Customer Support your views.

[Smokey Newman]

Hi

I have recently had to issue two support tickets to Linden Labs. It took over two weeks to get a reply and the answers were as useful as a chocolate teapot. The support at Linden Labs seems to have demised since I first joined Second Life and I do wonder what I am paying a premium account for.. What experiences have you had of Lindens support ? and How do you think they can improve their service ?

Maybe just maybe a Linden will read this.

Ty

Smokey

 

[Void Singer]

oh, I think I'll be subversive... you should definitely post in Customer / Technical Support for Basic Members - A New Idea

[Ciaran Laval]

I've very rarely found the ticket system to be excellent, sometimes good, largely slow. Live Concierge chat does seem to have improved recently in my opinion.

[Nany Kayo]

Customer service from Linden Lab is the worst I have experienced from any company.

They are lucky they are still the major player in virtual worlds.  Their competition will eventually take them out on this issue.   Linden Lab can't expect their customers to keep spending thousands of dollars on their products and get absolutely no response to billing errors for months on end.  I am looking for a replacement. 

[Angel Harmison]

I have been here for years now I think  5  or 6 ... In the  past it was better  but there  was under 10K residents here.  As the community has grown  I am sure it  takes longer to respond to things.  As I have  understood it is on a first come  first serve basis.  I will say this for the  few tickets I have turned in the  customer  service was good.. it was answered in a timely manner and on one issue  they really  really  really worked hard at  resolving it.  So all I  have to say is they are  doing a  good  job     from my perspective and I am  sure as time  goes on   even  that will get better.  I know I had a problem   last week so I went to the section called "Answer" did a little research and was able to resolve  my problem  there without a ticket even.  Which   for me  was good thing.  I  am hoping as time  goes by more people will  use the  different tools  they have made available such as that.  If I can ever  help you let me know!!

[Cabbage Acanthus]

SL is a fantastic place to play and have fun and mess around a bit.  But sadly, it will be nothing more than an idle passtime until they "get serious" about supporting their existing customer base.

As to why you are paying for premium, only you can answer that.  There are benifits to a premium membership that you may find useful but I have been quite happy without mine for quite some time now.  I scaled back my investment and presence here in SL to virtually nil.  Now, this is only an idle pursuit, a place to mess about and have a bit of fun.  Now my endeavors here only require the level of support and consistency that I can reasonably expect to receive from LL.

I was intrigued, and still am, by the possibilites of something like SL but the realities of RL SL and LL are such that those possibilites will forever remain just that, unrealized dreams that will never become manifest.  The first hundred people (or thousand) who found their dreams and hard work undone here by poor customer service and all the other issues that LL has I have sympathy for.  Anyone who follows them down that primrose path now is just someone who didn't do their homework and is now suffering the consequenses of their own lack of preparation.  I am grateful for their efforts, because without their quixotic nature I would nave nothing to enjoy here but in the end, once they bounce off of that windmill, one really has to ask them what else could they reasonably expect to happen?

I recommend changing your expectations as to what you can expect from LL and SL instead of trying to get the level of suppor that you believe that you deserve.  You aren't going to get it.  This is a great place for what it is.  Stop trying to make it something that it isn't and just enjoy your time here.  You will be much happier in the long run, trust me.

[Linda Brynner]

From all the tickets I have filed in the last years all have been addressed very proper and professional. However since Dec. 2010 from 3 tickets, 1 remained unanswered, 1 still is in progress since weeks and the last one was about 'standard' replies while I had already ruled those standard replies out. I closed that last ticket because it was going nowhere.

I think they have a highly unexperienced cs team at the moment after the lay offs. They hardly understand much unfortunate so grab a their instruction paper what to reply or something, you know like a call centre.

But how many IT companies do have proper cs. It is something they don't like. They usually like to geek and play, highly concentrated on the techs having no concept of their users' real needs.

[Prawnyloks Parker]

I have to say that my experience with support lately has been pretty poor also. I know of others that are feeling particularly let down too. I recently filed a ticket after getting nowhere with Abuse Reports, only to be told "Unfortunately, the Abuse Report is your only recourse for action." I wonder when these ARs will actually be dealt with, this has been going on for a couple of months now. My friend who is also trying to get a resolution to the same issues I am had a the self same response from Live Chat.

The sad thing is that once-upon-a-time things would have been dealt with in a timely fashion. I arrived here in the boom of 2006 when LL must have been struggling to keep up with support requests as so many new people arrived. But yet they still managed to offer support that actually helped more often than not.

Funny too that now when you have a ticket dealt with, you don't get the email asking "how did we do?", like we used to. I'm guessing they already know the answer to that.

I am however the eternal optimist... and I hope that sooner rather than later things do start to get better again.

[Rhiannon Wildmist]

I am glad someone is the enternal optimist. I had one instance where I complained for five months by AR and ticket about a spamming greeter from land on a neighbouring sim greeting all my customers. Land owner absent. Object owner did not respond to IMs or notecards.  When I gave up and moved on and rented the land my friend. She was already aware of the greeter issue and managed to solve it by dragging the object owner back from Inworldz to remove it.-  LL did nothing.

Recently I have had objects encroaching on another plot. Anchors on neighbours land (his last log on time "unknown"). Object owner not interested. Been ARing since February, told twice on Live Chat this was an AR only issue. So no. I have very little confidence in LL "support". One object overhung my land putting over 6m out of use ! I did not derender because my visitors could still see the offending megaprim and that did not solve the problem.

I do wonder what I am paying land maintenance for. Certainly get nothing in return for it.

 

[Abby10 Lenroy]

I don't know why people complain, when me & my wife submit support tickets, we usually get an answer within 24 hours. We even had a Linden assist my wife in fixing some problems she was having, and the responses were every 6 hours.

It started off at the low level, but then the customer support sent it up to a higher level where it was a Linden who was helping us. And the Linden was doing nearly everything he could to help us out.

 

Many people complain about the customer service that Linden Labs gives, but to be honest, I have never had any problems with customer support.

[Deltango Vale]

Over the past month, the backlog of tickets seems to have been cleared. Whereas at the beginning of the year it took three months to get a reply, I am now getting replies within three days!

I will, though, offer a word of advice. Write your tickets clearly. Be succinct. Remember, the person reading your case does not live inside your head. All he has is what you write. Therefore, provide the following information:

• why you are submitting a ticket (what exactly do you want? be precise)
• the reasons why you want something (I want X because of reasons 1, 2, 3...)
• will what you want affect other people? (the less negative effect on other people, the better)
• make LL's job as easy as possible, see it from their perspective
• be courteous (yes, you are a paying customer, but you are not God)
• be patient (would you like to do this job?)

So, hats off to Linden Lab for making a big effort to regain their once-high reputation for customer service. I personally am very impressed with this change for the better.

[Jo Yardley]

Up to the change in the way they deal with support (or firing a lot of people) support was awesome.

Tickets were answered quickly and in a way that actually helped you.

Live chat support was great and often actual Lindens came to your assistance to sort out a problem on the spot.

This is the only way 90% of (my) problems can be solved anyway.

Then they changed all this and I had urgent tickets and AR's that went unanswered for over HALF A YEAR.

Live chat support became extremely useless, all they said was 'file a ticket' or that they couldn't help me.

AND on top of that they cut the time you could actually reach live chat support in half or so.

That means that here in Europe for most of the day I am without any LL help.

Yet we still pay the same...

Recently things have changed again, tickets get replied too sooner (not sure if the answers are useful yet) and during 4 live chats with support about an issue one of them actually managed to help me.

Still it is not as good as it was or should be.

Somehow the live chat people can't do much.

There are problems in SL, BIG PROBLEMS that need  someone to come over right away, someone with lots of powers to ban, remove, fix stuff.

[Anita61 Anatine]

Exactly this is the reason why I gave up my premium membership I had for the last 2 years. I allready gave up on mainland or a Linden Home and rent a plot on an estate now. 

Live chat was a great help, but now unavailable for us Europeans during most of the day. I contacted them twice in the last few months (when I still had my premium) and all they could answer was: file a ticket, while before you could actualy speak to someone who knew about SL AND ocasionaly made housecalls if necesay!

The moment customer service will be improved I will subscribe to premium again.