The role of customer support in game development and its interaction with other departments
It is considered that the tasks of the support team include only interaction with users and solving technical problems. But not everyone knows that these specialists are also involved in a variety of processes within the company. Plarium Krasnodar will talk about the role of the support service in the work of the studio and how it interacts with other departments.
Support staff receive a lot of calls from users, so they know how the players relate to the project, what they like and what they don’t like, what changes they are waiting for. All this information is transmitted to the departments where the specialists are engaged in the creation of the product. Then the support service receives feedback from the developers: which of the proposed will be entered and what will not. This interaction helps the company to quickly respond to the players' requests and maintain a dialogue with them.
If the connection between departments is not established, users are the first to suffer. In our studio, the support service tries to get a list of changes or corrections in the game as early as possible in order to learn more about the new mechanics and to understand who they are interested in. This improves the quality of work and helps to solve user problems in a timely manner. In addition, the support department staff transfer point requests from players to other units. This information can help managers determine in which direction to develop the product further.
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Plarium Krasnodar has a Support Portal. It contains manuals for all studio projects, in-game item descriptions, and a FAQ. Specialists from different departments are involved in the development of the portal, but the support service is responsible for its overall structure. For example, based on feedback from players, requests for articles that are of interest to the audience at the moment are formed. Then this information is received by the copywriting department , where experts write materials and translate them into English. Finished articles are transferred to the localization department for translation into other languages, and then to content managers for placing texts on the resource.
You need to establish communication with the departments whose work directly affects the final product. Thanks to the data received from the support service, UI / UX experts understand how to change the color scheme or interface design and which processes to automate. So, guided by the information on the users' behavior patterns collected by the support, they expanded the functionality of the chat window and the walls of the clan. This allowed players who prefer to fight or develop the economy, quickly exchange messages and give orders to clan members. To satisfy the wishes of users, for whom communication plays an important role, they added emoji.
The QA department together with the support team is testing games on various platforms to understand what difficulties users may have. Analysts , working with support, track trends to find out which gameplay mechanics will be of interest first.
The legal department and the support team are working together on a user agreement. This document regulates the behavior of players and allows them to enjoy pleasant communication, without insults and obscene language. If someone breaks the rules, we remind him about them and warn that we will be forced to take action next time. In addition, we pay special attention to the protection of user data. Lawyers together with support and other departments develop policies for storing and processing information, as well as improve its protection.
Support specialists also communicate closely with the community department . They give advice on the textual and graphical content of the forums and official groups in social networks, offer ideas on organizing competitions. There are cases when users congratulate their clerk on his birthday, having built cities in the form of his nickname, and then take a screenshot of the game card and send it to the support. Support specialists refer such works to the community department with a proposal to place them in official communities. This helps to unite loyal players, encourage them to create content on official sites and bring new users.
The interaction between departments in our studio occurs through project managers . They form a single information field and can answer many questions regarding product development.
The priority remains speed and versatility. Today, the user, being anywhere in the world, wants to get an answer to his question as soon as possible, so the support service must be available 24/7.
One of the main trends is the creation of own software. At first, you can do with third-party products, but in the long term, this approach does not work, especially if the company cares about personal brand and the quality of its services.
The Krasnodar studio Plarium looked closely at many Helpdesk systems, but eventually created its own, which meets the necessary requirements. With it, we get thematic requests, quickly process information and solve emerging problems. Consider the example of sending letters: third-party programs cope only with the basic functions, and our system allows you to design HTML-letters, observing the setting and visual style of projects. So the user is always immersed in the atmosphere of the game. We are sure that the layout of the letter will not fail and that the fonts and arts selected by us will be displayed in it.
Another reason to get your own platform is the following: third-party technical support software developers often request access to game data, which is contrary to NDA. We considered that it was simpler, and more importantly safer both for users and for the studio, to create their own request processing system so that other companies would not receive classified information.
In addition, our specialists use any channels of communication with the audience: instant messengers, social networks, app stores.
Good support specialists should be able to adapt to the needs of the target audience, work closely with other departments and respect users. If an operator sees a person behind a ticket, then he treats his problem as if he is his own.
To evaluate the work of employees, to determine its quality and volume help internal indicators. However, an important indicator is user satisfaction, and its level should be high. Otherwise, it is worth thinking about what exactly you are doing wrong.
We establish communication between departments
Support staff receive a lot of calls from users, so they know how the players relate to the project, what they like and what they don’t like, what changes they are waiting for. All this information is transmitted to the departments where the specialists are engaged in the creation of the product. Then the support service receives feedback from the developers: which of the proposed will be entered and what will not. This interaction helps the company to quickly respond to the players' requests and maintain a dialogue with them.
If the connection between departments is not established, users are the first to suffer. In our studio, the support service tries to get a list of changes or corrections in the game as early as possible in order to learn more about the new mechanics and to understand who they are interested in. This improves the quality of work and helps to solve user problems in a timely manner. In addition, the support department staff transfer point requests from players to other units. This information can help managers determine in which direction to develop the product further.
')
Plarium Krasnodar has a Support Portal. It contains manuals for all studio projects, in-game item descriptions, and a FAQ. Specialists from different departments are involved in the development of the portal, but the support service is responsible for its overall structure. For example, based on feedback from players, requests for articles that are of interest to the audience at the moment are formed. Then this information is received by the copywriting department , where experts write materials and translate them into English. Finished articles are transferred to the localization department for translation into other languages, and then to content managers for placing texts on the resource.
Who should cooperate with?
You need to establish communication with the departments whose work directly affects the final product. Thanks to the data received from the support service, UI / UX experts understand how to change the color scheme or interface design and which processes to automate. So, guided by the information on the users' behavior patterns collected by the support, they expanded the functionality of the chat window and the walls of the clan. This allowed players who prefer to fight or develop the economy, quickly exchange messages and give orders to clan members. To satisfy the wishes of users, for whom communication plays an important role, they added emoji.
The QA department together with the support team is testing games on various platforms to understand what difficulties users may have. Analysts , working with support, track trends to find out which gameplay mechanics will be of interest first.
The legal department and the support team are working together on a user agreement. This document regulates the behavior of players and allows them to enjoy pleasant communication, without insults and obscene language. If someone breaks the rules, we remind him about them and warn that we will be forced to take action next time. In addition, we pay special attention to the protection of user data. Lawyers together with support and other departments develop policies for storing and processing information, as well as improve its protection.
Support specialists also communicate closely with the community department . They give advice on the textual and graphical content of the forums and official groups in social networks, offer ideas on organizing competitions. There are cases when users congratulate their clerk on his birthday, having built cities in the form of his nickname, and then take a screenshot of the game card and send it to the support. Support specialists refer such works to the community department with a proposal to place them in official communities. This helps to unite loyal players, encourage them to create content on official sites and bring new users.
The interaction between departments in our studio occurs through project managers . They form a single information field and can answer many questions regarding product development.
Trends and tools for working with users
The priority remains speed and versatility. Today, the user, being anywhere in the world, wants to get an answer to his question as soon as possible, so the support service must be available 24/7.
One of the main trends is the creation of own software. At first, you can do with third-party products, but in the long term, this approach does not work, especially if the company cares about personal brand and the quality of its services.
The Krasnodar studio Plarium looked closely at many Helpdesk systems, but eventually created its own, which meets the necessary requirements. With it, we get thematic requests, quickly process information and solve emerging problems. Consider the example of sending letters: third-party programs cope only with the basic functions, and our system allows you to design HTML-letters, observing the setting and visual style of projects. So the user is always immersed in the atmosphere of the game. We are sure that the layout of the letter will not fail and that the fonts and arts selected by us will be displayed in it.
Another reason to get your own platform is the following: third-party technical support software developers often request access to game data, which is contrary to NDA. We considered that it was simpler, and more importantly safer both for users and for the studio, to create their own request processing system so that other companies would not receive classified information.
In addition, our specialists use any channels of communication with the audience: instant messengers, social networks, app stores.
Summarize
Good support specialists should be able to adapt to the needs of the target audience, work closely with other departments and respect users. If an operator sees a person behind a ticket, then he treats his problem as if he is his own.
To evaluate the work of employees, to determine its quality and volume help internal indicators. However, an important indicator is user satisfaction, and its level should be high. Otherwise, it is worth thinking about what exactly you are doing wrong.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/418877/
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