Valve on Customer Service: "We Need to Do Better"

[Steven Bogos]

Valve on Customer Service: "We Need to Do Better"

Valve received an "F" rank from the Better Business Bureau due to it's appalling customer service.

Anyone who has ever had to contact Valve [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/tag/view/valve%20software?os=valve+software] for any kind of customer service should know that the process is... not great. This fact is reflected in the Better Business Bureau's (BBB) recent "F" ranking of the company, citing "poor customer service" as the biggest culprit. The good news is that Valve is rather ashamed of this, and assures us that it wants to change for the better.

"We don't feel like our customer service support is where it needs to be right now," Valve's Erik Johnson told Kotaku [http://steamed.kotaku.com/valve-is-not-psyched-they-got-an-f-in-customer-service-1691308332]. "We think customers are right. When they say our support's bad, our initial reaction isn't to say, 'No, it's actually good. Look at all of this.' It's to say that, no, they're probably right, because they usually are when it comes to this kind of thing. We hear those complaints, and that's gonna be a big focus for us throughout the year. We have a lot of work to do there. We have to do better."

The BBB [http://www.bbb.org/alaskaoregonwesternwashington/business-reviews/computer-software-publishers-and-developers/valve-corporation-in-bellevue-wa-27030704] claims that customers have filed over 700 complaints with the company, which has failed to respond to at least 500 of. The majority of complaints stem from "problems with a product/service." To elaborate:

"Consumers allege the games they purchase from Valve Corporation or Steam malfunction, do not work or have an invalid CD key. Consumers also claim the company blocks users from accessing their library of games. Consumers further allege they attempt to contact the company for assistance, but Valve Corporation fails to correct the gaming issues, does not correct credit card charges or issue a refund, or does not respond at all."

The "does not respond at all" phrase rings particularly true for most people I know, (including myself), who have had their complaints fall on deaf ears whenever there's a problem with Steam.

While Johnson did acknowledge the problem, he lamented that the BBB is not a particularly useful metric. "The BBB is a far less useful proxy for customer issues than Reddit," he claimed. "We don't use them for much. They don't provide us as useful of data as customers emailing us, posting on Reddit, posting on Twitter, and so on."

Source: Kotaku [http://steamed.kotaku.com/valve-is-not-psyched-they-got-an-f-in-customer-service-1691308332]

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[Redlin5_v1legacy]

They could also use a filter for their Greenlight program. <.<

Anyway, my only Valve customer experience threw me into a menu of FAQ's until I got to submit my question. It took forever for them to get back to me. I actually don't think my issue ever got resolved now that I think of it...

 

[TT Kairen]

Yet people fellate Steam and refuse to even consider installing Origin because it's made by EA and therefore possessed by Satan or something. Despite the numerous statements by users about how their customer service is actually pretty solid.

 

[grigjd3]

Honestly, I've always had a pretty good experience with Steam's customer service. So long as I explained my issue well and was a little bit patient, they made sure to take care of me. Opposed to the poster above, I don't mind Origin per-se, but they don't provide games I am interested in.

 

[TT Kairen]

Honestly, I've always had a pretty good experience with Steam's customer service. So long as I explained my issue well and was a little bit patient, they made sure to take care of me. Opposed to the poster above, I don't mind Origin per-se, but they don't provide games I am interested in.

You misunderstand. I wasn't criticizing Origin, I was stating how people's hatred of it and praise of Steam is bizarre given the poor track record of Steam's service.

 

[bug_of_war]

Wow, after what, 8 years of people saying your customer service sucks you finally step up and say, "Yeah, they're probably right"? God damn it Valve, I enjoy Steam, but you guys are honestly really poor at doing A LOT of other shit, and the fact that you're only just now owning up to the biggest fail that you're company has due to another company giving you a failing grade tells me that all you do is roll your eyes at the people using your product.

 

[Tyranicus]

My biggest problem with steam is their so called one "refund" for life. No more refunds after your first. I wanted a refund for X Rebirth and the gave me a FAQ page for the game and said sorry no refunds. I did refund a game like 2 years ago and got my money back. But I heard steam won't give anyone more than just one. I still want a refund for XRebirth

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

Yet people fellate Steam and refuse to even consider installing Origin because it's made by EA and therefore possessed by Satan or something. Despite the numerous statements by users about how their customer service is actually pretty solid.

while this is true, and EA does have a solid customer service program, I can't knock them on that, it's honestly been pretty damn good for years.

origin doesn't hold a candle to steam (steam keys to be more general) in terms of cheap deals and the amount of games offered. There are VERY few games on origin that I'm even remotely interested in, and even then, I probably have a steam key for it at a fraction the price..and this also is factored in by the fact that MAYBE 1 out of 200 games is there ever some game breaking or CTD bug. Otherwise it's usually nothing but smooth running on my rig, so thankfully I don't have to deal with valve's support (although I did once and I've had friends complain about it as well, so that's no excuse, just not necessarily something I'm required to deal with to play my games.)

OT: while it's taken them fucking forever to release any public acknowledgement on this, it's about damn time they got burned enough on it to hopefully DO something about it...but I'm not holding my breath on it.

 

[Metalrocks]

agreed that steam does takes its time to help or even respond to customers needs. i once got a reply from them after a month when i had issues getting to run RE6. in that time i resolved the problem my self. generally i did get a responds throughout the years i had to get in touch with them and did get helped more or less to my issue(s) but not all of them were very good or even helpful. the last issue was with LA noir. after getting a new GPU at that time, i could not play the game (not sure anymore what it was) and their suggestion was to clean out my entire library and install steam new or something ridicules like that.

i had quicker and better help from EA. so EA actually gets a thumbs up from me. hell, i even got a refund for AC unity and no questions were asked and i waited for 5 or 10 min until i could speak to a person on their life chat. even when the site said that unity cant be refunded.

 

[LightningFast]

Is this an actual "We need to do better" that will precede actual improvement, or a major publisher B.S. "We need to do better" that will precede status quo?

 

[Clive Howlitzer]

It is a bad sign when EA has better customer service than you. This is definitely one area they badly need to work on. A refund policy would be nice also.

 

[Vigormortis]

snip

For the record: The BBB is a fucking terrible metric by which to measure the quality of a company's customer service. The system is basically akin to Metacritic. Easy to exploit. Verifies almost nothing.

Still, Valve definitely needs to dramatically improve in customer support, regardless of the BBB's rating.

Yet people fellate Steam and refuse to even consider installing Origin because it's made by EA and therefore possessed by Satan or something. Despite the numerous statements by users about how their customer service is actually pretty solid.

Yet, I've never once had issue with Steam support and routinely get completely boned by Origin support.

And from my experience, I've heard just as many complaints about EA's support as I have Valve's.

 

[EndlessSporadic]

In regards to Origin, I can't say I like the layout of their launcher. I am also unsure what their DRM is like and I do not want them sending data on my computer without permission (as they tend to do). Admittedly the last two points may be me being misinformed and the first point is personal preference. The main reason I don't use Origin is simply because I do not trust EA. They've been heading in the right direction of regaining that lost trust lately, but it still needs more time.

In regards to Steam, companies only do something when someone with power calls them out on it. While the BBB is indeed a bad metric they do have some pull. Steam support has always been bad, and their policies often worse.

Ultimately I trust Steam more since I actually do research on games I purchase, but I do not trust any platform that makes you unable to play games you have paid for if something happens to your account. This mentality that end users are renting games instead of purchasing them is toxic and needs to die. Steam and Origin are both guilty of this.

 

[shintakie10]

Wow, after what, 8 years of people saying your customer service sucks you finally step up and say, "Yeah, they're probably right"? God damn it Valve, I enjoy Steam, but you guys are honestly really poor at doing A LOT of other shit, and the fact that you're only just now owning up to the biggest fail that you're company has due to another company giving you a failing grade tells me that all you do is roll your eyes at the people using your product.

I know, right?

Valve customer service is fuckin abysmal. Its especially fuckin terrible after having spent the last 10 years dealing with Blizzard's absolutely amazing customer service. Its doubly terrible when compared to Amazon customer service.

Valve customer service might as well barely exist for how useless it is most of the time. You rarely, if ever, get a response. When you do its shit that you've probably already tried in the week or longer it takes for them to get back to you. If its about a refund for a game, no matter the reason, you better hope that they've eaten a PR shitstorm due to that game or you're SOL.

I've gotten better customer service at friggin Walmart from an extremely busy and annoyed sales clerk who very obviously wanted nothing to do with me than I have from Valves dedicated customer service representatives.

 

[Zontar]

I don't really have that bad of a history with steam customer support. The only two times I've had to deal with it where when there was a problem that I honestly should have been able to solve on my own looking back (I was new to using it back them) and one where the problem was third party so I was referred to them instead (and they solved the problem).

Origin is something I've never had an issue with (though in all fairness I only have it because of the Origin Bundle and for whenever they have a giveaway), but a friend of mine had his account hacked and EA straight up closed the account. He's been dealing with that for 2 weeks now and it's still an ongoing issue with him.

 

[CardinalPiggles]

Yet people fellate Steam and refuse to even consider installing Origin because it's made by EA and therefore possessed by Satan or something. Despite the numerous statements by users about how their customer service is actually pretty solid.

Well I'll happily stand behind Steam seeing as my account has never been compromised, whereas my Origin account has been compromised 3 times in the space of a week (and has probably been so again since I last logged on).

 

[runic knight]

Never had much in the way of problems with steam that I can remember that couldn't be solved with 5 minutes of google an a bit of commitment. And that is only after talking about odd game quirks and incompatibilities as well.

Still, Steam has issues from all I hear and good for them to decide to fix that. Maybe making the process of customer support more user friendly would be a start.

As for origin, I disliked it because it always has hiccups with my system, the company behind it has shown a far greater concern over how much they can wring out of me then steam does, they have been compromised far more often, and I have heard as many ales of horror about Origin as I have about steam in relation to poor customer service. Between the two, I'll go with the one that at least comes off as less greedy. Illusions, I know, both companies want money at the end of the day, but still.

 

[DaxStrife]

I'm just picturing now Valve opening up their corporate e-mail system and discovering a massive back-log they didn't know about.
"Huh, apparently people really want that sequel to Half-Life we promised. We honestly didn't think anyone cared about that!"

 

[Scrythe]

Well the only time I've ever had to deal with Valve's customer service was quite pleasant, but I'm gonna buck the trend and not assume that their service is stellar just because I was an exception.

I will say this: It was highly amusing to score a refund on a game (accidentally purchased it twice; this was before they changed it so you couldn't do that), while still receiving an email telling me that they absolutely do not give refunds.

 

[Hairless Mammoth]

Before anyone starts thinking pressure from the BBB will help convince Valve to fix their customer support, know the the BBB is basically extorting businesses for a good raiting. Read the Off Topic thread here [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/18.872389-Im-confused-about-how-the-BBB-rate-customer-service] (and the links within) for more info on how the Better Business Bureau only "betters" businesses that pay for better grades. Even after (or if) Valve resolves the complaints against them, the BBB grade might not go up until Gabe opens the pocket book.

I've never had issues with Steam, but I'm not defending Valve. The one time refund needs to go, especially with GOG, who doesn't use DRM, letting you get refunds occasionally (They will suspect abuse if you do it often.) for unresolvable tech issues, and even EA having a more lax refund policy. I also believe in the reported wait times for a response. With Steam, Valve's customer base has grown proportionally larger than they have as a company. If they haven't already done so, they either need to hire more people for customer support or a third party company to assist.