Live Help Gone?

No more Live Help?

Agreeably, as they were untrained volunteers it was not an ideal solution (no disrespect to the Live Helpers intended, just pointing out that a company should really have PAID people so as to ensure there is coverage).

But nothing?

I have just been on and spoken to Chadrick Linden. He tells me to click on live help at the top. There is no live help only a knowledge base. My question was about first land. I was directed to the corporate page which happily told me that it was easy to get first land. Ha ! not on GMT it isnt. You are right..the game is great and the company must be worth a mint but customer service is poor.

Ah, apparently it is now called Help Request.

But still no one there.

Come on, Lindens, pay someone to man the thing properly, please. It is not fair to use residents.

But, but, look at all the shiny new UI stuff!

There's a blog post about it now (http://blog.secondlife.com/2006/12/13/whats-up-with-the-new-help-request-option-in-1131/), but personally it just feels more like trying to make it - temporarily - more difficult for anyone to get help. A name change doesn't explain the need to move it from the top down to the bottom.

There is a blog article about this, which amounts to "The Live Helpers were volunteers who were unqualified to respond to many of the problems people called them with." The new "Help Request" is apparently monitored by Liasons, who are actual Linden Employees.

And don't forget that the resident population of SL is extremely helpful. An answer to a question can be as simple as turning toward the person nearest you and asking if they know about a particular topic. It's understandable if a new resident feels nervous about asking a question... no one wants to feel like the new kid at school... but words of advice: Never ask about asking... just ask.

Oh... and it never hurts to do things like peruse the Knowledge Base online or Press F1 while in-world _OR_ search the forums (there's nearly 3-years of _knowledge_ tucked away in the forum archives for an answer to your question... because... just because other residents are happy to help answer questions its not their responsibility to do homework.

Just because Live Help might or might be gone doesn't abrogate residents from trying to help themselves.

The original Live Help was monitored by Lindens as well.

I think what the Blog article is talking about is the problem that happens if someone comes onto Live Help with a complaint about (for example) some of their items being corrupted by a sim crash - the kind of problem everyone hates, but that usually isn't recoverable, so it's actually just a matter of dealing with the angry customer (which I think is part of what they mean by "a customer service problem". In that case, at the moment one of three things has to happen:

a) a Linden answers to apologise to the customer and say that they can't do very much, while other requests for griefer ejects or technical problems that could be solved right away given god powers go unanswered because the Linden is busy.

b) a Resident Volunteer answers, and insodoing puts their head right in the lion's jaws of an angry customer, having to make a formal apology on the company's behalf when they are only a volunteer (and also, possibly, not doing it very well);

or c) no-one answers and the Resident who made the request gets even angrier and tells everyone that Live Help is useless.

All three of these are bad. As far as I understand it the intention is that they're going to divide Live Help in two, one for contacting volunteers and one for contacting Lindens, so that volunteers can't wind up in situation b) as they can just refer the person to the Linden option, and the duty Lindens don't have to deal with things that people would contact volunteers for.