My experience with Blizzard customer service

#0 - April 26, 2010, 6:03 p.m.

Dear Blizzard Staff

Im an IT guy, Im the go-to person for a company that has 50 stores and approximately 250 employees.
With 15 years experience, I regularly have to deal with people, employees, customers and I feel I have a pretty good grasp on what customer service should be....

This morning at 8AM EST I login to my account and Im asked for my authenticator, well i dont have one, so I immediately thought my account was compromised, I went to battle.net and couldn't log into my account either, but i was able to change my password.

I did my virus scan, I haven't logged in on another computer in months ( and have changed my password since) and I dont share my info with anyone.

Ive been a subscriber since 2006/2007 I own multiple accounts tied under one battle.net account.

Heres my experience. 8AM est is 5AM Blizzard time... So I understand i have to wait 3 hours for help.

11:00 am EST aka 8am Blizzard time, I make a call. I'm told that blizzard is unable to take my call, so i call back 16 times in a row and finally i get put to the queue. I'm told appx 35-45 minutes for a wait time, which is fine. I'm sure there are 1000 calls from morons that think their realm is broken, or are calling for things like " someone ninja'd a voa mount" , or rogues are OP etc etc calls that they could easily fix themselves by going online, or actually reading before they call to fix the problem.

In my situation all i can do is call.. So i wait.. One hour and 16 minutes on my cell.. Then i get a message saying " Were sorry there has been a system error" and was hung up on.

Its now 1pm EST. Its been two hours.. Ive been waiting patiently on hold for another 30 minutes hoping to get through and not be hung up. Ive sent in two emails as well.

Is this how customer service always is? I haven't had to call blizzard since i merged my wifes account with mine a year ago. What is the malfunction here?

Blizzard what is going on? Outsourcing? Tough Financial Times and call center cut backs?

I'm severely disappointed in this process at the moment. Ill respond once I actually get ahold of a human and hopefully they can take care of this. But this is a major turnoff as a consumer who has spent well over $1500.00 on blizzard products over the last 4 years.

If this treatment is the expectation, I really hope you take a look at this post to see what its like for a user who actually requires human services, and really rethink your customer service department.

If I did this to my employees or my customers and made them wait over two hours on a phone call, get hung up and re queued again and again, I would lose my job, and I'm pretty sure my company would be out of business.

Malkorix

#31 - April 26, 2010, 8:07 p.m.

Q u o t e:
Regardless, guys, this isn't the point of this guy's thread. Why not stay on topic? :)

Yes, let's please do that. Keeping threads on-topic and constructive is very important, and allowing a thread to devolve into flaming and trolling does this forum a disservice.

Q u o t e:
In my situation all i can do is call.. So i wait.. One hour and 16 minutes on my cell.. Then i get a message saying " Were sorry there has been a system error" and was hung up on.

Its now 1pm EST. Its been two hours.. Ive been waiting patiently on hold for another 30 minutes hoping to get through and not be hung up. Ive sent in two emails as well.

Blizzard what is going on? Outsourcing? Tough Financial Times and call center cut backs?

I'm severely disappointed in this process at the moment. Ill respond once I actually get ahold of a human and hopefully they can take care of this. But this is a major turnoff as a consumer who has spent well over $1500.00 on blizzard products over the last 4 years.

If this treatment is the expectation, I really hope you take a look at this post to see what its like for a user who actually requires human services, and really rethink your customer service department.

If I did this to my employees or my customers and made them wait over two hours on a phone call, get hung up and re queued again and again, I would lose my job, and I'm pretty sure my company would be out of business.

Just so that you are aware, a call is not your only option, and it should be possible to email our Account Services staff regarding the removal of an unauthorized Authenticator at [email protected]. You mentioned that you already have done so, and I hope our staff can assist you as soon as possible if they have not done so already.

We realize how important communication with our players is, and I'm very sorry to hear that you might have had a particularly frustrating experience trying to reach us by telephone. A want to provide the best possible experience we can, and we are in the midst of improving the speed at which we can reach our customers. I'd also like to reassure you that there have not been cutbacks nor any outsourcing. In fact, rather than cutbacks, we are expanding our resources to improve our ability to quickly and accurately meet the needs of our players. What there has been is an extremely high volume of incoming requests on a consistent basis.

Rest assured that we are working to field all incoming requests more efficiently. This is a long term, ongoing process though, and we deeply appreciate the patience of our players as we make these improvements. Also, we do not have any systems in place to remove a caller from the telephone queue, nor is such an error message (to my knowledge) part of our current system. Is it possible that the message you received was from your cell provider, particularly if you had been on hold for a long period of time? In either case, to help ensure the smoothest experience possible, it really is a good idea to call from a land line if possible.