The gaming industry has seen sustained growth over the past years. According to a Statista report, the sector’s market value is projected to reach USD 268.8 billion by 2025 – 50% more than its 2021 market value (USD 178 billion).
Similarly, in-game purchases are expected to amount to USD 74 million globally by 2025. These projections paint a positive future for the gaming industry. It also puts into the limelight an oft-neglected aspect of the sector, gaming customer service.
As customer demographics go, gamers are among the most vocal and engaging. There are countless internet forums dedicated to various games, from triple-A to indie titles and anything in between.
Thus, game developers should provide decent gaming customer service unless they want to get on the bad side of gamers.
What is gaming customer service?
Gaming customer service refers to a videogame company’s dedicated support services for its player base. Like other customer support services, gaming customer service caters to various game-related issues that players encounter.
These issues include:
- Inability to log in or access accounts
- In-game purchases not being reflected on a player’s account
- Bugs or glitches encountered in-game
- Credit cards not working with the game’s payment platform
- Appealing to game moderators’ decisions (e.g., getting unbanned from servers)
Players often reach out to a game studio’s gaming customer service through email. However, many game developers are also active on various social media platforms, particularly Twitter.
For example, Bethesda Softworks, owner of the well-known Elder Scrolls game titles, actively engages its player base on Twitter. The studio addresses player issues and encourages them to connect with its support teams for faster resolution.
Do you need dedicated gaming customer service?
While some argue that customer support is separate from the gaming industry, gaming customer service is part and parcel of games.
A game can leave a negative impression on players without proper customer support services. This is especially true for massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) and Gacha-style games where microtransactions are abundant.
These negative impressions can lead to bad reviews (both on game reviews and social media platforms), which can cause a studio’s player base to diminish and discourage potential customers.
Aside from avoiding negative reviews, having dedicated gaming customer service also has a number of advantages for game studios.
These include:
- Better player base understanding. Gamers can be the most supportive and proactive customer base when nurtured right. With effective gaming customer service, players will be encouraged to relay constructive feedback on what can make the game experience better for the game’s community.
- Better segmentation of customers. Not all players share the same experience, even within the same game (i.e., what works for a Skyrim player on a PC will not necessarily work for a Skyrim player on a PlayStation 5). With games released across multiple platforms, game companies need customer support teams that can provide their players with help matching their requirements.
- Better future products. As stated earlier, gamers can be very proactive customers. Game studios can count on them to provide detailed feedback on how developers can further improve the games they love (e.g., what needs to be added or removed, and what elements are lacking).
How to have an effective gaming customer service
There are many steps game studios can take to improve their player base’s gaming customer service experience.
Below are some of the methods game companies can use.
Have a 24/7 available support system
Gamers come from all over the world, and their gaming schedules fall under different time zones. Thus, game companies need to have gaming customer service available to players no matter the time of day they reach out.
Hire gamers as customer service providers
Gamers understand gamers. Customer service providers can better understand their customers when they speak the same “language.” Talking to a fellow gamer can help players convey issues more effectively as they can use gamer terminologies (e.g., grinding, cheesing, nerfing) that may just go over non-gamers heads.
Provide multilingual support
Like any other customer base, not all gamers speak or understand English. Gaming companies should have customer support services that can converse with players from every country where their game has been released.
Outsource gaming customer service
Game studios are, first and foremost, game-developing companies. Their whole schtick is about creating games that players will buy. However, the nature of modern video games requires studios to have a team ready to respond to the complaints and feedback of their clients.
Unfortunately, handling large volumes of customer feedback is not something that many game studios are equipped to do. In such cases, handing over customer support tasks to business process outsourcing (BPO) firms is the best course of action.
Many BPO companies specialize in and have the necessary expertise and technologies for providing quality customer service.
Challenges commonly faced by gaming customer service
Here are the two main drawbacks of gaming customer service:
- Social media reputation. Gamers have vast online communities on almost every platform. From Reddit to Facebook, gamers form support groups, and discussion forums can help make or break the reputation of game studios and their titles.
- Hardware and software issues. Games are rarely bug-free or don’t experience hardware compatibility issues. These issues – combined with the need to provide gamers with satisfying gaming experiences – make it necessary for games to undergo multiple updates and patches.
As service and commodity providers to more than two billion customers worldwide, game studios must overcome these obstacles to give quality gaming customer service.
