So, whats everyone's experience with Tera's customer service? The core gameplay is great, but the content is lacking. However the one thing I've noticed is that their customer service is exceptional. I've opened multiple tickets, and all have been resolved within a day or two max, some within a few hours. On top of that, every resolution has been beyond my expectations, with kind and often funny personalized GM responses. If theres one thing that I've learned, its that excellent customer service usually comes hand in hand with community communication, which leads to a game tailored to players' needs.
So whats everyone elses' experience with their customer service?
Just read some other threads. There's a recent one, and there are dozens of other ones that cover support experiences.
Support almost always boils down to the end result; either you're happy with it or you're not. The reflection of support is usually a reflection of a person's satisfaction of said end result, not the actual quality of the support.
Most people love the icing on the cake more than the cake itself ;)
All the GMs that I've talked to so far have been extremely helpful, where possible, and more than patient enough with me when I've had stupid issues (like losing track of my Facebook rewards).
If you've seen some of the threads on the General forum, they are wayyy more patient than most customer service reps would be or even need to be.
Just read some other threads. There's a recent one, and there are dozens of other ones that cover support experiences.
Support almost always boils down to the end result; either you're happy with it or you're not. The reflection of support is usually a reflection of a person's satisfaction of said end result, not the actual quality of the support.
Most people love the icing on the cake more than the cake itself ;)
You make some excellent points, many of which are true. However, Customer support can also reflect the amount of effort a support specialist is willing to put in to resolve issues which a customer has. The end result can be a large portion of the satisfaction, but the effort it takes to reach the result, the time it takes, or the speed of response are also major contributing factors.
To give two extreme examples:
I requested a refund from Tera. It was a 3 month recurring for which I requested a refund because I had forgotten to cancel/thought I had cancelled. I opened a ticket and only a few hours later, it was resolved with a full refund and a personalized message from a GM which i found rather humorous.
I did the same for my brother in SWTOR. However, I had to open a ticket, which received a response telling me to email their customer support. I then emailed their customer support, which said that this was a billing issue and had to be done over the phone. This process alone took 3 days, and all responses were automated. When i finally got the email back, i called them, and had to jump through hoops to get a refund. I called an indian call center, was transferred to their billing indian call center, and then transferred again to their "higher up" indian billing center. (i thought it was hilarious that they outsourced all of their customer service and billing) This entire process took 2 hours of talking and being on hold, and arguing before i FINALLY received a reluctant refund.
In short, it was the exact same problem, and the same end result. However Tera's support was leaps and bounds above SWTOR's, because of their speed, ease of resolution, and personalized responses. It actually felt like they cared, if you get what I mean.
I was mostly wondering if i just lucked out with positive and quick resolutions or if their excellent support was widespread.
The two time I had the pleasure of dealing with them because of last months double charge subscription issues, they've been on point. My first instance was with Chat Support which did take a while due to the long wait time. But once I was in, GM fix the issue in less than 2-min flat.
My second instance of Support was via telephone at 7AM East Coast Time. Phone rung once and a GM picked up on the other end. I was expected a telephone directory tree and listening to "long wait time elevator music". Nope! One ring and the introduction, "Hello, Thanks for calling EME. This is [GM name], how can I help you"? Again, in less than 2-min flat, problem solved and an follow-up email was sent no later than 10-seconds after hanging up.
Very impressive.
Now, if I could get this type of service from my local bank and Sprint my life would be soooo much happier.