How can Steam justify their support responses

[Porcu]

I've heard really bad things about steam support but have never had to use it before until recently, and my experience kind of hit me back. I sent a genuine question in and worded it in a why that required a actual response. I had a reply within 15 minutes which I thought was good, but after reading what it was it was obvious they only read the heading of my support ticket and copied and pasted some info that I found myself and read ages ago. Upon replying to that as nicely as I could I haven't had any reply what so ever.

Hands down the most confusing customer service I have had to deal.

Has anyone had any good support or are they all just as bad if not worse?

[Washell]

Vaemer-Riit eredeti hozzászólása:

Of course both of these tickets where submitted back in 2009-2010

They announced 25 million active accounts on January 1st, 2010. Company size at the time was ~300 people. They've got 125+ million now. Company size, ~300 people... Gee, I wonder why support takes so long!

It's not the user base that lost their minds...

[Vaemer-Riit]

Washell eredeti hozzászólása:

Vaemer-Riit eredeti hozzászólása:

Of course both of these tickets where submitted back in 2009-2010

They announced 25 million active accounts on January 1st, 2010. Company size at the time was ~300 people. They've got 125+ million now. Company size, ~300 people... Gee, I wonder why support takes so long!

It's not the user base that lost their minds...

True, although you have to admit the stuff we see on the forums gets more ridiculous each year and with each added feature(Trading, Market, Refunds) I am sure that support gets so much chaff coming through support that they would be hard pressed to take care of it even if they had 5 times the people that they had back in 2010

[ezwip]

They should have an 800 number that you call after a VAC ban and there is just one guy working there. You wait forever to get to him. Then when you finally get through he verifies your credit card info and bans your card, then hangs up.

[Zefar]

Hotblack Desiato eredeti hozzászólása:

Facebook, Google (possibly, though my source isn't clear on whether they outsource or not, but they've got far more users), Twitter....

Then there's Banking, Trading, etc. Certainly any bank or trading house alone may not arrive at 100 million, but combined they're far larger.

Youtube, which of course means Google.

Sony, already mentioned, it must be remembered is not solely a gaming company. They make far more of their revenue from electronics parts, and have a huge support staff.

I really doubt any of the people who work in Support for those companies would agree with your assessment of the difficulty of their jobs vs. Valve.

And regardless of any of that it's hardly an excuse that "we're so big and make so much dough we just don't have *time* to deal with all the people who pay us that dough." I know that isn't precisely what you said, but that's the impression it gave me.

First you don't get what I said. No other company deals with as many different problems like Steam Support do.
Facebook will most likely deal with harassment issues for most of the time and basically ANYONE can Moderate that.
Youtube deals with mostly Harassment and possible DMCA. But they got a lot of automated systems to help them for copy right materials.

For banks they don't need large support because their systems works most of the time. I should know as I work for one. We have a rather large amount of customers for our size and we only have about 2-4 people at support. They are not bogged down with calls and can easily manage the situation. Not to mention every issue they get can be solved rather easily. It's mostly about informing the customer on what to do or give them a time slot for a meeting.
This would be the same for most other normal companies out there. The support deals with quite a few types of stuff but they come up a lot. So it's easier. Steam gets hundreds of different tickets each day and all need to do quite a bit of work.


Sony MIGHT have a decent different support tickets but still not in the amount that Valve has. I'm also guessing most of the issues they deal with are account issues, faulty consoles and some other issues.


So no any other company out there doesn't deal with the amount of different tickets in different languages like Valve does.

You can't just throw money at a problem and expect it to fix it. Steam has grown so much in these past few years and when it started to grow a lot it doubled it's userbase in just a year. From 1 million to 2 million and then it kept increasing. You can not adjust to this.
But Valve are working on the support. No one has said they didn't. They are still trying to increase it and such. But it's not that easy when you're just located in one single town and have high demand.
They tried lowering the demands once, that didn't last long.

[Crunktanium]

They have an army at the ready to moderate posts 24/7. Yet they can't hire enough support because of so many active users. LOL what a crock..

[Joki the Disco Bandit]

Zefar eredeti hozzászólása:

First you don't get what I said. No other company deals with as many different problems like Steam Support do.
Facebook will most likely deal with harassment issues for most of the time and basically ANYONE can Moderate that.
Youtube deals with mostly Harassment and possible DMCA. But they got a lot of automated systems to help them for copy right materials.

For banks they don't need large support because their systems works most of the time. I should know as I work for one. We have a rather large amount of customers for our size and we only have about 2-4 people at support. They are not bogged down with calls and can easily manage the situation. Not to mention every issue they get can be solved rather easily. It's mostly about informing the customer on what to do or give them a time slot for a meeting.
This would be the same for most other normal companies out there. The support deals with quite a few types of stuff but they come up a lot. So it's easier. Steam gets hundreds of different tickets each day and all need to do quite a bit of work.


Sony MIGHT have a decent different support tickets but still not in the amount that Valve has. I'm also guessing most of the issues they deal with are account issues, faulty consoles and some other issues.


So no any other company out there doesn't deal with the amount of different tickets in different languages like Valve does.

You can't just throw money at a problem and expect it to fix it. Steam has grown so much in these past few years and when it started to grow a lot it doubled it's userbase in just a year. From 1 million to 2 million and then it kept increasing. You can not adjust to this.
But Valve are working on the support. No one has said they didn't. They are still trying to increase it and such. But it's not that easy when you're just located in one single town and have high demand.
They tried lowering the demands once, that didn't last long.

1.) You should have been more specific, as opposed to making a generalized statement. That you've been more specific now is something I applaud, but had you done so originally I wouldn't have bothered to point out the inadequacy of the response.

2.) Saying "anyone can moderate that" re: "harrassment" issues would tend to imply that Steam could do the same, no? So then why are there so many people posting so many threads illustrating that Steam doesn't seem to give a flying squirrel how many "offensive" profiles/profile names/profile avatars/etc. are put up, for instance? There are some that have existed for years, been reported countless times, with no response from Steam. While this isn't technically harrassment, it certainly seems to get some people's goat, and the principle is the same. "Anyone can moderate that.

3.) Does Steam not send out the very same types of automated responses that you claim Youtube does? General types of requests sent to support aren't scanned for keywords, and copy/pasted links to the appropriate thread sentb back as a reply? Are you saying that Steam uses a human being to respond to each and every support request? Because that doesn't sound like the experience people have.

And if Steam is getting a large number of requests that fall outside the scope of automated responses that's because they themselves have implemented features which will tend to increase these types of requests, i.e. trading/market and the like, in which case it is totally their fault and totally their responsibility to scale their support to match the incoming number of requests. One must grow with one's amount of business, in all areas, which is precisely what people are pointing out that Valve/Steam has not done. I wouldn't dream of taking on new contracts at work unless I were *damn* sure I had the manpower, resources and time to complete them, for just that reason, because it would undermine my customer's trust in me, and I'd lose revenue in the long run at the least.

4.) Sony's gaming division is only one aspect of the company. Up until a few years ago they made far more revenue from their electronics *parts* division, though this may not be the case anymore. But the point stands that they've recognized their responsibility to scale their support to their customer base. That Valve doesn't do the same is a *choice* on Valve's part, not some forced-upon-them-because-they're-just-a-tiny-team-of-really-good-guys-if-you-only-knew-them situation.

5.) Your last paragraph... my god.

"You can't just throw money at a problem and expect it to fix it."

Us throwing money at Valve all this time sure seems to have worked out well as a fix for Valve's problem of not having as much money as they wanted, hasn't it?

But, jokes aside, it's their *responsibility* to scale their support to their business. If the business has grown, the support must grow to match it. It's no excuse at all to say "it's grown just TOO fast, poor us", when it was *their* decisions on what to implement, etc. that led to the growth. It points to either a marked shortsightedness of the likely consequences those implementations or a willfull IGNOREance of the problem.

And while Valve may be located in one single town its user-base is not, and I'd venture to say neither are its bank accounts. An excuse often bandied about for the woeful response times is that people are filing "stupid" requests or something similar. That people just can't learn to help themselves, and poor Valve is left in the position of teaching them baby-steps.

But as my SRE wife points out, "If your default position is that your user-base is stupid, YOU'RE doing it wrong." Valve in this case wants to have it's cake (trading/market income, EA income, Steam Keys, constantly working to increase its userbase, etc., and all that from a "stupid" but thankfully happy to spend userbase) and eat it, too. And for Valve it looks like the cake is anything but a lie.