Topic

Please, anything but the form letter!

Recently I've noticed a somewhat unpleasant trend -- several of my bug reports have been closed with what may well be the epitome of generic responses:

"Thank you for your report. Your careful eye and attention to broken and
not-right things is helping us improve Glitch!

If we need any more info from you, we'll follow up with another email.

If you have any questions or if you have any further information on this
issue, follow the link below.

Thanks,

-the Glitch support team"

This really does make me a bit sad.  One of the things I loved most about this game was that it always felt like personal attention when you have a problem or need help.  Even the times I got a response that was a generic "Thanks for that" sort of thing, signing an actual name to it made me feel like I'm still dealing with people and not autoresponders on a variable delay.  A generic vague note with no name attached makes me feel like I got a voicemail that says a computerized voice has a "very important call" for me or that I'm "Already a Winner".  It's depersonalizing, and it gives the impression that whatever it was I said, it wasn't important enough to warrant more than a keypress for whatever the shortcut for form letters is.  Now, I will say that I'm 99.44% sure this isn't the case, but that doesn't make me like it any more.

So please, at least sign a name. Make up a name if you have to, I don't care.  Just give me the impression that I'm dealing with someone who cares about what I've said and that what I think matters.  You've all done an amazing job of doing that so far, aside from this.  Please don't get it wrong now!

Posted 17 months ago by Magic Monkey Subscriber! | Permalink

Replies

  • I do like the idea of simply adding a name... but... I doubt the staff will be able to do much more than that since the game is growing very rapidly, haha.
    Posted 17 months ago by Cerulean Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Having worked at a service desk: automated replies are fastest. Having to edit a reply is time not spent on fixing bugs.

    Devils advocate: Would you rather have them spend time writing personal notes back, or have them spend as much time as they have fixing the bugs and developing new ideas?

    Ingame they are still very personal, and they DO care. They just don't have the time to put that in letters. They planned to release Glitch around now / a few months ago (?) / in a few weeks (I am not sure which was the original plan), and they can't keep moving the date back...
    Posted 17 months ago by Miriamele Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Oh and not adding a name: The person who closes the ticket might not be the same as the one who looked at it. Adding a name to a mail has the chance that the receiver contacts the mailer directly for this issue, while he could adress the whole team. It is not 1 person that solves your issues, it's a team.
    Posted 17 months ago by Miriamele Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Oh, Miriamele, I know, but even little things like a name can make a massive difference psychologically. (I've worked in games and in QA, so I've got a pretty good handle on how much work they've got right now.) I also know that it's a team that addresses things, but people react very differently when something is personalized, such as with a name, than they do when they feel like they're dealing with an entity. 

    Devil's advocate back: Do you think the people answering tickets right now are the ones primarily implementing bug fixes or new features?  People get to wear a lot of hats in smaller companies, but I'm reasonably sure that there's differentiation in the roles there.

    Like I said, I do know they care.  I'm also trying to look at this from the perspective of someone coming in now who might not know that.  One of the things that currently sets Tiny Speck apart from other game companies (and thus Glitch apart from other games) is that level of caring, and any time I see it starting to erode at all (like now) I'm going to say something.

    Edit: Just to clarify, I'm not trying to be antagonistic at all here. I know things can be easily misinterpreted in written communications, so I just wanted to emphasize that I'm happy to have different opinions and to discuss them.
    Posted 17 months ago by Magic Monkey Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I know :) I just don't want people at TS get overworked or that people start to DEMAND things because they pay for the game. (That really works like a red piece of cloth on a bull for me) (that might be a dutch saying horribly translated btw).

    I also agree that a name makes it more personal. And I know it can be automated too that the name of the person who closes a ticket is put underneath the mail. It will seem more personal but it isn't.  I also expect that it will get more impersonal when there are more players joining. Playerbehaviour toward staff will get worse (it's often like that with masses). Well not worse, because the majority will not speak out or use the forums, but there will be more exesses. I dunno. I just really want them to go to work happy and keep enjoying it. Not saying that adding a name to a mail makes them unhappy. Just.. I am a bit worried for when the game goes live.
    How can they keep up this personal touch? You can't stay personal with bazillions of players. You can keep caring though, but it will have to show in a different way, like watching forums and being active there. Live help (which could become hell..)

    I know. I see things faaar to negative. Just a bit afraid of people being desillusioned.
    Posted 17 months ago by Miriamele Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Oh. 
    Darn. 
    I got exactly the same form letter. Since the bug report it referred to actually was to do with a troubling inconsistency that I only noticed because I have sharp eyes for that sort of thing, I had thought it was an actual commendation. Now I realize it was just a form letter. Feh.
    Posted 17 months ago by Eleanor Rigby Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I'm with you, Magic Monkey. I was pretty sad, too. Plus the form letters I got, the bug reports I'd sent were then closed but nothing was said about whether or not the bugs were fixed (to be fair, these were really minor, involved bugged badges and in one case a reversal of the correct order of actions (on the elemental pouch)). So my thoughts were: Um, okay, I know the game is getting bigger but I'm still really surprised my issue/bug was closed but not addressed at all. 

    Sigh. Growing pains. Bound to happen. On the plus side, look how many of the devs spend real time in game just playing with us and chatting with us. Look at the fast, personal attention people in Live Help get. The devs still respond to us in the forums (even just for fun, as in the Penis thread). Look at the fact the game still has an active real human being greeter program, to which the devs are deeply committed. I too want them to keep enjoying going to work, above all. So I guess if it's at the expense of form letters but keeping the other fun stuff we love...still thousands of times ahead of other companies and games.
    Posted 17 months ago by RM Subscriber! | Permalink
  • *facepalm* op

    when i got one, i was like why'd they even send this. but thanks anyways. 
    Posted 17 months ago by Mr. Dawgg Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Support has to scale, too. That means not every bug report will get the personal attention you think it maybe deserves. Fear not, people are working hard on squishing those bugs!
    Posted 17 months ago by Lilypad Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Excellent point, %username%!
    Posted 17 months ago by Joe Blow Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Miriamele, I think it translated just fine.  I am much the same.  What I'm trying to say is "Please give this back," rather than "I must have it NOW!"  I have a 5 year old child, I know all too well how aggravating the "NOW" demands can get (I don't give in to her any more than I expect anyone would give in to me if I acted that way). ;)  I know that things will change, but I just don't want to lose any of the things I think make it special here, even if I am just getting illusions in their place. In a case like this I'm actually content with illusions.  I wouldn't have even minded this one that much if it had a name on it... certainly not enough to complain!

    Eleanor, I'm sorry! I'm sure what you reported was still important!

    Part of the reason this bothered me the first time, I think, was that it was a ticket that had been open for weeks, and those are usually because something's tricky about it... my first thought was that it was an automated process for tickets left open for X amount of time.  The next few I got shot that theory down fairly quickly though. 

    All in all, I'm also quite aware that if this is the worst I have to complain about I'm in a very good position, whether or not I succeed in changing anything.   But I also don't want to lose any iota of what makes it special here (I know, I said it already, but it's for emphasis!) or have newer people think that the bug reports they send are going off into the ether or the great circular file in the sky. 
    Posted 17 months ago by Magic Monkey Subscriber! | Permalink
  • We read every report that comes in and work as hard as we can to resolve every issue that comes up as quickly as possible. But we can't offer hand-written personal responses to every report that every person files: it's simply impossible.

    (Maybe, in the future, we'll offer a subscription tier that costs a few thousand dollars a month which would offer personalized responses for every email you write to us. But, until then, when someone is tackling a queue of a thousand reports and has a few hundred which are all reporting exactly the same thing, there is no way around choosing from a list of pre-written responses.)

    This isn't "corporate" — it's just reality: if the support team has to think up new and different way of saying "thank you" + "we've got the information we need now" and type it out by hand to each person who submits a bug report (and some submit dozens a day) they will not be able spend the time analyzing unique cases or finding patterns among similar reports or any of the other things we need to do in order to improve the game.

    Having said all that, we should be including the name of the person responding (we just changed the way the tools worked and not including names was an oversight).
    Posted 17 months ago by stoot barfield Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I certainly didn't mean I expect a detailed and unique response to anything I say, that would be silly at best.  All I really wanted was names back. =)  Since it looks like that's happening, I've only got one other thing to say here.

    Thank you!
    Posted 17 months ago by Magic Monkey Subscriber! | Permalink
  • +! @stoot! Form letter responses are quite reasonable. I think including the name of the respondent will be a nice touch. Thank you.
    Posted 17 months ago by GreyGoose Subscriber! | Permalink
  • +1 stoot anyway *smiles sweetly*
    Posted 17 months ago by bored no more Subscriber! | Permalink
  • No problem, you're welcome and thanks again for pointing it out :)
    Posted 17 months ago by stoot barfield Subscriber! | Permalink
  • @stoot typo alert! your second line should say "can't" instead of "But we can offer hand-written personal responses to every report that every person files"
    Posted 17 months ago by The Cat Face Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Makes complete sense, stoot! Sorry for sounding whiny above. And yes, just having a name at end of the form letter is a nice touch, as Rachel2635 says. So thanks indeed:)
    Posted 17 months ago by RM Subscriber! | Permalink
  • lol The Cat Face.. I saw that but was been too polite to comment! lol
    Posted 17 months ago by BumbleBeez Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I got my first "form letter" response to a bug report I submitted at the end of this test.  I had to read through all of my submitted reports to even figure out which report this was in "answer" to.  It gave me a number but i don't think our reports are numbered.  The report referenced by the form letter wasn't of grave concern to me.  I was just under the impression that we were supposed to report ALL strange occurrences in the game.
    Posted 17 months ago by Marla Subscriber! | Permalink
  • As beta-testers (even those of you who chose to pay their sub up front), our job is to submit bugs. That's it. It's beta, things are going to be broken, and the team gets to the issue when they get to it. They've no responsibility to personalize responses to bug submitters. That's simply not feasible for a small game with a small staff and thousands of testers.

    You have to have faith that an acknowledgement in their ticketing system means that it's been reviewed and put into the queue in some form or another (either routed to a developer, or rolled up into an existing help desk item).

    Anything more than that is wasting the scant resources the Glitch team is working with.
    Posted 17 months ago by Sean of the Moor Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I was asked as beta player to report bugs, which I have tried my best to do thinking I was helping Glitch create a better game.  I received not one or two but three form letters all on the same day, and deleted it then, as I do all junk mail.  Never before had I deleted messages from Glitch but those messages were sent to me and if the bug persisted or whatever I could go back the original email.  Form letters are a waste of my time.  Please don't bother to even send those to me.  If Tiny Speck cannot afford to spend the time or personnel sending me a reply about a bug I've reported then please don't waste both of our times with a form letter.  I can handle that a lot better than a b.s. form letter.  thank you
    Posted 17 months ago by xoxJulie Subscriber! | Permalink
  • If people are reporting the same bug then perhaps there ought to be a response *relevant to that bug* that they could be sent. I.e., the support team responds to a bug once, and the response is kept on file. When someone else reports the same bug it can be added to the original report, and the beta tester will get the same response.
    Posted 17 months ago by Tanga Subscriber! | Permalink
  • @ Stoot: Thanks for the reply & the adjustment :)

    @ Magic Monkey: I'm happy about the outcome of the thread :)

    @xoxJulie: sending mails when the status of a ticket changes is pretty normal. Some people want mails with every change of the status, some don't want any. It's always a compromise.
    The minimum I would like to receive is 1.) A confimation mail that my ticket is received
    2.) A mail that my ticket has been resolved.

    If it's a duplicate of another ticket, I still want the mail when it's resolved. If my ticket is closed, how will I know when I should check if the issue is also solved for me?
    I don't know what ticket system they use, but there is a way around it.
    Adding duplicate tickets as sort of "child" tickets to a "parent" ticket in which progress is reported. Once the parent ticket is closed, all child tickets are closed as well with the same mail as the parent ticket. This also can indicate which issue is seen/reported a lot. It might be a tiny minor issue, but if everyone reports it it might be worthwhile to fix it.

    BUT. Not closing duplicate tickets is also timeconsuming, as staff will probably recall that another ticket of the same issue exists, but not the ticketnumber. So they would have to track down the duplicate ticket and add the new ticket to it.
    Closing the duplicate ticket is much easier.
    Also, keeping duplicate tickets open makes the apparant workload heavier. (Imagine looking at 100 open tickets in the morning or 1000). (ofcourse this depends if you show child-tickets also in the overview).

    I need to stop watching this thread, because I could go on about it a long time (and I've been on both sides, wanting more mails or less mails.)
    Posted 17 months ago by Miriamele Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I see some terribly unrealistic expectations here from Glitchers on what they expect.. For Giant's sake ! the Glitch staff are working their hearts out. Put yourself in their shoes... if you expect personal letters write Dear Abby.....I don't think some of you have a clue on what it takes to run a business....Tiny Speck is using all their resources to get this game up...They don't have time to hold your hand and if you expect to be patted on the head for sending in  a bug report. THIS IS NOT GOING TO HAPPEN. If you want strokes ask someone in your RL for a hug..It is a privilege to be a Beta...they have already given us many perks...Grow up you people and you know who you are.
    Posted 17 months ago by napabeth Subscriber! | Permalink
  • @ Napabeth: I think most people in this thread don't expect personal letters, they just want the mail to be more informal and less formal.
    It feels the people at TS are our friends, and we talk to them ingame that way. Then you get a mail which might be (to some) very formal, creating distance.
    In Dutch, we have a polite, formal way of adressing people and an impolite way. (Same as in german and French *: U, Sie, Vous). It's like adressing people with "Jij / tu / du" ingame, and then suddenly in the mail it's all formal.  (Oh the word in english is "you")

    I think that's what this is about, not merely about a mail without a name.
    About (fear of) getting very formal and distancing.

    * The rules when to use those polite forms and when you can use the other forms very for each languages, e.g. Germans hardly use "du" to anyone they do not know very well or who is older, while Dutch use "jij" very easily.
    Posted 17 months ago by Miriamele Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I just noticed my first bug report email, it was all personalised with my name, a copy of my report and the name of the support member, and an explanation that it was a known issue. Very nice, very friendly but I wasn't looking for it, didn't expect it and while writing this I sorted my mail and see I've got 3 of them! 
    I don't know about everyone else but I don't use my "important" email address for gaming. I've got one for work, one for family, one for crap, and one I never check for when I expect to be spammed to death. Glitch and Ebay are lumped in with the crap. (I only noticed the help reports because I have been selling) 
    I send my bug reports in the hope someone will fix the bug, which generally happens, and I keep an eye on the Help counter in the top right corner. It would be nice to be all friends with the devs but I know they're busy people and I'm just a numpty who bumbles around the site. 
    I come here to play the game, and have fun. I don't need any more from the team than that.
    Posted 17 months ago by Momo McGlitch Subscriber! | Permalink
  • @Miriamele... Hallo  !  Dag.. I have many Dutch friends...I have seen many infantile responses. You must realize that time is money.. The staffers at Tiny Speck are doing their best.  If a form letter turns you off find another way to make yourself happy. Sorry...
    Posted 17 months ago by napabeth Subscriber! | Permalink
  • @Napabeth: an automated message can be informal too. I'm not sure your last post was entirely directed at me though, I assume not since I never said I was asking for more personal or informal mails. As I said, I work(ed) at/ managed servicedesks, so I know the ins and outs of the process. I can argue for all sides: the customer, the servicedesker, the backoffice, the management. They usually all have different focus points and wishes/demands.
    Satisfying everyone is a very very big challenge.
    Usually it is not possible to fullfill all wishes. That doesn't mean people can't have them, or are not allowed to dream of the "impossible", or be sad that their wish isn't granted although they understand (and agree) perfectly why it isn't granted.
    Posted 17 months ago by Miriamele Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I don't even expect to get bug closure reports, after I submit a bug I figure the staff has enough to do to evaluate and fix the ones that are relevant and worth dealing with. The only reason I posted in this thread is that I honest-and-truly got that form letter and thought, "Oh cool, someone noticed my sharp eyes." I was just suddenly realizing that D'OH! it was actually a form letter. Silly me.
    Posted 17 months ago by Eleanor Rigby Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Time is NOT money - never has been and never will be.

    Time is about resources, and to have to personally deal with each but report while in beta may not be the best allocation of TS's resources at this time.
    Posted 17 months ago by MeherMan Subscriber! | Permalink
  • you got to watch out for them but reports!
    Posted 17 months ago by napabeth Subscriber! | Permalink
  • hehe
    Posted 17 months ago by Miriamele Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Wow... ok, just be thankful you got any response at all. There's nothing that says they HAVE to reply to you.

    I have gotten the same form letter once this past test (which is very well written, I might add), as well as other very terse replies and some more personalized longer ones. It all depends on who is responding, and whether your bug report is a copy of many of the same or something more unique. No worries--either way we're all here to make Glitch better, and that helps all of us! Just keep posting those bug reports and playing a better game because of it (regardless of what kind of a response you get) every time you log in :).
    Posted 17 months ago by Shepherdmoon Subscriber! | Permalink
  • @Shepherdmoon: Yeah, I felt pretty bad for being whiny after stoot's response (see my reply to his reply) because he seemed fairly perturbed. I think it's a) very sweet they're going to add a name to the form letter, b) totally understandable why they're doing it now that I engaged brain and c) awesome that they send out any personal responses at all, now I know. In fact, I got a couple of those after the test also. Kudos to TS!
    Posted 17 months ago by RM Subscriber! | Permalink