[QUOTE]We’ve been hearing from users for several years about the need for us to keep working on improving Steam Support. As always, our goal with Steam is to be continuously improving and creating better user experiences across the board.
We hope that most of you never need to contact support because your experience with Steam is issue free to begin with. However, we know that there are times when something just goes wrong and when you need to get help from an actual person. Improving Steam Support to make that experience as smooth as possible has been a big focus for us over the last couple years. We overhauled our support site, we’ve built better integrated tools, we no longer require a separate account to contact support, and we’ve increased our support staffing. We’ve also fixed as many bugs as possible and have provided new self-service options where they make sense. Today we are launching our [URL="http://store.steampowered.com/stats/support/"]Steam Support Stats page[/URL] and seeking to improve transparency around users’ experiences getting support from us. We believe that increasing transparency will both help users understand how we are doing and will help make sure we keep improving over time.
HELP REQUESTS AND BACKLOG
The first thing you’ll see on our stats page is a graph of the volume of submitted help requests that are waiting for a response alongside a graph of the backlog of waiting requests that our support staff has yet to respond to over time. As of today you can see that we receive somewhere around 75,000 help requests per day. We currently end up with around 8,000 requests waiting for responses at most times. We’ve worked hard to expand our staffing and to improve our support processes to get to this point. You can see on our graph that earlier this year we had more than 50,000 requests as our backlog which meant that we had nearly a full day worth of requests waiting for answers at any given point in time. Our goal going forward is to keep the backlog of requests shrinking and to be able to respond to all requests as quickly as possible.[/QUOTE]
[URL]http://steamcommunity.com/games/593110/announcements/detail/1301948399251160549[/URL]
[IMG]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/hbp3ez7asrj909m/firefox_2017-05-02_21-59-09.png[/IMG]
[URL]http://store.steampowered.com/stats/support/[/URL]
I guess you can watch when game launches go sideways now.
[quote]we no longer require a separate account to contact support[/quote]This was a thing?!
Wonder if I'll see a live chat for Steam support in my lifetime.
[QUOTE=Killer900;52179192]This was a thing?![/QUOTE]
Yeppers
Back when you only ever wanted to use Steam support for getting your account back, the idea was that you have a different account so you can get in if your Steam account is hijacked. Of course this is annoying if you aren't trying to retrieve your account.
I haven't used steam support in ages but it's good to see they're moving forward with it all.
I can't imagine what a nightmare it must be to manage a support system for something as massive as Steam though.
I was really surprised when I heard all the woes of steam support, since when I've had to contact them on a few occasions I've always received prompt and helpful support, but I guess I was just one of the lucky few.
Still won't refund my starforge after 5 years now. Still the worst purchasing decision of my life
[QUOTE=Spacewolf;52179518]I was really surprised when I heard all the woes of steam support, since when I've had to contact them on a few occasions I've always received prompt and helpful support, but I guess I was just one of the lucky few.[/QUOTE]My experiences have always been the same, and on the flip side everyone always raves about the support for Origin, and I've had them reply to two of four tickets I've filed with them. One of them was nearly two weeks later, and the other took three days and was just them going, "Can't help."
Although that is nothing compared to Ubisoft who took over a month to respond to my support request because my fucking account was hacked and every time I tried to contact support the phone support was down, and actually filing a ticket with them or using their chat support requires you have your account. And trying to contact their Twitter support prompted silence still many months later. Literally the only way I got back in was by exploiting the login system myself, just to get in and contact support and get them to remove the 2FA the hacker had added to my account.
Ohh, by the way, even if you have 2FA on a UPlay account your account can still be breached, purchases made, information changed, games played, all of that. They just can't remove the 2FA meaning they may need a couple of extra steps any time they want to log in.
Ohh, and Ubisoft's support is an abomination against all things decent.
May as well talk about Blizzard too, end on a happy note. Few years ago I wanted back in to my account because I hadn't played in ages and had lost my login information. I tried to contact support then and never got any help whatsoever. A year ago I decide to try again because fuck it I want to play the Overwatch open beta. Their support took about fifteen minutes including waiting in the chat queue. So I guess these days Blizzard is probably pretty good.
[QUOTE=Wowza!;52179118][URL]http://steamcommunity.com/games/593110/announcements/detail/1301948399251160549[/URL]
[IMG]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/hbp3ez7asrj909m/firefox_2017-05-02_21-59-09.png[/IMG]
[URL]http://store.steampowered.com/stats/support/[/URL][/QUOTE]
Why do they spike so much every Friday? It's so regular that it's weird.
[QUOTE=TurtleeyFP;52179730]Why do they spike so much every Friday? It's so regular that it's weird.[/QUOTE]
Paycheck and free time
[QUOTE=TurtleeyFP;52179730]Why do they spike so much every Friday? It's so regular that it's weird.[/QUOTE]Stab in the dark is just because its the weekend so there is a spike in people using the service as a whole, and also a spike in people with new games to play. I imagine many go, "Well, I've got the whole weekend ahead of me so I'm going to pick up a new game to play while I'm free." They sit down with it and for whatever reason need support. Most support tickets, as shown, are refund requests, which fits that. "Hey, this game is actually kinda shit, I'm gonna refund it." Further, for many people Friday is when they get paid, meaning that is when they are going to be most likely to buy a new game anyway.
[editline]2nd May 2017[/editline]
[QUOTE=Plaster;52179759]Paycheck and free time[/QUOTE]
Yeah, exactly this said a lot shorter than what I did.
[QUOTE=Spacewolf;52179518]I was really surprised when I heard all the woes of steam support, since when I've had to contact them on a few occasions I've always received prompt and helpful support, but I guess I was just one of the lucky few.[/QUOTE]
A friend of mine lost access to his account after he'd been an idiot, getting tricked into installing a RAT.
Took about two weeks before he even got a non-automated reply, and another two months before he got the account back
Steam Support is a fucking joke. There's literally no way to at email a human, knowing full well it'll take longer. Instead, you're shoehorned into going through an automated process, ending with a robot replying with a generic answer within a few hours.
I'd requested a refund for a game and had it authorised. When Steam tried to credit my Paypal, they encountered an issue and were unable to. They told me they could issue me with a Steam Wallet refund, I kindly refused and said I'd fix my Paypal issue and resubmit the refund request. When I resubmitted the refund request a couple months later, it kept getting shot down by the automated system, despite me including the ticket number of the original, accepted ticket, as well as a bunch of PDF files proving my refund request had been authorised. I ended up having to contact the super serious "my credit card was used fraudulently" subsection or something just to get a real life person to reply. Lo and behold, my issue was sorted without a hitch. I'd rather fucking wait 3 weeks for an actual person - who understands my problem clearly - to reply, rather than get an instantaneous bot reply.
[editline]3rd May 2017[/editline]
I remember the days when EA was hailed as being shitking of customer support. Nowadays? They blow Steam out of the water. I could actually call up a customer rep on the phone and they issued a refund right then and there after I waited for about 5 mins in a queue. It was pretty damn cool and made me wonder when Steam took a nosedive into being worse than EA. (I accidentally bought the season pass for BF1, played it for an hour, realised I didn't actually want it, and they were still real chill about refunding me).
[QUOTE=loopoo;52180387]
I remember the days when EA was hailed as being shitking of customer support. Nowadays? They blow Steam out of the water. I could actually call up a customer rep on the phone and they issued a refund right then and there after I waited for about 5 mins in a queue. It was pretty damn cool and made me wonder when Steam took a nosedive into being worse than EA. (I accidentally bought the season pass for BF1, played it for an hour, realised I didn't actually want it, and they were still real chill about refunding me).[/QUOTE]
I've had both my Steam account and my Origin account hacked. Steam took 2 weeks. Origin 15 minutes.
Contacted steam support a few years ago after my account got hijkacked, took them a week between each reply. This is good to see.
I feel like Valve needs a good kick in the ass to actually change anything major.
[QUOTE=megafat;52180475]I feel like Valve needs a good kick in the ass to actually change anything major.[/QUOTE]
More than that even. They are the most passive company in the world.
[QUOTE=meharryp;52180464]Contacted steam support a few years ago after my account got hijkacked, took them a week between each reply. This is good to see.[/QUOTE]
I was going to find my old support tickets to see how long it took them when mine was hijakced (one of those "login and get every steam game ever" tricks back then on), but all my tickets are gone since they use out actually accounts now.
These guys get 50,000 tickets a day? Holy fuck!
[QUOTE=Smoot;52181364]These guys get 50,000 tickets a day? Holy fuck![/QUOTE]
They have ~10 million [I]concurrent[/I] users, it's not exactly surprising that there's a lot of tickets.
[img]http://i.imgur.com/YDiYncx.png[/img]
I remember for a long time their support page used to just send you in infinite loops, where going through a troubleshoot then clicking on the "This solution didn't work" or similar button just let you back to the root webpage. I can remember nearly tearing my hair out after my account was hijacked and i was looking to actually submit a help ticket but i just kept getting referred back to a forgotten password/username page - which didn't help in the slightest because my normal email account had also been removed off my steam account.
[QUOTE=Smoot;52181364]These guys get 50,000 tickets a day? Holy fuck![/QUOTE]
Ubi EMEA support gets around 10k a day. And they serve waaay less people than Steam.
[QUOTE=Widow Engie;52182535]Ubi EMEA support gets around 10k a day. And they serve waaay less people than Steam.[/QUOTE]
They also serve a far worse array of products...
[QUOTE=Revenge282;52182559]They also serve a far worse array of products...[/QUOTE]
If you think that, wait till you see Steam's Early Access section!
[QUOTE=Thy Reaper;52182622]If you think that, wait till you see Steam's Early Access section![/QUOTE]
Is that were the ubisoft games are?
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