Doh -.- GM Ticket Fail

[Litlemouse]

Sooo... I sent in a ticket to a GM because there have been HOLY COW lotta spams on my server lately. Its getting to the point where I can't have a conversation with anyone because every time I have to scroll up immediately afterward because of gold spammers. This is what I sent in:

Hello, just alerting you that gold spammers have been extremely increasing their spams, at least on server Vashj. I don't know if it's only one account, or many, but it is truly getting annoying to everyone.

I've also gotten whispered by someone claiming to be a Blizzard GM, and directing me to enter account info etc. I know it's a scam.

Just giving you a heads up, as I've repeatedly right-clicked, Report Spam, and so have many people on my server, but it doesn't seem to be getting attention.

I got this as a reply:

Greetings Litlemouse,

Thank you for contacting us regarding this issue. However, the e-mail which you are contacting us about was not sent by our Account Administration Department, and appears to be a "phishing" e-mail attempting to obtain your account information. These e-mails are NOT from Blizzard. All account actions and inquiries will have the return address of Wowaccountadmin@blizzard.com; these phishing e-mails, in most cases have the return address of something close that may be overlooked if you are not paying close attention, or they will disguise the return address but redirect your reply. Please note that Blizzard employees will NEVER ask for your account password.

We encourage you to keep the following security tips in mind when playing World of Warcraft on any computer:

- Use up-to-date firewall, antivirus, and anti-spyware software to scan your system regularly for viruses, Trojans, and key-loggers.
- Keep your operating system and other software up-to-date and be careful when downloading new software.
- Be wary of "spoof" and scam websites and e-mails that pose as Blizzard Entertainment and request account or personal information.
- Use separate, unique passwords for your email, World of Warcraft, and any other online accounts.
- Change your passwords regularly and keep World of Warcraft account information updated using the Account Management page at http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/account/.

Additionally, we recommend following the Security Checklist on our Account Security site at http://us.battle.net/security/.

Thank you for your time and patience in this matter and your continued interest in World of Warcraft.

I don't get it, I never mentioned anything about an email O_o At this point I'm kind of wondering if they copy-and-paste most of their ticket responses... -.-

[Kurenio]

They do

[Saturo]

Yep, most of the time standard stuff like that is copypasted, when you write about something more specific (''I fell through the world and deleted my HS. Oops.'') they'll write themselves.

[Cialbi]

Oh, I'm certain that GMs are given 'textbook answers' that they can use. If you're encountering bugs, glitches, or other problems, and submit a ticket, there's a high chance that you'll be instructed to delete addons, temp. memory files, and your cache, which may or may not be connected to the problem at all.

[gigandetsgirl]

Although responses get copy-pasted, does anyone know if the complaints are still thoroughly looked into?

I reported a player on my server for having a vulgar name, and also got what appeared to be a robotic response. I looked the guy up on the Armory last night and he still appears to be there. Similarly, my server has also been having a spam problem, and I reported it. I haven't seen much of a change yet, but I'm sure with so many players committing so many offenses, it can be hard for Blizzard to contain.

[Cialbi]

Considering the people I've known that have been forced name changes because their name got reported, I'm thinking that the name you reported may not have actually violated any naming policies. When GMs do act, it's usually going to be effective immediately; you get booted off the server, and can't log back in on that character until you've made the name change.

As for spam, I honestly don't know. My guess (and it's little more than a wild guess) is that whether or not a GM takes notice is based on the volume of spam complaints mounted against a person; one person reporting you for spam probably doesn't garner anywhere near as much attention as a decent portion of /trade reporting you.

[gigandetsgirl]

Considering the people I've known that have been forced name changes because their name got reported, I'm thinking that the name you reported may not have actually violated any naming policies.

As for spam, I honestly don't know. My guess (and it's little more than a wild guess) is that whether or not a GM takes notice is based on the volume of spam complaints mounted against a person; one person reporting you for spam probably doesn't garner anywhere near as much attention as a decent portion of /trade reporting you.

You could be right, but I certainly hope it did - the name was on a mage, named "Frostysrfags." And I think you are DEFINITELY right about the spam. One person reporting may not be cause for concern, but surely they would look into it if dozens of users were reporting the same person.

[TygerDarkstorm]

My bf and I reported some dude named Whitepowerr. First time he changed it to a different variation of that spelling. Not sure what happened the second time.

I think the different responses depend on what you're reporting. For things like spam, I'm sure a simple copy/paste is the easiest solution rather than individually telling people they're "working on it." I know that if you report someone botting the response time is insanely quick and they typically try to contact you in person rather than a spam.

I recently reported a quest in Razor Hill that had totally bugged and got a super awesome GM to come help me in game (even gave me a good joke XD). Turns out they didn't really know that the quest was messing up, even after they took control of my account. So really I guess it just depends on what you're reporting.

[cowmuflage]

Well they are only human after all they can't be writeing to every ticket they get.

[Cialbi]

Considering the people I've known that have been forced name changes because their name got reported, I'm thinking that the name you reported may not have actually violated any naming policies.

As for spam, I honestly don't know. My guess (and it's little more than a wild guess) is that whether or not a GM takes notice is based on the volume of spam complaints mounted against a person; one person reporting you for spam probably doesn't garner anywhere near as much attention as a decent portion of /trade reporting you.

You could be right, but I certainly hope it did - the name was on a mage, named "Frostysrfags." And I think you are DEFINITELY right about the spam. One person reporting may not be cause for concern, but surely they would look into it if dozens of users were reporting the same person.

...Really? I'm shocked that putting 'fag' into your name isn't enough to get it rejected automatically. Besides, that is jamming words together to form a name, which I know has been enough to warrant a name change for other people.

My bf and I reported some dude named Whitepowerr. First time he changed it to a different variation of that spelling. Not sure what happened the second time.

I think the different responses depend on what you're reporting. For things like spam, I'm sure a simple copy/paste is the easiest solution rather than individually telling people they're "working on it." I know that if you report someone botting the response time is insanely quick and they typically try to contact you in person rather than a spam.

I recently reported a quest in Razor Hill that had totally bugged and got a super awesome GM to come help me in game (even gave me a good joke XD). Turns out they didn't really know that the quest was messing up, even after they took control of my account. So really I guess it just depends on what you're reporting.

Funny; Acherontia has been getting pretty steamed over a lack of action against botters that she reports. I guess that's the heart of the matter; when it comes to GMs, the quality of customer service can vary so erratically.

Well they are only human after all they can't be writeing to every ticket they get.

No, but can't you at least fault this GM for not really bothering to read closely?

[Chimera]

yea the message i got once was quite robotic. I sent in a harassment report because someone was acting very rude to me cause i was roleplaying with my friend in cat form cause i perfer my animal forms and they thought it was something to do with bestiality and the response i got had no explanation of what was gonna happen to them and they said very generally they were sorry i was a victim of it and that they would deal with it. Again, they never specified how yet when i reported someones name who was called 'Idnhealjews' (i-dont-heal-jews all smushed together so it fit as a name) and they were quite direct that they had the name erased and a three day ban (im guessing other ppl reported it too because it was quite foul. But thing is it wasnt nearly as foul as the harrasment i recieved from that one person who thought i and my guildy were doing some bestiality performances but all we were doing was eating some cake i bought in dalaran for us to share, my friend just happened to be wearing the black mageweave armor set cause he (he plays a female night elf) really likes that outfit

[cowmuflage]

Maybe Cialbi they where really busy? maybe there was something more important that needed doing.

[TygerDarkstorm]

Funny; Acherontia has been getting pretty steamed over a lack of action against botters that she reports. I guess that's the heart of the matter; when it comes to GMs, the quality of customer service can vary so erratically.

On Suramar I've always gotten rather prompt responses when I've reported someone underground mining (I call them botters since that's technically what they're doing). Granted, this was back in WotLK as I haven't been mining as much this expansion.

Well they are only human after all they can't be writeing to every ticket they get.

No, but can't you at least fault this GM for not really bothering to read closely?

A lot of their scripted responses are like that sadly. I once reported way back that it seemed kind of strange that my UH DK should have to resummon her ghoul pet every single time she dismounts, costing her a precious couple of seconds in combat when other pet classes didn't have to face such issues. My response was a scripted "working as intended" letter like they hadn't even read my ticket.

[AdamSavage]

Sounds like you got a lazy GM who didn't read it properly.

[Boven]

It's very unlikely that it's true cut 'n paste in the responses. Instead Blizzard appears to be using a CRM system with very little oversight.

For a number of years at my last place of employment, I was the manager of the team that handled customer service and support emails. When we started out, it was just two of us who basically just went through assorted email accounts via Outlook and copied/pasted appropriate responses. It didn't take long before it became more than obvious we needed a proper tool for that kind of work and the company invested in an automated CRM system.

The way those systems work is that one or more administrators spend a good chunk of time creating various queues and rules to channel incoming tickets and email messages to the appropriate person(s) and suggest a response. So, basically, a customer submits an online form or sends an email to some support address. The CRM system runs it through the rules and filters and determines who should handle it and puts it into that person/team's incoming mail queue. If certain conditions are met, the system will suggest a pre-written response. When the support person logs in and starts processing the emails in their queue, they'll see the incoming message along with the suggested response.

Now what is *supposed* to happen is the support person reads the customer's message and does whatever needs to be done, then reviews the suggested response to make sure it's appropriate. If it is, he/she customizes it a bit by doing things like adding the customer's name and other information specific to the request, then sends the response out. If the suggested response isn't appropriate, the user rejects it and either selects another pre-made one that is or creates one 'manually.'

At some regular interval, a supervisor or manager or whatever will log into the system and review random responses that the support people made for quality assurance purposes. Also, at regular intervals, productivity reports are run to see how many customer requests/tickets each support person is answering and how quickly and such.

That's what's supposed to happen. In Blizzard's case, it seems obvious that it doesn't happen, though.

In Blizzard's case, it seems the support people are more quota driven than quality driven. Just like in a call center, the employees are expected to handle a certain number of tickets per hour. Now, there's usually some leeway given with quotas since how many tickets you process depends upon the type of ticket. In the case of my old employer, tickets ranged from super fast things like "remove me from your mailing list" to far more complex ones that could take a long time to research and take care of. I suspect Blizz has set a very high quota just so that their queues don't get all backed up and doesn't take into account the difficulty of the tickets processed by the support people.

I also don't think there's any real oversight or QA going on. Basically, the high-ups are only concerned that the support team processed X number of tickets per hour and that they don't bother going and actually spot checking to make sure that the tickets are being processed correctly.

Where I worked, it took a year or two to convince the upper management that it was better to have more people spending a little extra time on each request than it was to go with bare minimum manpower and strict, high quotas. We did, though, and I do believe it paid off in the end. We tended to have a good bit of positive feedback from customers when it came to customer support.

Blizz seems to have taken the opposite approach. They just want those tickets closed, so some overworked GM who is trying to make sure to make his/her quota just sees the system suggested a response about phishing and hits Okay. That's how you get the annoying inappropriate response emails. It can happen under a well managed system too, but it's a lot more rare.

[Minifig]

Refile the ticket and if you got chosen to fill out a survey, be sure to do it in full and mark the field that says "The GM understood my reason for the ticket" as low as possible.

Blizzard actually pays VERY close attention to those.

On top of that, I'd recommend getting an addon called Badboys.. and all three of it's extensions, Badboy Levels, Badboy CCleaner, and Badboys Guilded.

You can find the link to it here: http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addo ... d-boy.aspx


It automatically filters all the spam you see in trade chat, and more. I don't even have to report people anymore because it does it for me.

Really worth your time.

[AdamSavage]

What's trade chat ? I make it a point to leave Trade chat when I make a toon, for that same reason above. Most of the people are in Stormwind/Ogrimmar anyway. I just use the general chat.

[Cerele]

Yep, most of the time standard stuff like that is copypasted, when you write about something more specific (''I fell through the world and deleted my HS. Oops.'') they'll write themselves.

if you are falling HS wouldnt help... lol

but yea hit invisible barrier and such

[Saturo]

I fell through the world once. Got a copy-pasted response that told me to HS. I was all: ''Yes... I'll do that. -.-''

[Kurenio]

I fell through the world once. Got a copy-pasted response that told me to HS. I was all: ''Yes... I'll do that. -.-''

oh wait you can't because your falling