Now Available: The Player Support Benchmark Report 2020

Recently, mobile gaming has taken the world by storm and the market is growing rapidly. To be successful, gaming brands must address this growth to meet the needs and expectations of their audience. Our new report, The Player Support Benchmark Report 2020, highlights key player support challenges, and how gaming companies can overcome them. Here’s a look at what you can expect from the full report. 

Addressing the problem: Challenges for player support

Since the gaming industry is moving so quickly, the issues that gaming companies face change just as fast. So, the question is: how can these companies keep up and support their players? Before gaming companies can improve their player support, they have to understand the problems. 

Taking a step back to get insight into what the common hurdles are is critical. While several factors can impact the way companies handle support, this report covers the most common challenges. 

Churn

1 in 3 customers report difficulty in reaching customer service. For mobile gaming brands, this translates into churn. Players don’t want to wait for a resolution, they want to get back to the game. This means that every interaction is high stakes for gaming companies. One poor player support experience could lead a player to leave your game. In fact, 32 percent of customers will stop doing business with a brand after just one bad customer service experience. 

Scale

Once a game attracts and retains a high number of players, support has to scale to meet demand. The challenge? Player support teams can quickly become overwhelmed with a high ticket volume, leaving many questions unanswered and increasing the time to first response (TTFR). This causes a rise in customer dissatisfaction. Those dissatisfied players may never come back and could damage your reputation if they share their experience with others. 

Localization

Diverse and geographically dispersed players have different support preferences and needs. To build a global fanbase, brands must learn how to tailor their support to these different requirements. 

Studies support the need for catering to customers across the globe. 72 percent of players who have support in their own language feel more satisfied with the experience and are more loyal to the gaming brand. Despite this, only 66 percent of brands have support options in non-English languages.

Digital tools to modernize player support in gaming

So, how can companies adapt to the global gaming landscape? There are digital tools that are modernizing player support and helping teams meet these challenges. At the same time, more customers are moving to online channels when interacting with a brand. 

Due to this, this player support revolution will be powered by the tools that gaming companies can use to improve operations. Asynchronous messaging, chatbots and self-service are at the forefront of this change.

Asynchronous messaging for seamless communication

With asynchronous messaging, players can move fluidly between engaging with a brand in real-time and then exiting the conversation until another time that’s convenient for them. This directly meets the expectations of players, with Helpshift research showing that 96 percent of consumers find it important to be able to return to a support conversation.

For gaming brands, asynchronous messaging is invaluable in providing a seamless communication experience in-app.  It also enables greater automation which impacts scalability. This frees up agent time to work on more value-added and critical issues like building rapport with players and sharing tips for better gameplay. 

Self-service with QuickSearch Bots

Many players want a speedy solution to their problem, regardless of whether it comes from a live agent or bot.  Because of this, many gaming brands are using an QuickSearch Bot to direct people to resources like FAQs and knowledge bases. 

An AI-powered QuickSearch Bot can also improve player support in other regions by directing players to resources in their language or agents who understand their unique needs. This ensures that all players, from any location, can easily access support. 

Custom chatbots

Companies can create custom chatbots for different workflows depending on their brand’s requirements. These bots can collect information to streamline interactions between agents and players. This prevents players from having to repeat information and directs all inquiries to the right team or resource.

As a result, agents can save time and focus on more urgent issues and tasks that require more human skills. Custom bots gather information from players, as well as metadata, to help agents resolve issues quickly.

Improving scalability across a game’s lifecycle

Launching a new game used to require an increase in agent headcount. Likewise, launching in global markets would traditionally require on-the-ground agent support and 24-hour coverage. Today, this is changing. Bots and automation make it possible to scale support quickly without having to bring in more agents. 

As agents rely on bots to do more of their manual tasks and experience the benefits that automation can bring in their daily work, the adoption of bots will rise. Likewise, as more gaming brands move towards in-app messaging, the use of automation increases along with all of the efficiencies that brings.

When companies combine automation with live agents, time to resolve (TTR) improves. As a result, brands do not need to massively scale their agent headcount to handle higher ticket volumes. Average TTR falls from 58.3 hours for issues handled manually, to 46.7 for partially automated issues and 11.7 for fully automated. This drastically increases customer satisfaction and keeps players in the game. 

Conclusion: striking the right balance

The best player support teams play to the strengths of humans and automation. Bots and automation can free up human agents to focus on complex inquiries and to build a relationship with players. 

To achieve this, however, agents must be empowered with the right tools. The path for gaming brands is clear: to meet player expectations for more accessible, efficient, timely and tailored support, a combination of humans and bots is required.

Want more insights on player support?

You can access the full Player Support Benchmark Report now. Click here to get your copy.