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G!VOICE conducted a special interview with Vivian He (right), GTW-CS and Emily Huang, GTW-CS as they shared the unspoken hard work in customer service.
Currently Gamania divides customer service sector into four divisions: staff who are responsible for answering customers’ calls, staff who deal with players’ online queries, staff who set up internal trainings for quality control of the customer service, and staff who assist in testing product quality and are part of QA team. Out of these four divisions, telephone customer service occupy the most people. Being front line customer service personnel is hard work. They need to do a 24hr shift and in the peak seasons (winter and summer vacations), an average customer service staff needs to answer at least 150 phone calls with majority of which they have to repetitively give the same answers. In addition, they need to be patient and calm the players’ emotions. In short, customer service personnel require emotional management skills and it’s not an easy job!
If You Want to Excel in Customer Service, Personality Matters
Have you had the experience of calling customer service personnel to complain about something? I believe many people have done it before. Customer service personnel need to listen to customers’ discontent, and help them to solve problems. If you want to excel in this task, you need to possess certain personalities. Section chief in customer service, Hong, Shao-Shuan mentioned that Gama-customer service personnel need to meet the following criteria: 1. Submission: when the work shift schedule is set, each colleague has to follow through 100%. Being late or check out early is out of the question, one must submit to the schedule; 2. Patience: customer service personnel need to be patient in replying repetitive questions asked by the players; 3. Ability to under stress: they need to be highly stress-resilient at work to face the emotional stress imposed by the players; 4. Empathy: they need to be able to think from the customers’ angle, comprehend and respond to players’ needs.
Staff who works at customer center need to face the players directly, they need to possess patience, stress-resistance and empathy to serve the them.
Customer service unit requires a lot of education trainings and therefore it is the only department in the company to be allowed to have its own education training sub-division. Whenever there is a new colleague joining in, he/she needs to go through a 3-week internal training which includes lectures, observing real customer service phone calls, and actual phone call practice. However, based on the amount of games Gamania had launched, it is impossible to include everything within 3 weeks’ time and therefore, the games are prioritized for new colleagues to familiarize with. Generally speaking, after three weeks of training and real life experience, those who are willing to stay and finish closing exam will become our customer service partner.
A Wide Variety of Customer Types: Customer Service is Not an Easy Task
Customer service is hard work, but staff also gets to contact with many players and sometimes ‘interesting’ incidents take place. Vivian and Emily both work for customer service and they’ve had experiences of players calling up just to prank. For example, there was a young man who called, said a bunch of swearing and hung up. There was another person who called and sang. Some of them called in just to chat. One player, who identified himself as ‘Black-heart Gama’, is a well-known figure in customer service. Black-heart Gama is Gamania’s loyal player, who calls the customer service whenever he encounters problems. He knows the voice of each and every personnel and remembers their employee numbers. He has been calling since he was high school student until now (around his 20s). He is a true legend in call center!
Customer service personnel each needs to answer 80-150 phone calls a day, it is definitely hard work.
Customer service personnel need to answer huge amount of calls every day. In the off season, each staff has to answer average 80 calls a day, and in the peak season, over 150 calls. From these huge amount of calls, players of different games present different characteristics. Vivian and Emily shared with us their observation of players and concluded the following features. Some of which really overturned our original expectation, it’s very intriguing!
|
Title of Game |
Player Community |
Characteristics of Players |
Difficulty in Handling |
|
Mabinogi players |
Intellectuals |
They are calm and poised. They do their homework before they call. They check the problems with the customer service personnel in details. |
««««« |
|
Lineage players |
Predominately male players |
Many players have played this game since they were young. A lot of them are very straight-forward so when there is a glitch in the game, they tend to get emotional or agitated. However, they are the ones who are most likely to apologize to the customer service personnel. |
««« |
|
Maple Story players |
Players who are either over 50 years old or in elementary schools |
Many of them call to ask about how to maneuver in the computers. These children are not very good at troubleshooting in relation to computers so when they call for help, they need simple, detailed explanations and patient guidance from our staff. |
« |
|
Counter Strike players |
Junior high/senior high boys |
Most of them call to ask about problems arising from the selling and buying of weapons. These players are very forthright. You just tell them how to solve their problems, and they will handle it themselves. As a result, they don’t stay long on the line. |
« |
Refuse to Sit and Brew Over Negativity: Release Stress From Time to Time is the Healthy Approach
Customer service personnel undergo many complains every day, they need to find ways to deal with their works with positivity. If you make trip to the customer service unit, you will discover that some of them pasted ‘sutra’ or ‘words of wisdom’ on their cubicles. Some people placed a mirror on their desk so they could see their faces when they answer the phones. Some put a bag of Kuai-Kuai (popular snack in Taiwan, the name of the brand suggests docile and subdued mentality) for ‘inner peace’. “Want Want”(another popular snack, its name is synonymous to ‘thriving’ and ‘prosperity’) is the forbidden snack in the department, because no one wants the phone calls to ‘prosper’.
Customer service personnel and their tips of not getting angry, e.g. placing a mirror to check facial expressions at all time, placing snack Kuai-Kuai and hoping that the telephone won’t ring, and placing a photo of Buddha so that things would go peacefully when they answer the phones.
Colleagues in customer service unit sometimes get together to work out in the gym on the 2nd floor or play entertainment facilities to release stress. They often get together off work to go to karaoke, dinner or go traveling to release the pressure from work. Not long ago, the department held a paintball activity, leading the colleagues out and about in the wide to sweat in the battle. They hope such initiative could boost the morale in the department. Indeed, customer service is not an easy task, they often encounter direct pressure. It is only when they release it from time to time that they could cope with work in a healthy manner.
Release stress and pressure from time to time is the key to maintaining a healthy and pleasant work attitude!