Regarding concierge support

Talonsbane

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No worries my friend. We're good. I rarely deal with Spectrum because of the nature of how it usually is there. I'm much happier sending in a customer support ticket through Concierge if I have any actual issues & then patiently kill time through other things.
 

Kowalski

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Having run a service a tiny fraction of the size of the current concierge population (maybe a thousand weekly users or so), I can say support is very difficult to scale, and frankly, there's a lot of wading through BS to be done in the process.



If I were to guess, I bet the following tickets pop up several times per day:



- "I died after grinding for 2 whole hours and lost some of my stuff, please go through the strenuous process of verifying what I had before dying and comping me!"



- "I'm experiencing a bug: [insert well-known bug that already has a workaround posted in forums and patch notes]. Please do some fancy computer magic to ensure it never happens again!!" (Bonus points if it's a new bug and they selfishly neglect to post it to the issue council despite clearly being instructed to do so first)



- "Hey I missed all three windows to buy a stock limited ship, this is ridiculous! You should personally stock one for me, what's wrong, you don't want my money???"



- "Hey can you ban ArrMatey420 for griefing? He killed me at a well-documented, high-traffic grinding spot....twice!! Clearly harassment. I don't have any evidence or anything to suggest it's actually griefing but I paid a lot of money to you guys, so you can trust me."



- "Why is [legacy capital ship] so expensive??? 5 years ago it was half the cost (even though it was a .jpeg back then), what gives??? I should get legacy pricing since I technically could have bought it back then!!



and last but not least,



- "I think I deserve [insert perk/benefit not offered by any subscription or concierge level] because I spent $1,000 on this game and that makes me a Loyal Customer™"



If the above dramatized examples sound far-off and unrealistic, then you probably aren't an E-Karen, and for that I applaud you...but I speak from experience when I say there are plenty of them out there.



I know it's frustrating to see what looks like them ignoring issues, but to Montoya's and others' point, they're likely multitasking with Concierge support being a fraction of their workload, and when they do get around to it, there's a lot of fluff they need to sort out.
 

Talonsbane

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If the above dramatized examples sound far-off and unrealistic, then you probably aren't an E-Karen, and for that I applaud you...but I speak from experience when I say there are plenty of them out there.
As somebody that has dealt with customers from being a grunt, to a manager of multiple restaurant locations simultaneously, to a night manager of a large hotel with its own bar & later all the way up to a government regulated vehicle station manager, I've dealt with a few entitled people. The above quotes are unfortunately rather realistic based on my experiences. To be honest, it wouldn't surprise me if those examples aren't rather timid compared to what the staff at CIG receive.
 

Ploeperpengel

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I know it's frustrating to see what looks like them ignoring issues, but to Montoya's and others' point, they're likely multitasking with Concierge support being a fraction of their workload, and when they do get around to it, there's a lot of fluff they need to sort out.
I have no doubt you are right about that but I'm not requesting they respond to every bullshit on the forum. Tickets they sure have to respond to. What I was trying to get at was community management being more present on the forum. Through poor choice of words it got mixed up with ticket supporters which I didn't want to attack. I know ticket support as well since I'm a Sysadmin.

They (community management) could do better than just filtering the bullcrap and reporting a couple of gems to the higher ups. Actually it was promised quite a while ago they would hire considerable staff to make things better on spectrum. I didn't see anything happen towards improvement. Stuff like reopening foreign language sections as one example. Well they did do that sort of as I see Banu and X'ian but no Russian, Spanish, German or anything else really :/
 

Sky Captain

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Yeah, just a post once a month that says:

"Hey gang, we read the forums, thanks for the input. The top five take aways we had this month from discussion here were A, B, C, D, E, and we've shared that input with Chris Roberts."

That would be a nice touch to demonstrate that we actually have community management and a developer listening.

Of course the folks that were championing X, Y, and Z would then go ballistic over their idea 'not being heard', but community management should be able to suck that up.
 

Talonsbane

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The problem with entitled people is often that for whatever reason they feel that their insane demands that only benefit them are just as important if not more than reasonable & well thought out requests that would benefit a large group of players. Then if they're ignored or don't get their way, they make it their life's purpose to make as much of a stink about things as possible wherever they can.
 
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Montoya

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Actually it was promised quite a while ago they would hire considerable staff to make things better on spectrum. I didn't see anything happen towards improvement. Stuff like reopening foreign language sections as one example. Well they did do that sort of as I see Banu and X'ian but no Russian, Spanish, German or anything else really :/
If they have an extra $50,000 to pay for an employee, would you prefer they get a junior gamedev or another guy to read spectrum all day?

Foreign language sections mean you need a mod that understand that language to moderate it. So hire a Spanish mod? French mod? German mod? There are more mission critical things for them to be doing that telling French backers to behave and be nice to each other.
 

Randson

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Honestly, my opinion is: They're doing their job, and when able to, they do it very very well! Always had good interactions with the concierge staff. Always. just, i dont feel service is to their intended speed nor level. they know that too, hence recent changes and the survey. They want a good program, we see a vast number of proposed changes that they have taken into consideration and have already started changing. While that is awesome, for there to be a concierge or "reward" system like this (which is honestly what it is, lets be real), there is a lot of improvement that can be made. And, as Montoya and others have explained in several ways, its not high priority. Now, making CIG's business decisions isn't my job, nor do I get paid to do so, its hard to imagine not to want to support a system that rewards your backers for paying you. You don't want to neglect your highest sources of revolving income. But who knows, I play the game, I'm not their accountant. I could even be entirely wrong. No matter what business you are in, however, its my personal opinion that if you're going to do something, you should do it well. Strive for excellence.

TLDR: Its good, it could be better.
 

Teru

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Hmm, aren't we all making a pledge, not investment? It's not like you are becoming a shareholder and have an actual stake in the company...

It serves as a sales tactic, nothing more, nothing less. Effectively, gamification of pledge amounts. I hope they don't have dedicated staff to this.

Also, I don't see other games implementing a similar support service for wealthy individuals. Does anyone have any examples?
 
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Ploeperpengel

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If they have an extra $50,000 to pay for an employee, would you prefer they get a junior gamedev or another guy to read spectrum all day?

Foreign language sections mean you need a mod that understand that language to moderate it. So hire a Spanish mod? French mod? German mod? There are more mission critical things for them to be doing that telling French backers to behave and be nice to each other.
Those forum sections existed before. Moderated by volunteers. They closed them. Promised to reopen them soonTM. Hire staff for comunity management and since then did nothing and probably won't. That's a bad policy/communication. As the community grows so do the requirements for community management. It's the price for developement backed by the community. As an American backer you might not care but many French, Spanish, German or Russian backers don't understand English well enough to actually feel included in said community. The reason that spectrum is such a shitshow might also have to do with the english speaking community management being understaffed as well.

I would actually prefer they put a little less devs into marketing tasks and more on the game instead because there simply aren't that many qualified devs to get that fast as they actually need them to accelerate developement of the game and keep the game running while it's being played and then create events to bring more money in for marketing event developement and so on.

Costs for community manangers are comparitively low. The made use of volunteers before, they could again. Even a shit forum is better than no forum if you don't speak english well.
 
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Mich Angel

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if i have any problems i just message them via concierge support and not the forum. they have gone above and beyond or me time and time again i think the longest I've ever waited for a response was 7 days. .............................................
This is my experience with Concierge support to.. not once have they failed to solve any request I had... (within reason of cause... )
And done so within a couple days usually 1-3 days...
Only time it took a bit longer was cause I send the request before a weekend followed buy holliday, so totally okay in my book they still came through with in 7 days.

The concierge forum is not the place to ask if you are concierge and have issues, you have your own page to contact them, that's what you should use.
The forum is more as a report in stuff to concierge about improvement, suggestions, bugs and such and not actual a place to asking to solve problem or issues..
And posting suggestions and bug issues etc.. don't need a answer or reply.
If you have actual issue, a problem or direct request or other issues to concierge support, do that on your private concierge page...( and you will get a response fairly fast )

And here is link to your private concierge page if you are concierge.
YOU ONLY GET IN THERE IF You ARE CONCIERGE !
That is why it say access denied here.. ( Test forum don't have access to it ) but it works for concierge.
You need to be logged in to you web page account first, before clicking.

Or you can login to your web account / hangar and press the concierge link up to the right in web hangar.

A Side note :
.... How you behave, is how you be treated. Remember that!

CHEERS! 🍻
 
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Ploeperpengel

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Well my "initiative" went the way to the garbage dump. Good riddance! I said what I had to say to get my catharsis.

Given the sort of very predictable outrage they provoke with the word "Carrack - Killer" now I come to a conclusion. The spectrum will not improve because:

Let's face it! CIG marketing actually likes shit storms!
 
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Sirus7264

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The concierge forum is not the place to ask if you are concierge and have issues, you have your own page to contact them, that's what you should use.
The forum is more as a report in stuff to concierge about improvement, suggestions, bugs and such and not actual a place to asking to solve problem or issues..
And posting suggestions and bug issues etc.. don't need a answer or reply.
If you have actual issue, a problem or direct request or other issues to concierge support, do that on your private concierge page...( and you will get a response fairly fast
I completely agree with this also this is just for whales to talk to whales etc. why should we get an elevated decisions? we already get all the fun things they are giving us as concierge other than that we are still just another person in the player verse. They do not owe us anything else past what we are getting. I honestly do not spend 1 minute on the concierge forum as i know spectrum in general is full of people who just want to complain all day about i want this i want that. We will get what they produce all we can do is provide a little bit of feedback on what would be cool. do not expect answers on a forum.
 

Ploeperpengel

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I completely agree with this also this is just for whales to talk to whales etc. why should we get an elevated decisions? we already get all the fun things they are giving us as concierge other than that we are still just another person in the player verse. They do not owe us anything else past what we are getting. I honestly do not spend 1 minute on the concierge forum as i know spectrum in general is full of people who just want to complain all day about i want this i want that. We will get what they produce all we can do is provide a little bit of feedback on what would be cool. do not expect answers on a forum.
Yeah I don't agree here. As I mentioned before the whole thing was about the Concierge Enhanced Program thread not the individual ticketservice. They continue to ignore that thread but started it. They actually might get Whales into investing even more by properly addressing those communication issues. I too think that, ultimately, concierges shouldn't receive that much more attention than any other user. It was kind of a strategic choice to address this first as the amount of invested money kind of is a ground for more justified entitlement. However, I think CIG needs to be better at comm regarding all of their users. Hiring more community supporters might actually pay in itself. Happy users are more likely to spend money on pledges than unhappy ones.
 

Sirus7264

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Happy users are more likely to spend money on pledges than unhappy ones.
When you have as many whales who feel entitled to driving the direction of the game they will never be happy. Best way not to cause drama is don't stir the pot to much which to me looks like they are trying to do. you can never make everyone happy and the direction of the game is not our choice we are just here for the ride. If we like what we see we have a choice to continue funding if we don't we leave it is the nature of crowdfunding.
 

Ploeperpengel

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When you have as many whales who feel entitled to driving the direction of the game they will never be happy. Best way not to cause drama is don't stir the pot to much which to me looks like they are trying to do. you can never make everyone happy and the direction of the game is not our choice we are just here for the ride. If we like what we see we have a choice to continue funding if we don't we leave it is the nature of crowdfunding.
If you actually look at the mentioned thread the lack of reponse to it creates a great deal of annoyance and is the opposite of not stiring the pot. Demanding from CIG that they uphold their promise or declare when they will finally fullfil those two meager improvements (which are Concierge-Gamepackage, that isn't even including SQ42 plus a couple of extra buybacks) has absolutely nothing to do with entitlement or driving the direction of the game anywhere.

Edit: The gamepackage is no big deal if you spend more than 1000$ and basically would just reduce the amount of tickets the concierge support receives because it happens a lot that some whale melts his last gamepackage and is then sending a request to restore it.
 
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Lemming

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I don't get this drama, they said by end of year. If the end of the year comes and no status update, ok ask then.

When it comes down to it, if you need BB Tokens, ask concierge support, if you melt your game package, buy one with credit. Nothing that was 'promised' should be course-altering.
 

Sky Captain

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Compared to most game companies, CIG does a fabulous job delivering weekly video content and monthly newsletters. I don't see any value in having devs responding to comments in the forums. As soon as they did that for one player, ten others will gripe that their post is not getting a response. No win scenario for the devs. But on multi-language support, for no added cost, I suspect that CIG could be more particular in who they staff, enlisting folks gifted with multi-lingual skills rather than staffing everyone only from the third-world english-speaking country known as Los Angeles.
 
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