Upgrading support@lindenlab.com response?

I noticed this quote over in the tech issues forum. As a long-time Live Helper, I can say one of the complaints I hear most is, "I've tried emailing support, and never hear anything back but that same old automated form letter." While I understand Linden Lab has gone through a huge period of growth over the past year, I am glad to hear this is being addressed / improved somehow. As Live Helpers, we are often told to refer people to support for problems we can't solve (as we don't have access to the customer database, or the asset server, etc), and it has been frustrating to try to convince people to keep trying. I must admit that that email address has often felt like a black hole of non-responsiveness!

Can anyone give some specifics on exactly what is being done to improve the response of support@? I'm very glad to hear its being addressed, but wouldn't mind being able to give some input on how it can be improved. Does anyone hear have any information, or constructive ideas, other than the obvious, "Well, how about answering them?"

Regards,

-Flip

I love to hear some constructive ideas from the Community -- here are a few of the things on which currently we're working and thinking:

*Support satisfaction feedback (coming soon)
*Round-the-clock, seven-day-a-week staffing (in the works)
*Round-the-clock, seven-day-a-week phone support (in the works)
*Multi-lingual support (in the works)
*'Peak' staffing for promotions, new releases, and high volume periods (in the works)
*Online ticket status tracking
*Website and Viewer support ticket submission
*Automatic search of known issues/bugs prior to submitting a ticket
*Staffed Support Island in-world
*Staffed website Technical Support chat

Holy cow!!

That all sounds wonderful Daniel!! All of those things I would be in support of!

Being able to categorize what sort of support you need would be helpful as well. I.E. technical, customer service, land sales/management, client and/or update questions..

Having never needed to use the Support services thus far, I don't know if there is already a way to do this, and if so,... nevermind! I know billing is a seperate address already, so I didn't list that.

Maybe assigning the incoming emails to the appropriate person right off the bat would shorten some of the queues.

*sings "There's a light...."

Right on LL very good to know.

Cat

I bet some of the reports also have to do with things that is affecting the whole grid, like when the asset server is messed up.

If there is something that is "temporary" and affects the whole grid, why not have a small section of the bug report tell people that this issue is already known, and is being worked on?

Not everyone reads the forums and it's not always in the login screen.. so, this would be a good way to prevent the unnecessary bug reports.

Glad to hear it, Daniel. SL's overall experience will be much better with these improvements.

Sounds . . . grrrrrrrrrrrrEATE!

coco

This is fantastic. The support@ email address is one of those things that has needed an upgrade, and WOW, is it getting one! Thanks so much for the response, Daniel, this is most heartening and should definitely help with some of the growing pains from having, what, ten times as many sims now as there were only 18 months ago?

Regards,

-Flip

I work in a company that uses "tickets" for incoming work that is distributed to various ques based on the problem/trouble a customer is having. *The system is called Remedy if anyone has ever heard of it*

We had the support satisfaction feedback system in place with resolved tickets. In my experience with our customers, our dissatisfaction rate was EXTREMELY high. Further analysis showed that basically our customers were using this only when they had poor performance, not when they were satisfied with performance. After doing a resolved ticket to dissatisfaction root cause analysis, we were able to figure this out and adjust totals accordingly. Just a little something to think about when you decide to implement it.

Support Island is a great idea. As a newbie, it's much more satisfying to relate to an av on location than to send an email or even an IM. Do Lindens refer people to Live Help when the problem is not a technical issue that only a Linden can fix? That seems a fair deal as long as there's someone active in Live Help 24/7.

Being able to wait in line to speak to a Linden avatar in-world would be a truly excellent development. Given the power of Second Life as a tool for meeting, interacting and communicating, E-Mails and phone calls seem very weak by comparison. I know that this sort of thing takes a LOT of planning and framing, since support people need to be hired and policies need to be implemented to keep them in the loop. Even so, this is easily the best solution. I look forward to seeing this fly.

Umm, just sort of wondering ... how long have you been either currently working on, or thinking about, these things? And is there an ETA on any of them?

I don't mean to be trollish, even though I know it's sounding like I am, but 'coming soon' and 'in the works' don't actually mean anything.

wow is right! what an awesome move forward for SL as a whole. once that entire list has been implemented, not only will the entire world run more smoothly, but it's one more thing we can tell others about SL.

excellent news.. i'm almost speechless with the implecations of these improvements.. not quite speechless, apparently, but still..


/bow

One thing I am looking forward to is an upgrade to the Live Help interface. I'd like to have residents be presented with an entire windows instead of just an IM, listing current issues ("Because of today's upgrade, TPs will be borked and textures will be slow to load!" and a section choosing what category their question is (General, Scripting, etc)... then targeting the IMs to Live Helpers who have listed that as a field of expertise. Also, perhaps a read out of how many of those Live Helpers are currently active in each category. This would let the Live Help team help the Liaisons a lot more by giving every the data they need and the targetting they need.

Just some ideas.

Regards,

-Flip

I think I hear crickets chirping, or is that the sound of all the LL staff working on SL 2?