Are You Satisfied With EA/BioWare's Customer Support In SWTOR?

[Shadylol]

By satisfied, I mean is it at least "good enough". I don't think anyone was really expecting it to be perfect; but is it Satisfactory?

My own opinion — No, I am not satisfied with their Customer Support in SWTOR. They never answer my tickets (I've had to make about 6 now), with anything other than an automated canned response. This canned response has been useless each time, telling me nothing other than "we read what you typed", and to check my e-mail. Not one of these tickets has had a legitimate resolution.

To add insult to injury, the Automated Response role plays as some kind of Robot "Protocol Droid"

Anyway, I just wanted to see what others thought of it. Maybe I'm being too critical of them, as there's probably an incomprehensible amount of tickets being submitted ever since Day 1 Early Access, and they have a lot on their hands. This is kind of a big deal to me, cause I can't see myself paying 15 dollars a month for a game, without customer support equal to, or greater than Blizzard's with WoW (at least WoW's GMs talk to me in-game, and usually can fix my problem)

[fruitypebble]

You expect too much given the circumstances. The kind of CS traffic Bioware is seeing right now for Star Wars would make upper management at Blizzard pee their pants. Blizzard walked those same footsteps at one point, and has since managed to make it work. Bioware is still getting their feet wet with a brand new, very bug ridden game.

[Xrxes]

well, with the recent patching problems, with corrupted patch files etc.., Blizzard's technical/support system looks like a divine garden compared to what SWTOR has.

I'm trying to install it now, but can't do it.. The whole update/install system is broken, it's getting really frustrating.

And others can say what they want, but i never had any troubles at launch day to install a blizzard game, though i'm anxious to play SWTOR, looks so nice and refreshing. Arghhhhhh....

You expect too much given the circumstances. The kind of CS traffic Bioware is seeing right now for Star Wars would make upper management at Blizzard pee their pants. Blizzard walked those same footsteps at one point, and has since managed to make it work. Bioware is still getting their feet wet with a brand new, very bug ridden game.

True, i have to admit.

But... I never had install problems on Blizz games.
Yeah, lag, queues, bugs etc.., all that is nothing new for any MMO, but a simple install/patch to go wrong and basically prevent you from even opening your brand new game? Naahhh, never. The system EA/Origin/BW is using is definitely a poor choice and is doing a lot of harm to the customers.

Me, i already have 20 hours since i bought it but i cannot install the game, simple as that. That's not good in any way you look at it.

[Grable]

Where's the "N/A - I haven't been in touch with them due to bigass queues they have" ?

[Shadylol]

Where's the "N/A - I haven't been in touch with them due to bigass queues they have" ?

That would still go under N/A, or if you find the queues for customer support especially bothersome, it would go under No, unless the lack of response was okay, or understandable, in which cause it would go under Yes

[Cyi]

So far no, I have been waiting 6 days now for a response. I mean I am all for Bioware and all, but at some point they need to do better.

[vizzle]

I'm just wondering what problems you guys are having that desperately needs Customer Service attention.

[Kisho]

Oh, Shadylol. You are hilarious. For months now you've been jumping into any thread you can, taking any opportunity possible to bash WoW relentlessly. Now that your holy grail has been released, you're still not happy. Did it ever occur to you that maybe the problem isn't with the developers?

Personally, I haven't had a need to contact customer support. I also do not understand why someone would need to make 6 tickets in the first two weeks! 1, sure. 2, maybe. 3 is pushing it. 6?! Either you have the worst luck in the world, or you're making mountains out of molehills.

Furthermore, again: it's the first couple of weeks. Their customer service is going to be pushed to the limits: let's imagine that everyone made 6 tickets in the first couple of weeks. Assuming there's 1 million players at the moment (which seems to be the number floating around atm), that's a maximum of 6 million tickets for Bioware's customer support to deal with. If each ticket takes 5 minutes to deal with, that's 30,000,000 minutes to deal with everyone. 30,000,000 / 60 = 500,000 hours. Assuming an 8 hour work day, they'd need 62,500 employees to deal with that workload. Just in customer service.

Of course, I'm making an over-exaggerated assumption here. So let's be more conservative: everyone has made 1 ticket in the past 2 weeks. This should account for those who have made 0 tickets, and those who have made 6 (or more, god forbid).

Each ticket takes 5 minutes to deal with.
1 ticket for each of the 1,000,000 subscribers, 1,000,000 tickets.
5,000,000 minutes, or 83,333 hours.
10,417 (rounding up) employees.

10,417 employees only in customer service just to deal with all the tickets, which AREN'T the only way of submitting concerns/feedback/criticism. And this is assuming each ticket takes 5 minutes to deal with, when some could take even longer (and some could be shorter of course).

So yes, you're getting automated responses. Because they simply do not have the manpower to do anything else. Stop submitting so many tickets, and maybe we'll get better customer service, yes?

[Deleted]

no i submitted a ticket and got some weird reply back from some droid gm =/
it didnt even concern my ticket.

[Fela]

Where's the "N/A - I haven't been in touch with them due to bigass queues they have" ?

Does waiting in a queue satisfy you? It's part of their (lack of) customer support.

[Ihazcakeforu]

How is the ticket being a droid insult to injury?
They aren't doing it just to you to deliberatetly piss you off, it's just a different/fun/interactive way of answering tickets.

[Shadylol]

Oh, Shadylol. You are hilarious. For months now you've been jumping into any thread you can, taking any opportunity possible to bash WoW relentlessly. Now that your holy grail has been released, you're still not happy. Did it ever occur to you that maybe the problem isn't with the developers?

I never stated, or implied that SWTOR was my "holy grail", it's just an MMO (sort of), that I decided to try out, since I'm not playing WoW anymore.

[Dakia]

I haven't needed to contact them, but I know that people have had issues. While it is frustrating, people need to understand how bogged down they are right now with people contacting them for the most trivial issues (ie the early access calls that locked down their call centers).

[Crookers]

No it's absolutely shocking

[Fela]

Oh, Shadylol. You are hilarious. For months now you've been jumping into any thread you can, taking any opportunity possible to bash WoW relentlessly. Now that your holy grail has been released, you're still not happy. Did it ever occur to you that maybe the problem isn't with the developers?

Personally, I haven't had a need to contact customer support. I also do not understand why someone would need to make 6 tickets in the first two weeks! 1, sure. 2, maybe. 3 is pushing it. 6?! Either you have the worst luck in the world, or you're making mountains out of molehills.

Furthermore, again: it's the first couple of weeks. Their customer service is going to be pushed to the limits: let's imagine that everyone made 6 tickets in the first couple of weeks. Assuming there's 1 million players at the moment (which seems to be the number floating around atm), that's a maximum of 6 million tickets for Bioware's customer support to deal with. If each ticket takes 5 minutes to deal with, that's 30,000,000 minutes to deal with everyone. 30,000,000 / 60 = 500,000 hours. Assuming an 8 hour work day, they'd need 62,500 employees to deal with that workload. Just in customer service.

Of course, I'm making an over-exaggerated assumption here. So let's be more conservative: everyone has made 1 ticket in the past 2 weeks. This should account for those who have made 0 tickets, and those who have made 6 (or more, god forbid).

Each ticket takes 5 minutes to deal with.
1 ticket for each of the 1,000,000 subscribers, 1,000,000 tickets.
5,000,000 minutes, or 83,333 hours.
10,417 (rounding up) employees.

10,417 employees only in customer service just to deal with all the tickets, which AREN'T the only way of submitting concerns/feedback/criticism. And this is assuming each ticket takes 5 minutes to deal with, when some could take even longer (and some could be shorter of course).

So yes, you're getting automated responses. Because they simply do not have the manpower to do anything else. Stop submitting so many tickets, and maybe we'll get better customer service, yes?

Your calculations imply that they would process all those tickets on ONE day. Yet you allowed for accumulation over 'the first couple of weeks'.

Let's assume an average of 1 ticket per player over 2 weeks, that means roughly 10 work days.

Which would leave us with 1000 customer service workers to serve 1 _million_ customers, does that sound like too much to you? All assuming 5 full minutes to handle each request.

[Shadylol]

I'm just wondering what problems you guys are having that desperately needs Customer Service attention.

Sith Corruption toggle in options not working, 200,000 gold that I mailed to myself never arriving, and a few Bug Reports; have been what I've made tickets for. I guess these aren't "Desperate", but there are other issues that have been reported, by other people that are game-breaking, such as the Bounty Hunter Class Quest never finishing it's Final Act for many players, leaving them unable to progress to Ilum Dailies (I talked to a Sith Inquisitor in-game who could not finish his Class Quest, as well, although I was able to finish mine as an Inquisitor)

[Kisho]

I never stated, or implied that SWTOR was my "holy grail", it's just an MMO (sort of), that I decided to try out, since I'm not playing WoW anymore.

Focusing on one part of my post doesn't render the rest of the post ignorable.

[Crookers]

I'm just wondering what problems you guys are having that desperately needs Customer Service attention.

Pre-order code not working was the first problem I had, also have been unsatisfied with responses to in game tickets (automated response and closed)

[Necrolepsy]

considering the fact they resolved 3 of my issues in a 10 minute call with 5 minutes waiting time I am very satisfied.

[Shadylol]

Focusing on one part of my post doesn't render the rest of the post ignorable.

I wasn't trying to ignore the rest of your post; I just read it as an overall statement, not something directly said to me