degrading messages from kona linden

If the customer is babbling incomprehensibly, then no they aren't.

I work in retail. Every once in a while we get people that bring in merchandise that "doesn't work". When pressed for details, they have none. Any attempts to comprehend the problem is met with blank stares and angry gestures, like it's MY fault they can't communicate clearly.

Even better are folks who speak no English... none. They could be Mexican migrant workers, Asian folks in business suits, whatever. And they just hand me things and I have to use my psychic abilities to fix their problem.

If you have an issue, and you're communicating to someone who can potentially FIX your issue, be concise, be clear, and be coherent. Internet English is hard enough to read when you're just typing in IM... it's even harder when you're trying to describe a problem correctly.

LF

Why Are You Putting Down The Lindens With Every Word Capitalized Like It Is A Proper Noun?

LF

Julianna, I do think it's a bug in that it doesn't show you who accepted things from you. But this happens only if you give something to someone who is offline or busy. So before suspecting items are being taken away without your consent, I'd do a quick recall of who you passed items to in the past several days.

Best bet is to take down the names of friends who you passed stuff to but were offline or busy. Then follow up on them and see if they accepted it. Because the transaction isn't complete until they accepted it, even though you might have given it to them days ago.

Also, I don't think there is an indefinite amount of time that the server will hold your item. So if the person you sent the item to logs in after more than a week or so, then accepts it, they might not be receiving anything, cuz the transaction timed out. It's either lost in the void or back in your or their lost and found folder.

Just to be on the safe side, I'd make sure the person is online and ready to accept before sending stuff to them. Hope that helped some.

Of course you would have understood what she meant if it had been happening to you...are Lindens supposed to be mind readers? If they had never heard of this before... which it seems that way to me from his response, then how could he have understood what her report was about? I had no clue what she was talking about because I have not had the situation happen to me.

I think what people need to learn from this is that they need to be clearer in regards to what the actual problem is and check the forums to see if it has already been reported. This will save much time for LL and get things fixed much quicker. They can spend more time working on what needs to be done instead of wading through reports sent like the one above and wasting time trying to decipher and/or replying to get more information.

That's what the forum does when you type in all caps.

Well i wrote in all caps...lol they changed it to upper lower case, not ME!! hahaha seems theres yet another SL bug ! and how very nice of you to bring it to their attention!
SMILE

But Julianna didn't babble incomprehensibly, she said:



As a fellow user, non-tekkie, that was INSTANTLY clear to me as that weird "anonymous inventory acceptance problem" that seems to be happening MORE in the game lately due to server lags and people not logging in due to log-in problems! Sheesh! Is that not clear?

Instead of a simple handling of her simple problem, that any fellow user who had spent perhaps five minutes analyzing it more than she had, she got a snarky, condescending letter from Kona -- really bad stuff!

When she tried to complain her about that gross oversight and laxness in supervision,
she got Lexa's snarky and condescending answer:



Imagine making a characterization of a customer like that! Imagine! That's an outrage!

THE CUSTOMER IS ALWAYS RIGHT

I'm willing to bet that the disagreements on this forum over this issue can be neatly divided into groups:

1) those who are under 20 or 20-somethings who are tekkie experts or at least technologically--proficient, arrogant about that knowledge, and actually suffering a bit of inferiority complex over their huge gaps of knowledge in other fields (when they aren't simply ignorant of their lapses)
2) those who are over 30 and are not tekkie experts who are not technologically proficient or at least not tecnologically proficient on frustrating game problems, regardless of their basic computer skills (that they obviously had or they wouldn't be on this game) who are knowledgeable in other fields

It's a cultural AND a generational problem. So to argue about it some more will only further reveal the horrible lows to which our new generation has sunk in their failure to provide the most basic kind of human courtesy to their fellow human beings, so depersonalized and inhuman and arrogant they have become by their overexposure to malls, huge warehouse high schools in suburbia, and the Internet.

A sad commentary indeed.

I'll offer the same suggestion I gave in answer to a post from Julianna last month on a different issue:
Blasting the Lindens

That said, I agree that Kona could have practiced far greater diplomacy.

Actually, it's probably there to prevent people like you typing in caps ALL THE TIME.

Being in a customer service job for several years, i would have had my head taken off for that one, as would any of my employee's that answered her complaint in that manner. A much better way to have handled this problem would to have been to ask her to clarify her problem, give some dirrection as to the information needed..and proceed with her from there. Yes its a given shes very upset, as anyone mite be thinking they are losing iventory items they have paid for, or are selling to customers. Its the customer service techs duty to calm her down, and get the proper information needed to solve her problem, in such a manner as not to make her feel stupid or small for making such a request.

It's perfectly common in customer service to deal with instances where you do not understand what is being reported to you.

It's not OK to respond in this fashion. However, this is probably not the best place to ask, as you really won't get much sympathy from those who's job is not to service you as a customer.

I spent a good many years doing technical customer service work, and i'd say a good 80% of the time you can't understand what they're trying to tell you is wrong. However, your reply should always be at worst "I'm sorry [Sir, Ma'am], I don't understand what you're trying to tell me."

If you ever receive a reply of such in any form, you should ask to speak with the supervisor or manager of the client services department. I guarantee you they will see the problem in the response immediately.

BTW -- Your report made no sense to me either. You may want to slow it down and try reading back your own report a few times before submitting them, maybe have someone else read them too.

Yeah what he said and such!

You really should try to write up a report that is CLEAR, and offers details on how to REPLICATE the problem.

I found nothing degrading in Kona's reply and if you are routinely submitting bug reports similar to the one above, you're probably making thier job much more difficult.

You offered very little in the way of details: a bug in your inventory.

You might try being a little more descriptive about it before blasting Kona on the forums. I've posted bugs many times since I've been around and have never had a problem.

My guess? User error.

Yes... I've read about some of your problems with Kona. I've also dealt with Kona (and a few other Lindens) frequently, and I've not experienced what you have.

Again, I suspect user error.

I didn't completely understand her bug report the first time I read it. So I read it again. A Linden should not be sending out emails implying very strongly that a customer is stupid. If the bug report was written that terribly they can do with it what they do with everyone elses - ignore it.

I just finished reading Julianna's post in the Linden Hotline forum and I must say, I think you have it out for the Lindens. You blasted Philip for giving you attitude (Philip? Come on..) and you blast Kona for not helping you out with a problem you're having with Norton.. a problem that is clearly not LL's.

Julianna... whatever tips Kona gave to you on how to submit a proper and helpful bug report should be re-read and the next time you submit a report follow the tips.

You have experience with this bug so a jumble of key words was enough to triger off an association to this bug you have experienced. Please tell me how someone with no knowledge of this bug could decipher this and then attempt to reporduce it?

Not to talk down to you, but a bug report should make understandable what happened, and the steps leading up to that event, including any other relevant information, to someone who has NO prior knowledge of the problem that was experienced.

what is with drafting run on sentences without punctuation and capitalization is this the current hip vogue of the gen y crowd and the literary equivalent of rap music contributing to the dumbing down of written communication i cant do more of this please stop me....

Damn Gina! Can't believe people find the time to be so judgmental and critical of what he/she said! AARGH

Steps to reproduce the bug:
Go to sim X, create object X, with a script doing X, at X time of the day. (add any other necessary facts such as how many people were around at the time, if the sim had low FPS, etc. And try to aviod becoming emotional as it may cause some confusion in the problem).

Observed results:
Y happend, it happened Y amount of times.

Expected results:
I expected Z to happen.

P.s. Spell Check . If you are dealing with a business, it's always best to try and convey your thoughts as grammaticaly correct as possible.

Just how many "senior Linden" personnel do you expect to be available on a Saturday morning, anyway?


I'm a fellow user, non-tekkie as well... and her bug report in the first post was incomprehensible to me. Perhaps the reason you INSTANTLY understood it, while I didn't, isn't related to class, age, or technical acumen... maybe its just because you have direct experience with what she was talking about, and I don't. It might just be that simple, and not part of some class struggle or vast conspiracy. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

I always get kind and knowledgable responses from Kona. Perhaps I'm just lucky that way?

I'm not sure what exactly is going on with the bug described in the first post. But something simular... I think... that I get is " accepted your inventory." messages, without a name, often in Offline messages as well. It only happens when I give them an item however. I've never had it randomly happen.

I personaly would love to see people type better as well.

You recommending apologies? Seems to be hypocritical being unable to accept them yourself.......

The intent of the original poster's complaint can be divined by reading the bug report. Was it written in the best format? No. But if we are ever going to be a mainstream product, we have to expect that most users are not from the IT world, have never been beta testers and have no formal training in QA.

This means we are going to get reports along those lines. As a 20 year customer service veteran, what Kona did was rude and over the line. If he/she was so exasperated at the reports, he/she should have routed them to someone who could handle themselves professionally. Should Kona be fired? No. Should someone talk to Kona about how to talk to customers? Yes.

As it stands now, the product is being marketed as a non-beta, in production application. As such, the user base is not expected to encounter bugs that require technical training or expertise to report. Unfortunately, they do. The Lindens should take this into account when responding for more clarification.

A recent report that I filed had the three Questions in free text to be filled in. For me, it was not an issue, as I am used to it. To a casual user, this does not seem mandatory and promotes free form text. If they are intent on receiving the report in a certain format, then change the bug report GUI to match it.

I've had nothing but good service from Kona in the past. He's responded quickly, tactfully, and honestly to every one of my problems.

That said, maybe what's going on is that the issue that you have with Second Life may be frustrating you a bit, and therefor make you upset and sensitive to the things that the Lindens have to say. I put forth in fact, that no matter what Kona Linden may have said, if it wasn't the end-all be-all immediate fix you were looking for, you would have had a problem with what he said. It happens, emotions run high.. people tend to get frustrated with game mechanics and take it out on the service representatives.

It sounds like both of you have been trying to work together to fix this problem, and judging from your initial statement and his response, that there is a failure to communicate at some point. If he has told you how to format a bug report properly, and yet you still fail to do it, it is not his fault you cannot follow directions. The guideline he probably set forth to help you format your bug report is not to irritate you or surround you with red tape. I'm certain he's trying to help you, but he cannot if you cannot supply him with the proper information.

In fact, if you truly want to resolve your problem, the ball is in your court. Its up to you to supply the necessary information.. because no Linden is a mind reader. The more information the better, and jibberish solves nothing. You're fully capable of writing in a clear and consice matter, as you've proven in your beginning post. Why couldn't you write clearly when it's important?

In all fairness, his reply was a little curt. I would like to think that an adult would be strong enough to not be bothered by his tone of writing. If you were insulted by his honesty, would you be more insulted if he were to sugar-coat everything he said as though he were talking to a child?