Should technical support (Liaisons, email, phone) be for Premium users only?

As we all know, the technical support team of Linden Lab has been struggling to keep up with all the work from the increased number of users in the last few months, since Basic Accounts became free, and LL's been gathering so much good PR in all the media — worldwide.

Before the whole freerider community demands my immediate impalement and my skin hung up at the Governor's Mansion, consider the following points:

- Around a fifth of the SL users are Premium (paying) users. However, LL provides free technical support to all of them
- Many of the new users require most of their technical support very early on their first steps of Second Life. But many will only switch to Premium at a later stage — often after 'getting hooked' by having a good experience with SL. This means that it will be exactly at that point in their 'second lives' that they'll need technical support the most — but are not yet paying for it
- Most modern software companies these days move to a model where a software license is cheap (or free), but support comes at a premium. Linden Lab closely follows that model: you don't have to pay to enjoy Second Life at all, the user client with all sets of tools is free to download, and you have free access to the whole grid. Only when you feel the urge to own your own land will you start to pay for SL. Still, many of the best top designers have basic accounts, proving that you don't need to own land to have a good experience of SL
- SL provides several levels of technical support: by phone (with toll-free numbers and even with international numbers), by email, through in-world bug reports and abuse reports, and by keeping a staff of in-world Liaisons. They also support information websites and wikis, forum discussions, and run volunteer programs for in-world help. Finally, they even pay people doing in-world classes ("educational events". This is rather a lot when compared to some companies in similar areas of business. Again, all this is provided for free, and there is universal access to technical support - the only exception being the concierge team for sim or half-sim owners.

This is a rather strange setup, IMO. While any company should strive to have a good technical support team, using different ways to access it (ie. phone, email, in-world), I also think that Linden Lab should concentrate on the paying customers to cover their running costs. It has been shown that the "access for free" model, if done properly and wisely, can actually be much better than the alternative. Even the old shareware model (try before you buy) seems to be slowly replaced by the new concept that you should give everybody free access, but charge for extra services instead. Technical support is usually something that is reserved for paying customers; companies run things like wikis, forums, and mailing lists for providing free technical support instead.

Before you all think that this would be a discrimination feature towards 4/5ths of the population, who enjoyed free technical support so far, think of what it means in terms of a cost-effective solution. First, you get what you pay for — as a Premium account, you would now get 5 times faster turnaround reply time from Linden Lab. If you desperately need Linden technical support, it also means that you should be prepared to pay for it; the alternative, of course, is to rely upon free technical support.

Many issues requiring Linden technical support are related to land and group-based problems. These affect Premium users/island owners (the ones actually owning land!) to a much higher degree. Thus, these will not have any issue with this suggestion — they already pay to Linden Lab!

Other issues are technical ones — people not being able to connect (or having faulty connections), suffering from lag, bad graphics, unconfigured machines, etc. These are almost all easily covered by asking questions to other users, in-world if they manage to log in, or through the so many available public channels — blogs, wikis, knowledge base systems (coming up soon), etc. Since SL is a "closed" application (as opposed to otehrs where you can have lots of interactions between third-party software), on all these cases, it's rare that a user cannot answer as well as a Linden employee. The only difference is in the speed of getting an answer — ie. by email instead of through the phone.

Finally, there are SL-specific issues that affect both Basic and Premium users, and that can't be solved by any user. Good examples are "stuck" clothes or items (ie. things that get attached to you but that you can't detach any more), duplicate inventory folders, weird gestures popping up at irregular times without being called, and other esoteric issues that really require a Linden employee to fix them. They're not "bugs" in the sense that they don't affect all users; rather, they're specific issues tied to some data corruption on the many databases. These are sadly the sort of things that really require the intervention of the Linden technical support staff.

Many have complained how hard it is sometimes to get in touch with the technical support team (phones busy, emails taking days to get answered, in-world Liaisons too budy answering hundreds of IMs at the same time, etc). Now imagine that LL would only get 1/5th of the calls! This would immediately be a relief to many...

Actually, the above figures are not right — since most of the new users are alts anyway, and hidden in the middle of all those alts is highly likely a Premium user, that would be able to get technical support for all of their alts. Naturally enough, it's hard to estimate, without concrete data, how much this measure would have an impact in relieving the technical support team. Thus my suggestion for a lively discussion

As there might be good, solid reasons for a Basic user to get in touch with the only team that can help them out, I suggested a few alternatives for "limited free technical support". Two choices seem to be obvious — free technical support during the first weekn you log in, or a limited number of opening new technical support tickets (or a combination of both).

While this won't make LL earn more money — moving towards a model where people have to pay for technical support will not have suddenly all Basic users eagerly jumping to upgrade their accounts — it would at least control their costs, by relieving their technical staff a bit, at least for a while, and allow them to keep the current number of employees to provide better support to the ones who are willing to pay for it. I think it's worth a try

never used it anyway, but it at least needs to be readily accessable for people just starting out, and most of them start out as basic.

I am a basic user, but I send rather large checks to a friend of mine, who is a premium user and who owns an island that I help to support. I suspect that there are a large number of users in similar situations, renting land on a private island (or the mainland), who are contributing to LL's cash inflow just as much as a premium account holder (in many cases), but just not directly.

As far as I can see there would be no technical way to see who is really a "paying customer" and who is not.

I think tech support should be for the lifetime accounts only

Briana Dawson

Wait... there's technical support?!

I only say No because believe it or not Jennyfur is a free basic account because Flipper handles all of the land stuff, so while I technically do not own land under this account it doesn't mean that I shouldn't be allowed up use support based on the land we share.

Full free tech support to all.

Tickets would be bothersome to handle (I have enough to manage as is lol), and the entry level of basic accounts is where you need the help.

Heck! I think I needed help finding the support help! ^.~

~Jessy

Not only no, but
HELL NO!

I voted for no tech support, but I am still somewhat undecided. Like Gwyn I am waiting for all the great arguments to come out against this idea, but so far I haven't seen any.

I think Gwyn is right in that a lot of the best kind of help and the majority of the help one gets really comes from friends and neighbors, not the Lindens. I am not saying there aren't arguments for free tech support, but so far the two brought forward here don't sway my mind.

- The person who is paying big bucks to their friend with the private island already has a support system in the form of their friend and landlord.

- Jennyfur is... Well she's flips GF!
what kind of support could she need that flip couldn't provide as well as most Lindens?

The general statement or view that new users are the ones that need the help and that most of them are basic accounts also seems full of air when you consider that they aren't paying anything.

If we were all still paying the 10 dollars to join then I would say it makes sense, but a free account is just a "tryout" or test account really. If you furthermore make allowances for exceptions like critical database issues, and also allow the basic users to purchase support through some kind of voucher system, there is no unfairness in this proposal.

Gwyneth Llewelyn is a superior being
Scalable business models are good. I'd go for something like 30 days though. In your first 7 days you are unlikely to login more than once or twice

No. If LL staff can't handle the amount of residents coming into SL, then they should either stop advertising, hire more personelle, or get rid of free accounts all together. (I certainly hope they don't decide to go with the 3rd option.)

If I were on a Basic account and couldn't even get tech support, then upgrading to Premium just to make the program work the way it should would be the last thing I would consider doing. I don't throw money at people who tell me I don't matter.

Lets address issues that are more concerning......Pages over this.........Next

Ladies and gentlemen, another splendid, insightful contribution by Usagi Musashi!

Please, give her a hand.

*claps*

Make sure you try the veal!

You owe me a Fat Tire Ale and a handi-wipe for my monitor.

Try the veal... teehee!

Like Dianne said, I'm still waiting for good reasons supporting a model where the ones that pay Premium have to take on the burden of sharing that meagre income of LL's with the ones not willing to pay anything for it ;) Echoing your words, Dianne, it's not the amount of money you pay, but the principle behind it (ie. naturally this model didn't apply to the time Basic accounts paid US9.95 for joining). Everybody knows that as soon as you're willing to pay for at least a half-sim you get bumped into the category of users allowed access to the Concierge team instead of the "regular" technical support. So, paying more, earns you more (and hopefully better) technical support. It follows that the ones that don't pay anything should legitimately get exactly what they are interested in investing in LL: namely, nothing :) As the old saying goes: "you should get what you pay for".

There is a difficult ethical question to answer here, as we have a dual model: value to SL is not necessarily value to LL. One person who does a tremendous investment in SL (the grid, its society, its residents) can create "value" for LL (indirectly, through their participation and content) as a basic account, but sadly that is not directly tied to LL's income column. That's why I'm also not absolutely sure of my proposal. I can only say that if I want technical support from Red Hat or MySQL, I have to pay for it — even if I'm a top developer of Linux graphic drivers or contribute to bug reports of MySQL (I'm neither of those, lol). My "value" as an "indirect helper" does not entitle me to free support from either of these open-source companies, even if they'll probably give me a pat on the back as thanks and the equivalent of a Linden bear :)

Jonquille, I'm astonished with your answer :( There isn't a single company in the world that closes the doors to an increasing number of users; that's financial suicide. The closest you have is the Google model: growth-by-word-of-mouth (in the sense that to get free access to their tools, you need to have someone invite you to their system). That's a very interesting exception, and I wonder if it couldn't be adopted as well. So, no, it doesn't make sense to suggest having Linden Lab announcing: "until we make more money out of this, all new accounts are effectively placed on hold". As a matter of fact, this would be shooting one's own foot, unless they had an excellent strategy to promote existing Basic users to Premium users — my guess would be that the reverse would happen, as a protest for not having more new users. Also, in terms of PR and relationships with investors, this would be a nightmare, impossible to handle.

The alternative, hiring more and more people to handle technical support, needs to be considered carefully — LL has a profit to make :) I'm quite confident that they add as many people on the tech support staff as their budget allows it; and by encouraging more people to become Premium, they can afford many more. That's how it has been in the past. Still, we all see where it leads: inefficient handling of all tech support-related issues — they need far more people to do that than their budget allows them. Also, as a result, you get overstressed, tired employees, many working overtime, 10-12 hours a day, often including weekends, and this is pretty unfair for them (even if they get paid for doing that and love their jobs!).

BTW, an interesting comment made on one blog of the VW gurus showed that the model of allowing free accounts is not only economically feasible, but it can even beat a closed model only with payed accounts. Outside the virtual world business, we have thousands of examples like that: Mozilla, Apache, MySQL, Red Hat... :) All are available to be hired for giving technical support, but their products are free. The ones that do work for free are foundations, relying upon donations to pay their costs. Should LL become a foundation as well? :)

Perhaps a different question could be asked here. How many people do you know in-world that pay for a group of people to do technical support on freebies? (ie. open source scripts) I know just one (Francis Chung — worth mentioning her :) ). Are there more? If your answer is "I can't afford to pay people to give support to my open source freebies", then I can only ask: why should Linden Lab do the same? :)

Eggy, 7 days are indeed not enough, I should probably put "X" days there. 7 is a magical number, a legacy of the days all accounts were paid for, and LL thought that 7 days would be enough for a "free trial". I agree that this is rather optimistic, and 30 would be a better number.

Ah, and Jessica, you might not have noticed, but LL is using RT: Request Tracker for assigning tickets for ages :) No company these days can afford not to do something similar. As a matter of curiosity, RT is also open-source, free to download and use, and the company behind it (BestPractical) charges for technical support :)

I didn't say anything about "until we make more money at this.." I said until they can handle the growth of their own company. If you've only made 10 omelettes, you don't invite 500 people to breakfast claiming to have free food.

Edited to add: And I'm sure someone can correct me on this if I'm wrong, but one of the main reasons there was a huge influx of There players was because There basically said, "You're on your own." and decided to let the system fall to its own entropy. Or, that was the rumor at the time the There players swarmed over, anyway.

Ah, sorry, I got you wrong on that, and I stand corrected!

So how should they handle the growth of their own company, and what should they do in the mean time (ie. until they actually handle that growth)?

I listed 3 options in my post. The most obvious, and the most business savvy, would be to use all the cash they're bragging about getting to hire some staff. In their lofty goals to become 'the metaverse' they're going to need more than 30 employees. It takes money to make money, as the saying goes.

But they did — they're a 100-employee-company now!

But if that isn't meeting their company needs... hire more. 11 million bucks can pay for a lot of tech support.

I simply don't think that denying Basic account holders any support or interaction is the way to go at all. Maybe I'm snotty, but as I said, that wouldn't make me want to give this company any more of my money.

Well, Jonquille, that fact is undeniable.

So you think that by putting more money into a large tech support team, you'd be able to encourage more people to go Premium, and thus the problem doesn't really exist?

Whereas I'd personally prefer that money to go into development instead, fixing bugs, scaling the grid, introducing new features, and through that model, encourage people to get more attached to SL to the point they'd be willing to pay at least Premium...

Very likely they're doing both, btw.

What problem doesn't really exist? Not having enough tech support for the hordes they keep luring here? Yeah, hiring more tech support would actually solve the problem of not having more tech support. Strange how that works.

I don't think more people will be encouraged to go premium by denying them decent service. I'm not really sure how much more clearly I can state that.

People will be encouraged to go Premium by offering them good service with good options, not by giving them a flushie in the newbie restrooms.

Am I really the only one who's more willing to give my money to a company that treats me well than to a company that treats me like a peon? Wow.

Just don't outsource it to a third world country (nothing against those of you who live in third world countries). I love my Vonage phone service, for example, but talking to their tech support team brings me to tears.

P2

Jonquille, I'm sorry if I upset you — that was not my intention

You see, from my personal point of view, I don't expect anything for free. I never did. "There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch".

I'm not claiming that
a) LL shouldn't improve their service;
b) People shouldn't expect a better service, always (and be vocal about their rights to a better service!);
c) Resources shouldn't be pooled into providing a good service first.

Rather the contrary! I wish all these things as well.

I'd love that things would be as simple as saying: "there is a problem here; let's throw money at it, and the problem is solved". More tech support reps are not the only possible solution. An alternative solution is to give people exactly what they pay for; since in this case there are indeed alternatives that can provide free tech support. Lots of alternatives, as a matter of fact.

That's just my point and nothing else; I'm not discussing if LL should or not improve their service; of course they should, and they most certainly will. We have been given all the hints that they're revamping the whole documentation, providing more tools for searching for technical information, and very likely, adding lots of new tech support reps, as soon as they finish their training. This is very encouraging, but... will it be enough? That's what I'm wondering about, but I have no answer to that — perhaps it is, perhaps it isn't.

hehheeh i have a lover troll on sl Lo Jacobs but sorry your not my type How many alts does she have on sl?