You should Care about Mobile Gaming, No Matter Your App Type

In this tribute to the Mobile Gaming industry, we will deep dive into the reasons why publishers of all app types including fintech, retail, food & drink, lifestyle, and education must take a look at the Mobile Gaming player support experience. A lot can be learned from their disruptive practices.

Pioneers of the App Marketplace

The mobile gaming sector has been a true pioneer, continuously building and enhancing their app experiences. One of the key tools they have mastered for improving user CSAT and customer retention is about providing in-app support to their players or customers natively in their games.

Are you a disruptor in your industry or would like to be ahead of the game? Join us on Tuesday, March 22nd and learn from the most advanced mobile app type: Mobile Gaming. Come chat with gaming CX leaders to discover their secrets and best practices. Even for the non-gaming apps, there’s so much that can be learned from GDC (the leading gaming event) and the white-hot success that mobile gaming continues to see.

Unprecedented Scale & Automation Levels

The mobile gaming industry is one of the fastest growing industries. The pandemic brought a newly invigorated appetite for gaming. While other industries suffered, gaming took off as more and more people found themselves at home and in need of digital distractions.

They also have an average MAU considerably higher than other types of apps. They handle an immense amount of users and data in their apps on a daily basis. Not only do they have to account for massive quantities, they also have to manage strong seasonal variations, as well as game release cycles. Whenever an app releases a new update or feature, it’s common for the number of support tickets to increase with bugs and crashes to fix. All of these factors heavily impact the numbers of users and inbound support tickets at any given time. Successful gaming companies know to be ready for the possibility that a game launch might suddenly explode in popularity, driving downloads to massive scale in a very short timeframe. According to Business of Apps (2022), a trending gaming app broke records by bringing in $207 million in revenue in its first month on the market. At its peak, it was drawing in 250 million users each month.

With such unprecedented scale and volume, the app publisher had to create a system that would allow them to scale up or down depending on the number of user variations without straining their support resources or skyrocketing their costs.

As a comparison to illustrate the scale of mobile gaming, Helpshift is installed in over 4B+ mobile apps & handles 300M+ bot interactions per year & 800M+ player self service interactions per year. Most of these are gaming apps. Publishers of different app types could learn a great deal about navigating sudden scale and handling large influxes from the mobile gaming category – namely the strategic use of automation. For example, when the pandemic started, mobile app usage soared. The companies that were already utilizing automation were able to handle the enormous amount of tickets they received once they scaled. On the other hand, those that were not using automation (a large portion being from non-gaming categories) struggled with this uptick because they were still using legacy systems such as phone, email, and web forms. Incorporating automation will not only help with the unforeseeable events, it will also make seasonal spikes less stressful.

On average, the top gaming customers are able to leverage automation in 95% of issues (Player Benchmark Report). These high performers experimented with new customizations and issue resolution pathways until they reached an optimal ratio of automated-to-live support. To achieve this high rate of automation, AI and chatbots are first employed to determine intent, then to triage the issue, and apply automated workflows, as needed, depending on the use case and customer requirements. These high-performing brands, became masters of automation, focusing on covering a large number of the common issue categories with customizable chatbots that are built to immediately respond to player inquiries and, in many cases, guide the player through to resolution without the involvement of an agent. Full-automation is not necessarily the goal, but instead a balance between the scale of automation and the strengths of human agents.

Cutting-edge Technology & Leading the Metaverse Innovations

The mobile gaming industry is at the forefront of technology & innovation and is characterized by a fast paced environment for app development, constantly releasing new features, and new games at an incredible speed. Of course, updating an app doesn’t always guarantee its success. But it is critical for apps to be updated regularly. Frequent releases help mobile apps respond to user feedback and fix issues quicker, preventing unhappy users, improving the user experience, boosting their engagement and encouraging conversions.

The gaming sector is one of the most thrilling tech industries because of its importance to mass culture, entertainment and technological advancement. Gaming companies are using the latest technologies to bring their games to life all over the world.

In 2021, the App Store offered more than one million gaming apps. The mobile gaming industry faces fierce competition which drives the gaming studios and publishers to be absolutely perfect in terms of user experience. The UA strategies are so costly and challenging, mobile gaming publishers can’t afford to leak their users out of their games. If the players have a bad support experience, they take the risk that the player will never come back to their game ever again and probably provide a bad word of mouth review to their friends and public gaming communities.

There is a lot to be learned from gaming app developers and how they work hand in hand with CX teams to gather user reviews. They mastered the art of collecting and analyzing player feedback to continuously iterate and enhance their products. User feedback is crucial for building up the quality of their apps and allowing better stability.

When app users can only provide feedback via email and pop-up surveys, they are less likely to give valuable feedback, if they respond at all. Using in-app feedback improves response rates, therefore providing a qualitative and quantitative gold mine.

Most Popular Apple Store categories 2018

Unrivaled In-app User Excellence

The mobile gaming industry has a business model driven by the app itself being the core source of their revenue. They are the mobile-first business by excellence and the most lucrative app type. In 2020, mobile games revenue worldwide amounted to $77.2 billion. Typically, gaming apps will have a much higher ARPU (average revenue per user) than other types of apps (Games accounted for 67% of total app revenue in 2021). There are many monetization strategies you can choose from: in-app ads, rewarded video ads (the user chooses to watch the video ad in exchange for an in-app reward), playable ads, in-app purchases (pay for additional content, extra lives in the game, coins, gems, etc.), subscription model (gamers make regular payments to gain access to additional game content, features, and items or to get an ad-free gaming experience). Most of them mean you have to keep your users happy and in your app longer if you want your business to thrive. At the heart of their survival, mobile gaming companies push the boundaries of in-app user experience excellence in order to get their users hooked and spend as much time as possible in their game. Keeping the player in the app is paramount. One hiccup in the player’s journey can make or break your relationship with that user. If you respond efficiently and constructively, you’re likely to keep them satisfied and engaged with your app. However, if your customer support is lacking speed, accuracy, and empathy, you’ve likely lost a user forever.

Generation Z and millennials are experiencing a new level of in-app support that they will expect from all brands going forward. Mobile gaming is setting a new standard for player support where automation, in-app experience and AI leads to a fast and successful resolution which will be required from all brands in the future.