Esvee
11-07-2003, 08:44 PM
Hi all,
Playing a warrior just like most of you, I too have been baffled by their absolute lack of respect for some of their customers or their complaints. I work in marketing myself on a management level and SOE in my opinion probably has one of the worst functioning marketing departements I have ever seen.(I d fire the lot of em).
Some facts and figures you may find interesting:
1. When you complain, you are actually doing a company a big favor as this is free market research. You ignore complaints at your perril.
2. SOE does very poor market research; the feeble excuse for a survey when you logged in a few months back is about all I ve seen; they are woefully out of touch with their customers.
3. Only 5% of dissatisfied customers ever complain to a company; (seeing the huge number of angry posts all over the internet, this means a lot of people are upset) The rest grin and bear it, but 95% of those that don't complain opt for another product; aka, good luck keeping your player base for EQ 2.
4. If you attempt to resolve a large portion of customers complaints, you have a chance of retaining about 75% of those customers if you handle it promptly. If you can t handle it promptly, communicating with your dissatisfied customers is very important; (they send Absor to do this, and frankly he has not been a lot of help lately).
5. In extreme cases dissatisfaction can lead to legal complaints or public protests; this is more or less on the way with the Stand down on november the 18th; that s how bad it is now.
So why is SOE so complacent? For the simple reason that a lot of their customers are effectively addicted to their product. Many will complain, but will not cancel their accounts due to the amount of time invested and emotional attachement to their character. I m guilty of that too; I still log on, but only to raid generally.
What will happen is most likely one of two things:
1) Many of the players who play EQ at the moment will not opt for another SOE product as soon as a good alternative can be found. They may get lucky and carry on generating income from new customers but I doubt it.
2) If any of the players feel passionate enough about it to force them to take action now before EQ becomes obselete, you basically have only one option. Only by massively and publicly cancelling accounts will this have any significant effect. If this very-hard to organise campaign is successfull, warriors will be very few and far between, making raiding for many guilds very hard and most likely causing EQ to die or making them fix some issues pronto. If SOE is smart, they ll learn from this and try harder in EQ 2, but I doubt they ll fix EQ 1.
Sorry for making this a boring post, but I felt it warranted saying; Seeing people afraid of a ban sometimes makes me wonder too......You are a paying customer and if they have any sense they will try to make you enjoy their product as much as possible. Treating your customers like children is not a good way to keep them. And once I have seen most EQ has to offer (guild is allmost in Time), I will not purchase another SOE product again untill I see significant improvements in customer-oriented marketing; I will advise many to do the same.
Esvee
lvl 65 Overlord of Kylin Eyes
Playing a warrior just like most of you, I too have been baffled by their absolute lack of respect for some of their customers or their complaints. I work in marketing myself on a management level and SOE in my opinion probably has one of the worst functioning marketing departements I have ever seen.(I d fire the lot of em).
Some facts and figures you may find interesting:
1. When you complain, you are actually doing a company a big favor as this is free market research. You ignore complaints at your perril.
2. SOE does very poor market research; the feeble excuse for a survey when you logged in a few months back is about all I ve seen; they are woefully out of touch with their customers.
3. Only 5% of dissatisfied customers ever complain to a company; (seeing the huge number of angry posts all over the internet, this means a lot of people are upset) The rest grin and bear it, but 95% of those that don't complain opt for another product; aka, good luck keeping your player base for EQ 2.
4. If you attempt to resolve a large portion of customers complaints, you have a chance of retaining about 75% of those customers if you handle it promptly. If you can t handle it promptly, communicating with your dissatisfied customers is very important; (they send Absor to do this, and frankly he has not been a lot of help lately).
5. In extreme cases dissatisfaction can lead to legal complaints or public protests; this is more or less on the way with the Stand down on november the 18th; that s how bad it is now.
So why is SOE so complacent? For the simple reason that a lot of their customers are effectively addicted to their product. Many will complain, but will not cancel their accounts due to the amount of time invested and emotional attachement to their character. I m guilty of that too; I still log on, but only to raid generally.
What will happen is most likely one of two things:
1) Many of the players who play EQ at the moment will not opt for another SOE product as soon as a good alternative can be found. They may get lucky and carry on generating income from new customers but I doubt it.
2) If any of the players feel passionate enough about it to force them to take action now before EQ becomes obselete, you basically have only one option. Only by massively and publicly cancelling accounts will this have any significant effect. If this very-hard to organise campaign is successfull, warriors will be very few and far between, making raiding for many guilds very hard and most likely causing EQ to die or making them fix some issues pronto. If SOE is smart, they ll learn from this and try harder in EQ 2, but I doubt they ll fix EQ 1.
Sorry for making this a boring post, but I felt it warranted saying; Seeing people afraid of a ban sometimes makes me wonder too......You are a paying customer and if they have any sense they will try to make you enjoy their product as much as possible. Treating your customers like children is not a good way to keep them. And once I have seen most EQ has to offer (guild is allmost in Time), I will not purchase another SOE product again untill I see significant improvements in customer-oriented marketing; I will advise many to do the same.
Esvee
lvl 65 Overlord of Kylin Eyes