Answer HQ improvement/ Customer Service Improvement

[JCdarkness92]

Answer HQ seems to be at the moment a place where EA can get people to flood their questions and hope that some players will have answers to all their problems, this removes the accountability of EA directly to consumer, this I disagree with, whilst I have attempted to help on many posts in the 24 hours i've actually had an account, I have seen very few moderators or managers making comments or offering advice, perhaps 1 in 20 threads gets answered by a manager, I am being generous here.

Perhaps this is just for fifa 13 of course EA has other games, perhaps they handle these better so I can therefore only assert that this is the experience from a purely Fifa 13 standpoint, if there is an issue where EA cannot be bothered or do not have the personnel to manage the forum community then they have to either scrap the idea entirely or they have to get people to answer these posts, you cannot expect solutions to pop out of thin air, their is a reason that people go to doctors, it's because they have a problem with their health that they want fixed by a professional, it's not a problem they want fixed by 500 people they randomly meet with possible underlying motivations that could potentially cause problems for them.

My second "Bright Idea" is for there to be more EA advisors, I've read dozens upon dozens of posts and tried to help on some of them, but their is no response from any advisors when the problems are sent out to them. I am currently waiting for an initial RESPONSE from any EA advisor, this is nearly 4 days, I presume EA don't work Sunday's, why would they? They don't seem to do much work any other day of the week, so I'll not hold my breath. It's been suggested that they are all extremely busy working very hard, are they really? I doubt it, if they are EA need to ask themselves why, I can tell you why, EA released FIFA 13 in full knowledge of its many bugs and glitches, do not get me wrong I do not expect a perfect game, but nor do I expect a game that I have paid £40 for to be such a disaster, I hear good things about PES 2013 from friends and reviewers, is this some stunt from EA? Expect us to fork up extortionate amounts of money each year for little to no benefit? Well here is some help for you, I've gone through approximately 40 posts, all with people saying they are ready to pack in and head over to PES for solid, consistent and quality product, not to mention prompt replies, so on that note I will leave you with some statistics from TARP Worldwide, 1 customer complaint = an average of 50 people, 

75% will complain to 8 others about the issue either face-to-face or via the phone which represents:

296 people who have been told directly who then tell 237 more people

13% will complain to 60 others via blog, tweet, or social media, such as Facebook which represents:

420 people who have been told directly who then tell 336 more people

12% will complain via e-mail or chat with 8 people which represents:

48 people who have been told via chat who in turn tell 38 more more people

In summary, one escalated complaint = an average of 50 clients and 1,375 cases of word of mouth.

[EA_Francois · Accepted solution]

Hello jcdarkness92 and thanks for your message,

I understand that your frustration stems from a perceived lack of responsiveness on the FIFA 13 board. While I believe that your disappointment primarily hinges on the fact that Answer HQ is not a traditional support platform, but a community initiative where gamers can share their expertise with other fellow players to help them out. The principle is simple, really: many of the problems encountered on our boards (people asking how to update their Origin profile, do profile changes/merges, enquire about a billing issue etc.) are questions that any gamer who's already been through the process or has read some of our help articles can do. All the Game Advisors not currently reading a Help article to a player regarding something for which he could have found the answer with a bit of Google Fu are Game Advisors available to help a player who's account has been hacked and really needs EA assistance to go through the procedure of account recovery. This is only one example.

Nonetheless, our team is working closely with the FIFA dev teams over in Canada to make sure that bug that are reported on Answer HQ get escalated in order to be fixed. I know for a fact that the guys in Vancouver are hard at work to address the issues that have been reported in order to deliver the best football gaming experience.

As regards our team's responsiveness, well, we're still in beta here, but our team is growing to accomodate the needs of our community. You may have started to see some new faces around, and will continue to see more as we continue to expand.

Finally, regarding people abusing one another's trust: you have seen by yourself how the community immediately flagged a post when someone tried their hand at scamming people in these walls. They did not last long. I have seen some of your messages on the FIFA board, and this is exactly the attitude we are welcoming among us.

We have great things planned for our community. Thanks for being part of it.

[EA_Francois · Accepted solution]

Hello jcdarkness92 and thanks for your message,

I understand that your frustration stems from a perceived lack of responsiveness on the FIFA 13 board. While I believe that your disappointment primarily hinges on the fact that Answer HQ is not a traditional support platform, but a community initiative where gamers can share their expertise with other fellow players to help them out. The principle is simple, really: many of the problems encountered on our boards (people asking how to update their Origin profile, do profile changes/merges, enquire about a billing issue etc.) are questions that any gamer who's already been through the process or has read some of our help articles can do. All the Game Advisors not currently reading a Help article to a player regarding something for which he could have found the answer with a bit of Google Fu are Game Advisors available to help a player who's account has been hacked and really needs EA assistance to go through the procedure of account recovery. This is only one example.

Nonetheless, our team is working closely with the FIFA dev teams over in Canada to make sure that bug that are reported on Answer HQ get escalated in order to be fixed. I know for a fact that the guys in Vancouver are hard at work to address the issues that have been reported in order to deliver the best football gaming experience.

As regards our team's responsiveness, well, we're still in beta here, but our team is growing to accomodate the needs of our community. You may have started to see some new faces around, and will continue to see more as we continue to expand.

Finally, regarding people abusing one another's trust: you have seen by yourself how the community immediately flagged a post when someone tried their hand at scamming people in these walls. They did not last long. I have seen some of your messages on the FIFA board, and this is exactly the attitude we are welcoming among us.

We have great things planned for our community. Thanks for being part of it.