The interview continues…

Now, when Joe Gamer goes to the store and shells out his money to buy a copy of EQ what portion of that product is under your purview?

Oh, it's everything. From the basic "I lost my account password" to a technical problem, "Oh, I'm crashing to the desktop when I launch the program" to GM problems. It's the whole gamut, really, it touches everything.

So of all the things you are responsible for, is there any one thing that takes up more of your time than anything else?

I think right now since we've made the recent announcements about changes to our item reimbursement policy it would be that. I mean, you know that, you've played UO and EQ and you're playing AC now. There are just some people who will always try to take advantage of a situation.

So just to conclude about the responsibilities and about what the plan is here at customer service like John said in his email we're increasing staff, we're increasing coverage for our European users and also trying to help out our Asian and Australian groups.

Right. I think that that was something that has caught all three of the big MMORPG's by surprise, first was the sheer number of GM staff that would be required to handle the huge amount of player population, but then also the need for 24 x 7 to cover overseas players.

Exactly. We've just reached a new agreement that will increase our distribution in Europe, so we will be seeing a whole bunch of new European users.

Now, you've gently used the phrase 'revamping'. At what point will you consider the customer service program turned around?

Well, it's getting there. I've been in San Diego about three months now and one of the key things that we've done is to put in a new phone system. This is important because prior to July we had only one line coming in to the Verant building and it was a local number. So what we've done, we've brought in a T1 line to our phone system which quadruples our capacity. That brings us up to 32 inbound lines and we've increased the staff from 5 phone reps to well over 15.

It sounds like you are definitely hiring out there!

Absolutely, hiring is our number one priority.

So should our loyal Corp readers send resumes your direction?

Absolutely! Our jobs are listed online at www.verant.com. So we've spent a lot of time bringing that T1 line into the building with a toll free number on it.

That was a charge number before, right?

Well, it was a charge number for the EQ technical people. The Station has always had a toll free number and that number, 888-STATION, now comes into the Verant building. And that's really important to the customer because now there's no confusion, they can call a toll free number and get technical support, billing support, the whole thing.

Before the billing was being handled by a team in Utah, and although they were giving good support they weren't in synch with Verant so it created some confusion. A customer would call in on one line and have to be told they needed to go over to the other line.

Heh, for me I'm always afraid that when I call that second line they will tell me that I actually need to talk to the people at the first line!

Right, and I admit that there was some of that going on and it wasn't good for our customers. It wasn't good for anyone really, because the reps were getting frustrated also. There's nothing quite like getting an irate customer on the phone and having to tell them that they need to talk to someone else. So we've sort of eliminated that whole problem with the new line.

On the email side we've just brought in a really sophisticated email system to help us respond to and track our email. And we've added six people who do nothing but answer email all day. They are dedicated to email support. If we get a lot of calls on hold they can jump on the lines, but their first job is email. Our response goal is 24 hours. We're getting there, I would say right now we are at 48, which is comfortable, but the goal is 24.

That sounds great. I know that in all of the big three the game is designed to try to immerse the player as much as possible. But in a lot of instances that immersion is broken when a player has to go to a website for support, or call someone on the phone. What is being done to provide more in-game support?

Well I think we are doing that now by hiring more GM's. Most customers know how to petition for a GM, but unfortunately if we don't have the coverage on the server that petition will go unanswered. So the first thing is increasing staffing. In addition we have an excellent group of guides, we have a large group of volunteer guides and I think they do a wonderful job.

And what are the plans for the guides? Are you currently expanding there too?

We are always taking guide applications, so yes! We have two people on staff who are dedicated to working with the guides and reviewing the tests (all guides have to take a test), and they go over the application and then do the training and set up the guides. The program is quite integral actually.

So how many guides are currently on staff?

I would have to check, but I know it's over a thousand. But let's be careful about 'staff', these people are all volunteers. And they do a great job.

Well, loyal Corp readers, tune in tomorrow to read the rest of the interview. We'll talk to George about reigning in rogue GM's (a totally timely topic) as well as the recently announced EQ item reimbursement policy!

1 - Scotto Interview Page 1

2 - Scotto Interview Page 2