly powerful mix of vigor, strength, courage, and focus to a band of champions ready to take on all comers.

	Khrolan's exact birthdate is unknown. There are tales of a child born sometime in the summer, who up and walked out of the hospital, hijacked a car, drove to the nearest Greek restaurant, and ordered a gyro, to go. "Extra tzatziki sauce, please." The clerk behind the counter was so impressed by the babe's brazen attitude, that he completely forgot to ask for payment. We have it on good authority that this tale refers to Khrolan, but reliable records are lost to the mists of time. What we do know, however, is that on his 16th birthday, Khrolan entered the Gobi Desert, armed only with a large bottle of Fiji water. Several weeks and 1423 miles later, he exited the desert, looking none the worse for wear, holding, incredibly, a large, *cold* bottle of Fiji water. When asked how his travels went, he replied, "Eh, it was okay. I don't see what the big deal is." Asked about the Fiji bottle, he remained mysteriously silent. The people of the Gobi however, to this day tell stories about the loud Asian man who brought them the "sacred water."
Synchronic's travels begin in a Tibetan monastery where he had been abandoned. Raised by kindly, but stern monks whose white beards touched the floor, he learned how to balance on a pinhead at the age of two, and reached enlightenment at the age of 12. About a year later, he became friends with the Dalai Lama, who described him as a "Pretty cool kid," and "Really good at Tetris. Watching him play is like listening to a butterfly unfurl its wings. I wish he would let me win a few times though." Not too much later, and after being called a "Cheater," and a "$&#@ n00b," Synchronic decided it was best for the world if he moved on. He went looking for challenges around the world, and finding none, disappeared for a time.
The next time Synchronic surfaced, it was in North Africa in a heated hand to hand fight with Khrolan. Contrary to what you might have heard, the Sahara, up until this particular battle, used to be a very fertile, temperate grassland. Unfortunately, each blow in this epic battle created acres of shattered desert, every failed attack resulted in square miles of ruined terrain. After several years of this, Khrolan and Synchronic had forgotten the reason the fight had started, caring only that they had finally found an equal in the other, neither willing to cede defeat. They even engaged in idle chatter between strikes, discussing the state of the world, each other's lives, women, and the strangeness of snails.
		Meanwhile, Magnus and his team had been watching the destruction, impressed by its scope, considering how to best channel it into something productive. Waiting for the right moment, he crafted a new species of bird, whispered to it, and sent it on.
And the world heard silence as the bird spoke in each of their ears. The rest, they say, is history. You can get more information on our new companions here.

Key Performance Indicators

Running a successful and profitable call center requires that clear and explicit Key Performance Indicators be defined as soon as possible. A Key Performance Indicator (KPI from here on out) is a metric that a business uses to determine the success of their process. Normally, you'd find them wrapped up in a goal of some sort, i.e. “We want to reduce CPC to $.73 this month.” You don't want too many KPIs, nor do you want them to be overly complicated. It should be a metric that can be easily determined, and quickly digested by your employees (so that they know what their goals are and where they are in relation to them).

To give you an example of useful KPIs, I'll share with you a few of our own. In order to make the decision to use these particular KPIs, we had to sit down and really figure out what was most important in determining whether we're a successful call center or not. It came down to four primary questions: Are we being cost-efficient? Are our agents being maximally productive? Are they producing quality contacts? Are our customers satisfied? If we can answer yes to all of these questions, then we can safely say that we are being successful.

So now that we have defined the information that we need to have, we need to develop a KPI for each of them. Something measurable and discrete.

Cost Per Contact (CPC): This is an easily derived metric that divulges all sorts of useful information, depending on how you want to use it. Basically what we do is take all of our agents' contacts over a specified period of time, divide them by the cost of our agents for the same time period, and we have a number that gives us a rough estimate of how much each contact costs us; the lower the number the more efficient our agents. If we see a spike in this number, it alerts us to potential problems; perhaps a too-high headcount; a widespread bug that's a serious CS time-sink; or heaven forbid, underperforming agents.

Contacts Per Hour (CPH): This is a fairly self-explanatory KPI. It is a number that represents how many contacts our agents have completed per hour. We then use this KPI as part of a goal for our agents, by setting a minimum number of contacts per hour per agent. If the CPH ends up higher than our minimum demand, we're succeeding, if it's lower then we know right away something needs to be addressed.

Agent Quality Score: Again, a fairly obvious metric, but a key one; albeit one more a bit more work intensive than the previous two. We generate this score by going into the agent's actual contacts and scoring them according to guidelines we've set out for them. As always, the higher this number the greater our success. If it falls lower than our pre-defined minimum, we know immediately that an agent needs some one-on-one time, and perhaps retraining.

Customer Satisfaction: We derive these numbers through automated exit interviews conducted at the end of contacts. While these numbers aren't going to paint an especially clear picture of agent quality (particularly in the gaming industry, where customer satisfaction isn't always in line with what is best for the community) it does give us a very clear picture of how our customers, as a whole, view us. It is important for customer support not to have an antagonistic relationship with our customers, and so it is important that we know how our representatives are doing on that front. If we have a low CPC, a high CPH, and a high AQS, it doesn't matter much if the community hates us. This is therefore a value that we monitor closely; if it's high, we're happy, if it's low, we need to start looking at our other KPIs to see where the disconnect is. If they're all satisfactory, then it's time to go back to the drawing board. Arguably, this is our most important KPI.

So there you have it. Simple, but powerful, as all good things ought to be.

Game Support Representatives needed!

Game Center Group oversees a premium customer support center that offers a best-in-class support alternative for gaming, entertainment and web-based companies. The Game Support Representative (GSR) provides first tier customer support through receiving in-bound calls, e-mail service requests, live chat for technical, account, billing and game play related requests. Common customer interaction includes assisting in troubleshooting technical issues surrounding game installation and application use, account subscription and registration assistance, along with answering and resolving various game-specific questions. The San Diego based call center features state-of-the-art technology in a relaxed yet professional work environment. This position focuses heavily on creating memorable, efficient customer support interactions to uphold the premium standard demonstrated by Game Center Group.

Game Support Representative positions are immediately available at our San Diego office. For more information, please e-mail jobs@gamecentergroup.com or apply below:

Apply Here

In this issue

Home sourcing
Two New Heroes
Key Performance Indicators
Help Wanted!

QUICK TIPS

1) Tribal knowledge will develop within your center whether you like it or not. That being the case, be sure to provide as many easy avenues for sharing that info as practical, and identify the tribal shaman in your group asap.

MMO FOCUS – Terminology

1) IRL – In Real Life. Used in MMO chat to distinguish between events occurring within the game world and the real one.

“Man, I need some food. Oh, no thanks, I mean IRL.”

2) OMGWTFBBQ: A compound acronym used to express either severe sarcasm (usually towards users of extreme leet speak) or intense surprise.

Example 1:

“d00d, u srsly n33d 2 chk th1s 0ut”

“OMGWTFBBQ! Speak normal, man.”

Example 2:

“OMGWTFBBQ! That deer just 1-shotted me! How’s that possible?!”

Farewell.

And there you have it. Hope we’ve been able to shed some light, open some eyes, and clear a path for our compatriots in the front lines of the gaming industry.

Have a good one!

-Game Center Group.

"We Don't Make The Games, We Make The Games Better"