How MobilityWare Reached a 4.7 App Store Rating with Over 1.5M Ratings Increasing LTV and Retention

Overview

The gaming industry is no longer one dimensional, it has become a billion dollar industry with multiple focal points. For Jeremy Budzinkski, the Customer Support Manager at MobilityWare, his focus became how to resolve issues and questions for players faster so that they can get back to what they love: gaming. 

The world today revolves around convenience and the fact that consumers want issues resolved instantly. When this does not happen, the internet has provided multiple ways for customers to voice their dismay. One thing remains true even in these modern days, nothing travels faster than the speed of light with the possible exception of bad news. Roughly 90% of consumers consider star ratings to be an essential part of their evaluation of a new app. Keeping this in mind, the importance of maintaining customer satisfaction and harboring great reviews grows along with the industry. 

“Research shows that apps with a rating under 4 stars lose up to half of their potential downloads. Users simply don’t click on apps with lower ratings – and inappropriate reviews can have a severe impact on your overall score.” -Anatoly Sharifulin, CEO of AppFollow

As the gaming industry grew, so did the dire need for follow up on less-than-satisfactory reviews and ratings. MobilityWare noticed a surge in the priority and ability to answer more app store reviews; they needed to develop a system that streamlined responding to these reviews. 

“We were using two different portals and all of the reporting was spread across different systems. So we couldn’t get everything into a single place. One of my leads discovered that AppFollow had an integration that can send reviews through Helpshift and we can use a single platform to reply to customers.” -Jeremy Budzinkski, Customer Support Manager

In July 2018, MobilityWare’s integration of AppFollow and Helpshift began and value was noted immediately. A number of apps have shown a 0.1 (2.5%) – 0.3 (7.5%) increase in star ratings within 1-2 months after integrating. Since the integration they observed a 2.2% average increase in star rating and managed to reach 4.8 star rating with over 1.5M Ratings in the Apple app store. The number of players returning to downgrade their ratings to a lower score fell by 60.71%. They decreased their review response time from 90 hours to 24 hours (more than 73 % decrease). They were also able to leverage their whole support team to answer app reviews in addition to support tickets, bringing the power of Helpshift to their review management process and greatly improving their agent productivity. The bot deflection rate after using Helpshift went from 86% of tickets in 2018 to 95% in 2022. With Helpshift, their support CSAT now averages 4.5.  

Introduction:

MobilityWare has solidified themselves as a leader in the industry with 27 games, over 400 million downloads, and more than 28 million monthly players. They set out with a mission to bring joy to others one game at a time through integrity, accountability, passion, adaptability, and empowerment. 

The integration of Helpshift and AppFollow proved to be a successful solution to increase player feedback visibility and improve MobilityWare’s player response process. Automations can pick up star emoticons, e.g. “★☆☆☆☆ Spider Solitaire “ and route tickets to support agents based on the rating. Sorting these reviews is a key feature of Helpshift automation and is useful in identifying spam as well. Through several canned response templates, multiple variations can be created and used as feedback. This cuts down on the automated blanket responses to reviews which is a pitfall of many other bot systems, and such a dangerous game when your answer is published on the internet forever. There is a difference between answering the same response to multiple issues sent via a support ticket (private) and answering the same exact response to multiple reviews in a public-facing environment where users can see you are using automation to respond.

The Challenge:

Answering app store reviews directly in the app store proved to be difficult as the company’s popularity grew and thus ineffective in improving the ratings. Using two different portals and processes led to delayed response times, app store reviews were just an afterthought at that point. There was also a disconnect in the reporting process that spread the information across too many facets to actively track and action user feedback efficiently. 

The Solution:

Keeping the goal of improving their app store ratings in mind, MobilityWare knew that something had to be done to increase downloads, player retention and the lifetime value of players, which in turn, would lead to more success against their competitors. With the integration of AppFollow and Helpshift, this conjoined two standalone portals into one centralized arena to ease review by their staff.

1. Customer support teams can respond to reviews left in the App Store, Google Play, Mac App Store, Amazon appstore, Amazon marketplace, and Microsoft Store in real-time without leaving their Helpshift dashboard.
2. They can respond to more user reviews faster…
3. Track critical data around app updates, ratings and reviews.
4. Track reviews updates and keep history of these changes.
5. Customize what reviews to receive: all, negative, positive, reviews in specific language, etc;

By developing this unified reporting, MobilityWare is now able to compare performance of reviews and issues which simultaneously streamlines the productivity and performance of agents. This allows the staff to be better balanced and able to act cross-functionally between customer support and app review management. The one person job of responding to reviews and ratings is now dispersed among six support agents.

“I found it very useful to have a single portal to review reports and measure the productivity of app reviews and CS. And then with the customer issue fields, we were allowed to segment them apart.” –Jeremy Budzinski, Customer Support Manager

The Success:

MobilityWare has been able to improve their app store ratings since the integration has taken place. In addition to that, sometimes players leave a rating for a game initially, but over time, their sentiment can change and they might decide to reduce their initial rating. For instance, if the brand does not answer and address the player’s issue, it could elevate quickly and aggravate the pain and frustration of the user. Thankfully, following the integration, and answering all the negative reviews, the number of players returning to downgrade their ratings to a lower score fell by 60.71%, meaning more of MobilityWare’s happy players are staying happy!

This shows the benefit of using Helpshift and AppFollow to track and respond to app store reviews rather than manually gathering the information over two separate portals or even worse having to answer directly in each app store. The ability to onboard the support team to help with the app store review response task provides a better brand reputation online as a reliable gaming experience and a path to retain their players.

MobilityWare has mastered the perfect balance between support issues and app reviews. They were able to streamline their user experience from in-app support and app store reviews. Your support channel should be easily accessible in your game or app and keep users in the game through the entire support journey and MobilityWare has achieved this with the integration of Helpshift and AppFollow.

“AppFollow and Helpshift work seamlessly together. The great thing about Helpshift and AppFollow is it provides visibility to not only our customer support staff but also to our game teams.” – Lance Kim, Senior Director of Technical Operations

By The Numbers:

• 2.2% average increase in star rating
• 4.8 star rating on the Apple App Store
• Decrease review response time by 73 %
• Decrease by 60.71% the ratings downgrade