Fixing the Hotline

Hi,

Just wanted to keep everyone informed. We know that the Hotline has blazed a bit out of control lately, filling up with technical support and personal account issues. We've all been a bit swamped trying to answer or find answers to all the other very good questions. We apologize to those of you who we haven't answered yet.

We're working hard to improve the Hotline. Our ideas include providing categories to better organize threads (including reorganizing all the existing threads), getting more Lindens involved, creating a better built-in way to search the FAQ and wiki for answers to commonly asked questions, and making sure tech support issues are handled directly by our support team.

I'm working on all this stuff this week. Please stay tuned and thank you for your patience. If you have any questions, please let me know.

Well good. It needs it.

Btw, if anyone had ever responded to any of the last 3 months or so of bug reports I've filed, or bothered to respond in the tech forums with anything more than 'its your firewall' brushoffs, I wouldn't have to resort to the hotline for personal issues. I imagine a lot of other hotline posts come about the same way.

The Technical Issues forum is mostly a place to discuss things with other residents. If you have a personal account problem, contacting [email]support@secondlife.com[/email] is the best way to get direct help.

There's also the phone center:

Customer Support Center
Toll Free: (800) 860-6990
Hours: Monday - Friday - 8am-6pm PT.

As for the bug reports, you should have automatically received an email giving you an ID # for your bug report. By default, that is the only email you will get concerning your bug report unless LL needs more information from you (this is all stated in the email). But if you still have issues, you can reply to that email (including the ID #) or contact support.

Hope this info helps.

Right. But we discuss them, ascertain we all have the same bug, and no responses come or nothing gets done. So what you're saying is that it's kind of pointless using the technical issues forum to actually try and get an issue addressed? It's just for bitching, basically?



Not a lot of good to those of us outside the US in totally different time zones.



Hmm. So I shouldn't send 'personal issues' as bug reports? Like, 'I crash every time I try to edit an object' or 'I can't tp' or 'some of my inventory is missing' or 'my estate tools havent worked for months'? I was under the impression thats what it was for. Then I guess I'll stop reporting them ingame using 'report a bug' and use the support email address for each of my problems instead. Actually I thought it amounted to the same thing. But I have to say I've not had a lot of luck getting help via email either.

I beg to differ on email being the best way. I filed a report on my crashing to support via. email on Friday and finally got a response yesterday basically saying 'it's your anti-virus, or your drivers' (the one-stop answer to anything in SL!). Good job the community found out for themselves that turning shadows off in 1.6 stops many people from crashing, so it's another bug to add to your list - and it's well documented on the technical forum as well and has been for days now.

Support takes ages to respond, if at all, and I've never found their responses much other than cookie-cutter standard replies that mostly don't actually help. The hotline was misguided as support obviously doesn't have the time to answer the support requests they already get in a timely manner.

If the technical forum is for discussion amongst ourselves I'd suggest you put that at the top in a sticky - I don't see one there myself so it's a natural expectation that those who run this service will also answer.

Not at all. There are some Lindens who monitor the Technical Issues forum, but it is fundamentally a place to share ideas and experiences with other residents. Lindens will pop in and try to help however they can. But if you have a personal account issue that is unresolveable, you need to contact support directly. Only then can LL make sure that you're getting the help you need.




If you have a recurring problem with your specific account, "report a bug" is helpful for identifying the problem, but you should DEFINITELY contact support so they can work directly with you to resolve your issue. [email]support@secondlife.com[/email]. I'm not sure what you mean by "not having luck" with that email account. Have you never received a reply?

Hmm...it sounds like the support team might need more help. I understand the latest 1.6 has slowed down support email replies, but the idea of not getting any response is very troubling to me. Has anyone else been sending email to support that goes completely unanswered?

As for the technical forum, thanks for the feedback. I agree that we need to make it clearer....while Lindens ARE monitoring and participating in the technical forum, individual support issues should be send to [email]support@secondlife.com[/email].

With all due respect I think you'll find support emails not being answered, or if they are answered not in an acceptably timely manner (and no I'm not expecting an answer within hours), goes back way before 1.6. And certainly this reliance on it being anything other than SL's fault for any problem has been the standard ever since I joined. Nice try at an excuse though

Sometimes I receive a canned response. Sometimes nothing. I think once only, I have received a personal reply from someone who actually showed some interest in the problem at hand and made it obvious they'd actually read the text of the email.

I know it's not your fault, Pathfinder, but I have to say I'm feeling distinctly ignored by the Lindens lately. Well, not even lately - I've had some of these problems for months.

I know they have a lot to do, and I know I'm only one resident, but after dozens of postings, emails, bug reports by the bucketload, crash logs in the hundreds and even talking personally to a few Lindens when they've been unfortunate enough to be on at the same time as I am (not often, granted) they must know I'm having more than a few difficulties. And then its kind of frustrating to be told that half the things you're doing aren't really the proper course of action. Just like it's frustrating to spend a week battling the latest release of Second Life, trying every last thing possible to remedy it and then being told 'its your anti virus' or 'its your firewall' when it really, really isnt.

I'm sorry, Kris. I don't have an easy answer for you, but I'm listening and will be bringing up these problems with support whenever I can with other Lindens.

One thing...I'm wondering if many other people here have been using the "report a bug" when they should have been contacting support for direct help with something. Do you think we should add a new menu item under Help? Maybe something like "Contact Support for Direct Help" which would generate an email to support? Please tell me what you think would help prevent critical personal support issues from getting "lost" in the bug reporting queue.

*raises hand*

Just an idea, Mr Pathfinder--

Change the post process for Hotline to the following steps:
1. User clicks Post button and an intermediate page loads with a list of current *hot* issues, relevant FAQs to the current release, and links to the correct forums to post to in certain situations*.
2. The user scrolls through these looking at info with following possible results:
2a. User sees that crashing while streaming video is a hot issue, clicks link for more info.
2b. User doesn't see their problem.
2c. User see that Technical Issues forum would be more appropriate.
2d. User sees nothing that fits, continues.
3. At bottom of list is a button to continue.
4. User clicks and the real post page is displayed.

Take an hour to code, could save scores of hours of sorting through inappropriate posts by those who don't know what a sticky is.

Thoughts?


* Example of situations:
If you are having a problem with video or audio, slow connections, crashing, or installation, then please post to Technical Issues .

If you are having difficulties with getting a script to work, then please post to Script Tips.

Have a suggestion to make Second Life a better experience? Then post to Feature Suggestions .

(1) I assumed that the technical issues forum was an area where Lindens and residents could interact, and "together" parse out solutions. The fact that a number of us weren't getting consistant participation from Lindens on issues with the 1.6 upgrade there surprised me. In fact, the solutions were resident discovered, and consisted of "work-arounds" to problems with 1.6 that we're not even sure the Lindens are aware of. The hotline seemed to be hit-and-miss on these kinds of issues, as well.

(2) Yes, I've sent a couple of e-mails to support. I got a "canned" response on one, no real relevance, and no follow up. I got no answer on the other. I've also sent bug-reports, but what I've gotten in return are canned "thank-you's".

It really troubles me to hear that some of you are not receiving responses to your Support Requests. Our Support Request tracking system is set-up to require that every email we receive gets a reply, and our average response time is under 48 hours.

That said, there are a variety of reasons why someone may not recieve the reply they're anticipating:

1. The Request wasn't sent to [email]Support@secondlife.com[/email]. Pathfinder mentioned this as well. Requests sent via the Bug Reporter or to [email]Bugs@secondlife.com[/email] won't receive a Support reply; the same goes for help requests sent using the Crash Reporter. If you sent a request using either of these paths, please send an additional request to [email]Support@secondlife.com[/email] to make sure you get a timely response.

2. Spam filters, Bad email addresses. It's not uncommon for our email to you to get shunted into by a spam filter into a trash file or junk mail folder. It's also possible that we're trying to reach you using an out-of-date or unused email address -- our system may respond using the email address listed on your account, even if you made the request using a different address. This is a particular problem with free-email services -- Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail.

3. Reclassification. Sometime Support Requests need to re-filed as Bug for more investigation -- especially when it comes to lost inventory other complex issues. Unfortunately, we were not providing a reasonable notification that they transfer was being made, and these issues didn't receive the usual Bug Report response either. This was a sizable oversight of our policy that every Support Request gets a reply. We've corrected this problem, and reclassified requests won't fall into this particular blackhole.

As for canned responses, they're usually sent to address a common issues (like firewall ports, or drive problems) -- the Support staff would loose a good deal of sanity if they typed the same Nvidia driver URL forty times each day (All work and no play makes Jack http://www.....). No one should take a standardized response personally; the goal is simply to fix a problem as quickly as possible with the most likely solution, if the steps contained don't work we'll try something else. Resident who have spent two hours on the phone with the Support staff troubleshooting a router can attest that we can be very persistant in tracking down a problem.

We're continuing to work to provide more and better Support options and channel -- if you haven't visited our Support Wiki, I'll invite you to have a look: http://www.secondlife.com/hlep There's a ton of great information in there and, best of all, you can share your own expertise with others.

Daniel's post in summary:

I'm upset that you're upset (no, honestly I am).

1. It's your fault.
2. It's your fault.
3. It was our fault but no longer is so you can't blame that!

Canned responses need little though or effort. Quick scan, send answer that seems to fit, let customer chase for better service. Don't take canned responses as a personal slight as they're not personal at all!

Please visit out wiki so you can help yourself and not bother us so much. I cannot type the link correctly, however.

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But seriously, I know support is tough but it appears there are lots of ways to try to get support but there's always a reason why the way we chose wasn't the correct one, which explains why we weren't updated. That isn't telling on the customer, that's telling on the scattered support mess at LL.

You can't have all these different ways of getting information to LL and not have it centralized - I dread to think how much time is being wasted there by the lack of 'joined up thinking'. I know lots of people who'll use every method simply so they've exhausted every avenue - so no doubt you have several different people all dealing with the same person's same request that's come through different avenues.

You need a central sorting point, which can then forward into relevant areas. But judging by the differences you highlight in the way information is submitted and where it then goes, I don't think this exists currently, does it. You should collate information in a single place giving you easier cross-reference between follow-ups and allowing you to organize yourselves better, giving a better service.

Just a thought.

I raised this very suggestion with Robin shortly after the Hotline debuted. Apparently, there may not be support in vBull to make that happen. At the very least, though, perhaps some of these sugestions could be integrated into the posting interface itself.

Personal issues and support questions aside, it's really annoying to see questions asked that could very, very, very easily be answered by Live Help or ANYONE older than a week in-world (Example: can I pay someone if they aren't on my Friend list?)

Immediately after the 1.6 upgrade, over two dozen people posted in nine different threads in the technical issues and hotline forums about near-immediate freezes and crash-outs. In nearly all of these cases, people clearly stated that (a) these events had not occurred in 1.5 and the 1.6 preview, (b) all drivers were up to date, and (3) system configurations had not changed. In nearly all of these cases, people stated that they were sending in crash reports.

There were three responses from the Lindens. In one response, a Linden stated that they didn't understand the problem, but would appreciate crash reports. In another response, a Linden advised people to upgrade their drivers. In a third response, a Linden stated that this issue was not part of the list of "known problems" with 1.6. These responses occurred in the first 48 hours; after that, there was no further information or progress reports forthcoming.

Residents discovered that the problem had to do with the "shadow" graphics preference, which had been broken by 1.6. Turning "shadows" off fixed the problem for most people, after they were informed in the forum by other residents.

To this day, we don't know if the Lindens know that the shadows preference is broken, although in responding to a Hotline thread one week after the initial problem, Robin Linden promised to pass the information on to technical support.

I'd say that part of the problem lies in correlating the information, recognizing its level of significance, distributing it to the proper people, and communicating a tier of responses to affected people in an efficient manner.

Postmark, you're suggesting an interesting option, although to implement would mean creating an area for questions outside of the forum. To Moopf's point, that would mean yet another place for you to place a question, and for us to seek to be responsive.

The hotline has been an experiment to see if we could tease out the questions that were getting buried in the discussion forums. But Eggy warned me, and rightly so, that it wasn't scalable. The fact that so many questions are support related or crisis reporting has exacerbated an already challenging situation.

The bottom line is -- I want to get your questions answered. I don't want to create redundancy, and I especially don't want to create redundant problems! We've come up with a few ideas:

- use a moderated forum where we review and answer the questions before they're posted for public view
- create a system that tries to help you answer your question and gives you options in FAQs, wikis, other forum threads where you might find the answer before you post in the hotline
- create sub-forums so questions can be categorized and delegated to Lindens most likely to be able to answer

For now my goal is to get the current questions answered or re-routed, while we debate the best next step.

The support issues you've raised are important. I'm sorry if you've been frustrated or confused trying to get help, and we'll continue to work on ways to improve the service.

I think the first point there will make the Hotline a much, much more valuable reference for the end user than it is in its current form. In order for it to be manageable on your end, though, you'll need the second point solidly implemented.

Indeed a hairy problem.

I was about to suggest some means of support that connected new users quickly with more experienced ones. Then I realized we already have that. I wonder why the the Hotline is so often being used rather than Live Help, when the former is so much slower than the latter.

Ultimately, when people have questions or problems, they don't want to have to search -- they want to speak to people and ask questions. As it is, Live Help is pretty darn good for that (or was when I was new). Perhaps there's a way to make Live Help more readily accessible? More noticeable? A weekly MOTD declaring the power of Live Help could help.

Your in-house resources for question-answering are obviously not unlimited. Support is going to be an ever-increasing challenge. I hope the ultimate balance you strike still leaves you as accessible as Linden Lab currently is. It's refreshing to get such frequent and frank interaction from such high-level individuals. As companies grow, it's common to see them begin to restrict their communication channels -- some of them isolating themselves from their customers completely behind E-Mail autoresponders and "support wizards." Whatever path you choose, I'd hate to lose your ears.

Excuse me? Did you actually read what I wrote? I don't quite understand how you can come to the conclusion that what I suggest - a central sorting point where everything goes - could possibly lead to another place for us to place a question? It actually means wherever we place it it is dealt with in the same way.

I did understand you, I think, Moopf. Let me try to be more clear. The solution we considered, that's similar to Postmark's idea, is another place on the website to ask questions. That would be in addition to the forums, support, bug reports, and so on.

I understood you to say that we shouldn't be adding more places to gather information, but that we should centralize. So I was agreeing with you, albeit in a clumsy way. Apologies.

Ah OK, I think my cold must be befuddling my brain more than I realise as I'm not understanding you here either. You can have as many places you like to let people ask questions as long as they're all sorted centrally and dished out to the relevant people. I'm not sure that would be too difficult either (on the face of it) as anything being collected can be automatically assigned to the avatar because of the information available at the time of submission, e.g. the forum has the avatar details, a crash report has access to the avatar details from the client, a bug report fired from in-world has the avatar details from the client etc. The only place where there might be some extra sorting needed is through email although I would suspect that most people would email support using the same email address they have on their account so the information could again be automatically collated under the 'account'.

This has the benefit of making sure that all correspondance from a customer is locateable quickly and easily. In addition, for instance, all points of contact should raise an auto response - be that from a crash report, bug report, A.N.Other web site facility or via. email - things are then traceable quickly and easily.

With a central point that filters the information to the correct department, those who are best placed to answer the questions will have everything collated and won't have to shove contact around as much, in theory. I'm talking about a person or people as this central point, by the way, not an automated system, although much could be automated with the linking of everything by accounts, or by the first point of contact.

Such a system wouldn't be foolproof and this is just skimming the surface of what would be needed but some investment in pulling such a system together I'm sure would make support representative's tasks much easier, quicker and precise. I don't know how much of this you already do but I get the feeling that emails go one place, forum support is dealt with by other people, crash reports go somewhere else and bug reports maybe somewhere else again - I don't get the impression that it's organised to any great level currently. I could be wrong, but that's my perception.

OK - got it. While there is some degree of centralization, it doesn't exist to the extent that you're suggesting. The support and bug tracking system is oriented around incident tickets, but not necessarily cross-referenced by account. A good thought. Integrating forums and questions from other areas apart from the incident tracker is a bigger challenge requiring more consideration.

Robin,

Nothing I am suggesting would do no more than help educate, then redirect to the existing support structure. vBulletin is PHP, and all I suggest is that the Post button on the H2L page is rescripted to open an intermediate page with some basic, small word examples of what already exists that can be searched and used, with links. If the person then feels they must continue to post to H2L, then they click the Continue to Post button at the bottom.

If vBulletin is anything like any of the nuke CMSs and BBs, then adding in the page would be simple (even the hot issues and pertinant FAQs can be driven from your SQL DB) through templates, and adding an extra select statement to build the Post button's code would be a snap as well. But, just for a test, you could easily hardcode the links to Wiki FAQs, hot issue threads, and proper forums to post to just to save time.

Another idea that just somehow managed to form in this giant mellon I call my head: when folk are crashing and can't get in, then Live Help is useless to them. Also, many people post H2L because they want an answer FAST! Consider adding a Java IRC client so people can go and ballyhoo in #secondlife. Or better yet, create #secondlifesupport, that way folk in #secondlife can still feel free to have bitchfests #secondlife'rs can keep an extra window open to #secondlifesupport, and one o' the mods can put together a bot to toss out insta-replies(c) to specific phrases and buzzwords.

These ideas are proven in the real world--links prior to contacting support (which you don't even do on your standard support page), and many open source groups use java IRC clients for fast resolution. Test drive them and see what happens. Can it be any worse than what there is now?

I like pie.

How about this:
New forum called "Questions & Answers", user-moderated.
Put "Hotline to Linden" in a sub-forum of that.
We reply to what we can, and if it's something only Linden can answer, we move it to the Hotline. Will the forum software support this kind of thing securely?
You can rotate the forum moderators like you do with Live Help, and even briefly skim the Q&A headlines to see if there's something that should have been answered by LL but wasn't.