Please Improve your In-Game/GM Customer Support

I am really enjoying the game, and have run into very few problems, however there is very little that can sour your feelings toward something you like more than an inability to get any kind of help for an issue you encounter.

My issue is fairly minor, but it is still an issue that I would have like addressed. My attempts to get any type of acknowledgment of the problem, or any hope of resolution have become a rather sour point on my experience.

The first comment I would have is that there is no such button as “GM Call” readily available, even though it is referenced several times in support articles. When you first go to the support desk, and pick the contact option, the only selection there that gives the impression of the possibility of being contacted by a GM is the “Harassment” option. The other options of “Report a Bug” and “Submit Feedback” both have the disclaimer that they will likely not result in individual contact.

I find it very odd that the part of the support desk that is labeled as “Contact Us” has the least possibility of providing actual contact.

Never the less I submitted my problem, and never received a reply. Since then I came on the forums, submitted a thread in technical support, then one in the bug report forum.

After a few more days of no replies, feeling rather helpless and frustrated… even more so considering the minor nature that the problem seemed, I browsed through the in-game support feature and found that if you couldn’t find your answer in the “Knowledge Base” area, then it allowed you to submit as question.

Skeptical of the possibility of an answer, since it technically didn’t promise one, but did say that it would be reviewed, I put my information and problem in the fields supplied and sent off my response. In the mean time I came on the forums and warned others of the bug I ran into in the hope to spare others of the issue, since there is apparently no current plans to fix it.

To my surprise, a day later, I came back to the in-game support desk and found that I had received a reply… or at least I thought I had until I read it.

After taking what must have been 5 seconds to look at my issue, whoever read it hit their trusty macro for “I’m sorry you encountered and error, however to get this resolved we ask that you submit a report on our website. The specific forum for this report is the In-Game Bugs forum. Thank You and have a nice day!."

Really? Fine… ok I didn’t actually say in the that first report that I submitted a bug report already. My bad. However the customer experience at this point to get support had already been an uphill battle, and I was fairly irritated. I found my bug report, copied the URL and attempted to reply to my response only to get: This issue has been closed.

Well you know what? It’s not closed, I don’t feel it’s closed, why did you close it? In nearly every other customer service interaction one thing you will always find they ask you before ending the interaction.. "have all your concerns been answered?" Yea.. not here.

Unwilling to give up, I submitted a entirely new ticket, linking the bug report in the ticket clearly, and then restating the problem and why I didn’t feel the bug report was a solution that was going get me a resolution in a timely manner.

To my dismay, the next day, I received a response to my ticket that was a word for word duplicate of the last response. So yea, macro.

Now I admit, they told me submitting a bug report is the best way to get a “fix”, however my concern with the experience goes way beyond the fact that at this point I don’t feel that I will ever get my issue resolved.

While MMO’s and online gaming are a little bit different then other services, I do feel that at least some effort should be put into improving the experience the customer has when any contact is made with the company. I also feel that you shouldn’t try and set up so many roadblocks between yourself and the customer. While I do understand that it costs money to maintain a staff that meets the customers face to face, it is very important to at least give the customer the option to do that.

During my entire experience I have not once found a way to actually TALK with a GM, or support rep about my problem or why I can’t get it fixed. I have not been able to get an explanation on why something so simple is so hard to get resolved.

You may have noticed I haven’t actually mentioned what my problem is.. well I’m ashamed to say it’s mostly my own short-sightedness. I re-did my PLD job quests, one of which was my AF gear, and already had my original set in the armoire. I ended up with a duplicate set, and have no way or discarding or otherwise reclaiming those 5 inventory slots.

I know… it’s just 5 slots, we get a lot so it’s a minor issue… but again I wanted to express my frustration with the customer service experience as a whole.

Please improve it. Please make it possible for a customer to get some kind of human interaction when they feel they need it. Knowing that support is there when it’s important to them can build a lot of loyalty toward a company, where as feeling that there is no way to be heard can leave someone feeling helpless and frustrated… and less likely to want to log in at all.

Please do better.