Choosing Customer Support Staff

When it comes to the heart of the customer service program, you have four basic options: a small paid staff, a large paid staff, outsourcing, and volunteers.

Paid Staff

Hiring only a few paid staff and hoping for the best is generally not a valid option for the massive multiplayer games, because of the workload involved.

However, Ultima Online and Asheron's Call chose this approach after using volunteers for many months, citing legal concerns as the main reason. U.S. Labor law, quite simply, does not recognize such a thing as a volunteer in a for-profit business, and several lawsuits have been filed against companies that use them. See Case Study 4.3.3 for more information on this topic.

Case Study 4.3.3: Volunteers, Games, and the Law

More on volunteers in the legal system can be found at www.dol.gov/esa/regs/compliance/whd/whdfs13.htm

For more information on the lawsuits relating to volunteers and online services, see:

• www.salon.com/tech/feature/1999/04/16/aol_community/index1.html

• http://dir.salon.com/tech/log/2000/09/21/ultima_volunteers/index.html

• www.e3dnews.com/e3d/Issues/200102-Feb/lead.html

• www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,41821,00.html

As of August 2002, none of the lawsuits have resulted in settlements against a gaming company, but the issues are of significant concern and warrant attention.

Unfortunately, the only way to pay for a large staff is to charge considerably more than the average game can reasonably expect from its players.

Simutronics' games have long offered "premium services" where players can opt to pay considerably more for preferential customer service, and this model works extremely well for them. However, the games in question are text-based, with considerably less overhead than their graphical counterparts, and still allow a large number of volunteers to assist. Everquest introduced "Legends" premium service in 2002, but no data is currently available on its success or lack thereof. Finally, while several thirdparty companies, including Zreality and the Themis Group, offer online gaming customer service assistance, the effectiveness and costs involved must be carefully evaluated before choosing this option.

Volunteers

Despite the threat of litigation, the volunteer approach was chosen by most online games and has worked quite well, although its effectiveness varies due to management issues, willingness to trust the volunteers with commands that have the potential for abuse, and available tools.

As the volunteer service model is the most prominent, it is going to be the focus of the rest of this article.