Well - that is disturbing!
Apparently as of today people are being kicked off Live Chat (without being helped) for not having spent enough on farm cash? Or not buying recently? Or....? The criteria is not yet clear - but oy!
Way to go Zynga!! The ONE THING that you were doing so well and now you're turning THAT into yet another way of pissing off players?
Unbelievable.
I guess they have SO many customers, they don't need to worry about keeping them.
I seriously hope any potential investors are doing their due diligence. This company is seriously intent on self-destruction.
Showing posts with label live chat. Show all posts
Showing posts with label live chat. Show all posts
Friday, August 26, 2011
A few updates ... orchard text; live chat vs email support; ~super~ orchards
Orchard text has been (FINALLY) fixed! That makes me very happy, as it means that I am once again able to waste altogether too much time mastering trees and growing seedlings to share with my friends.
Had occasion to use Zynga's support yet again this week. I bought two of the new magic peach trees which are very cool, (but I am still waiting impatiently to get my hands on an as yet unrealeased except for in feedlings which I have no luck with, mossy trees) - and the first time I attempted to move them, one disappeared!
I had no luck getting Live Chat then, so eventually got frustrated and sent in an email request for support. They responded in less than a day - BUT the trees and farmcash the email said they had given me were not in the account. I eventually discovered that - even though I had made sure to contact them from the problem account, the fix had gone into another also played on this computer. Second time they've done that; I have no idea how it happens... I guess sometimes they just don't look at the UID in the form.
Anyway, I was going to just gift a replacement tree from that account to the correct one, but then I decided to try again to get live chat. Took about 20 reloads, but did eventually got through.
As always, Live Chat was great - even though I told her that they had actually given me 2 extra trees & 25 FV$ (but in the wrong account) she cheerfully fixed it in the correct one as well. In fact, she surprised me! She had told me that she was replacing the tree and putting in 50FV$ - but when I went to move the tree from the gift box I found not one, but ten! A very nice surprise.
I still haven't bought any ~super~ orchards, and probably never will - but they have dropped the price (for everyone, as far as I know) to 30 FV$ to upgrade them.
Unfortunately, though, they still have not apparently got the message that those of us who are never offered the low prices (and/or the good deals on FV$ and bounty packs and so on) are becoming increasingly irked and insulted. Has been quite a lot of frustration in the forums about the price spread on some of the new fairy critters.
Those defending Zynga (who are no doubt at least some of the time among the favoured players) often point to these sort of pricing experiments as being akin to in-store pricing experiences - but to me, that is a ridiculous argument.
First of all, I highly doubt that most stores do pricing experiments where an item is priced at such broad variances. I should pay > 3x as much as my kid for this item?! Seriously?
And second, if I go into a store and pay $1 for a bottle of pop, and you go into your store and pay $0.75, the chance that either of us is ever going to know and have occasion to be insulted and irked about it is pretty slim. We do not have the same sort of relationship with the store OR with each other as we players do with Zynga. They REALLY need to rethink their approach, as they ARE seriously damaging customer loyalty and trust.
Which should be painfully obvious to them - if only they actually paid attention to the forum discussions and to the cranky people that contact customer service when they discover they have been ripped off.
It is nice that they fix it for those of us cranky people who do contact CS whenever we discover that we have yet again been ripped off - but how many people do not actually bother and just stayed irked?
Given the ongoing loss of Farmville players (and presumably, income) - and all the talk of IPO offerings - you would think that such feedback would be considered a little more important - and a lot more quickly - than it is! Every time I see anything about the IPO I shake my head. What company in their right mind shoots itself in the foot over & over (throttle? limits? price gouging?), loses millions & millions of customers, and THEN tries to go public?
I must be missing something - me, when I research a stock, I'm looking to get in when they are growing, not tanking.
Had occasion to use Zynga's support yet again this week. I bought two of the new magic peach trees which are very cool, (but I am still waiting impatiently to get my hands on an as yet unrealeased except for in feedlings which I have no luck with, mossy trees) - and the first time I attempted to move them, one disappeared!
I had no luck getting Live Chat then, so eventually got frustrated and sent in an email request for support. They responded in less than a day - BUT the trees and farmcash the email said they had given me were not in the account. I eventually discovered that - even though I had made sure to contact them from the problem account, the fix had gone into another also played on this computer. Second time they've done that; I have no idea how it happens... I guess sometimes they just don't look at the UID in the form.
Anyway, I was going to just gift a replacement tree from that account to the correct one, but then I decided to try again to get live chat. Took about 20 reloads, but did eventually got through.
As always, Live Chat was great - even though I told her that they had actually given me 2 extra trees & 25 FV$ (but in the wrong account) she cheerfully fixed it in the correct one as well. In fact, she surprised me! She had told me that she was replacing the tree and putting in 50FV$ - but when I went to move the tree from the gift box I found not one, but ten! A very nice surprise.
I still haven't bought any ~super~ orchards, and probably never will - but they have dropped the price (for everyone, as far as I know) to 30 FV$ to upgrade them.
Unfortunately, though, they still have not apparently got the message that those of us who are never offered the low prices (and/or the good deals on FV$ and bounty packs and so on) are becoming increasingly irked and insulted. Has been quite a lot of frustration in the forums about the price spread on some of the new fairy critters.
Those defending Zynga (who are no doubt at least some of the time among the favoured players) often point to these sort of pricing experiments as being akin to in-store pricing experiences - but to me, that is a ridiculous argument.
First of all, I highly doubt that most stores do pricing experiments where an item is priced at such broad variances. I should pay > 3x as much as my kid for this item?! Seriously?
And second, if I go into a store and pay $1 for a bottle of pop, and you go into your store and pay $0.75, the chance that either of us is ever going to know and have occasion to be insulted and irked about it is pretty slim. We do not have the same sort of relationship with the store OR with each other as we players do with Zynga. They REALLY need to rethink their approach, as they ARE seriously damaging customer loyalty and trust.
Which should be painfully obvious to them - if only they actually paid attention to the forum discussions and to the cranky people that contact customer service when they discover they have been ripped off.
It is nice that they fix it for those of us cranky people who do contact CS whenever we discover that we have yet again been ripped off - but how many people do not actually bother and just stayed irked?
Given the ongoing loss of Farmville players (and presumably, income) - and all the talk of IPO offerings - you would think that such feedback would be considered a little more important - and a lot more quickly - than it is! Every time I see anything about the IPO I shake my head. What company in their right mind shoots itself in the foot over & over (throttle? limits? price gouging?), loses millions & millions of customers, and THEN tries to go public?
I must be missing something - me, when I research a stock, I'm looking to get in when they are growing, not tanking.
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
Customer Service
Well, while I often find things aggravating in Farmville, I certainly cannot fault them for their customer service - especially not when it comes to Live Chat support.
It is not always available - and sometimes it can take many refreshes of the support page before you will see the link - but every time I have used it, they have solved my problem quickly, with a minimum of fuss - and usually thrown in a bonus for my aggravation.
Several times I have had FV$ magically disappear - which worries me somewhat, as I am not confident that I would always notice it. But when I have noticed and contacted them through Live Chat, they replaced it and then some.
Yesterday, I happened to notice that my coin tree had disappeared. Trees do that, occassionally - if I happen to have an error while in the middle of moving a tree - poof! But every other time (that I have noticed; I wouldn't notice unless they are level 1 trees I can't replace) they have turned up... usually in my storage. But this time, it was just gone. And since coin trees were a quest prize and (don't get me started!!!! ) non-reproducable (even though they SAY they are) and non-purchase-able, I was irked.
I spent altogether too much time searching for my poor lost coin tree... went through every single orchard, moved them all around, etc etc. No luck. The next step was to start moving everything around, checking to see if it was hiding behind something or other - still no luck - and using an aborist didn't change the mastery level either... so it seemed it was gone, not just misplaced.
Nothing worked - the silly thing was gone.
So...after another search this morning, I contacted Live Chat support, and was given not only a replacement, but also 4 more (so they could stay together and not get lost).
Excellent customer service.
Zynga's email support tends to be rather more hit & miss - although most of us diehards know that if you don't succeed, you can always reply to the message, get a different rep, and keep at it until you get resolution - and that CS representatives are not always provided with good information (that applies to Live Chat reps as well) - but on the whole, this is something Zynga does do very well.
Suggestion #3
Keep up the good work in the customer service department, Zynga. (But you might want to look at communication between CS & the developers; that could be improved)
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