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The gaming market is highly competitive with over 2,457 companies around the world and $30.4 billion in revenue. There are new games popping up virtually every day and one of the biggest differentiators is the customer experience (CX) they offer. Companies that want to make an impact, retain their audience, and launch new products have to service their customers. In this article, we break down the current state of gaming CX and discuss the top strategies for how companies can improve their user experience.
Let's dive in.
The State of Gaming CX Today
A recent study on Gaming CX showed that gaming companies are behind the ball when it comes to responding to their customers.
Most Gaming Companies Offer Mediocre Support Across Four Dimensions
There are four main dimensions that gaming companies need to work on improving. Here they are.
Response Time
First and foremost, it's critical that gaming companies respond to customer inquiries on time. According to a HubSpot report, 76% of gaming companies with readily available email addresses ignore customer service emails. Business response times in other industries are 12 hours and 10 minutes. Studies show that 90% of users expect companies to respond to complaints within 60 minutes, and 30% expect a response within 15 minutes.
Relevancy
The next challenge that gaming companies have is responding with relevant information. Studies show that 33% of gaming companies don't provide a meaningful response. Nothing can be more frustrating for a customer than to receive an email that doesn't answer their original question.
Personalization
It's critical for every customer response to be personalized. It should have a personal greeting and a personal sign-off. Turns out that only 19.5% of gaming companies personalize their emails, and only half of those include both a personal greeting and a personal sign-off. Users don't want to get generic responses to their emails so companies really need to work on personalizing emails more and putting more effort into building relationships rather than ticking boxes.
Empathy
More than half of gaming companies don't show empathy. The Support Performance Index (SPI) measures the empathy scores of company responses. In a recent study, 33% of gaming companies scored in the 50-60 range, which is pretty mediocre. During COVID-19, only 7% of gaming companies acknowledged the pandemic and only 50% inquired about the child's specific needs.
A new study from PwC found that only 59% of consumers feel that companies have lost the human element of customer service. Another study from the Harvard Business Review found that emotional connection is twice as valuable as customer satisfaction. So even if a gaming company can't solve a customer issue or doesn't have the right solution for them, if they show empathy they can still make a positive business impact.
Gaming Companies Often Don't Deliver the Empathy Customers Desire
Empathy is one of the most important aspects of good customer service. Users want to feel understood and establish an emotional connection with the brands they interact with. Unfortunately, consumers say that only 6% of gaming companies are empathic. So the industry has a lot of room for growth in this area.
Most Companies Respond Within < 24 Hours
Business metrics show that across industries, companies respond within 10 hours to customer inquiries. Gaming companies respond at an average of 39 hours, which is 3 times slower than other industries. However, things are changing. 3 out of 4 gaming companies respond within 24 hours, and 26% respond within the first hour of receiving a message from a customer.
Quick response times are critical because they directly impact gameplay and user retention. The CEO of Solitaire Bliss, Asaf Cohen, said that when they reduced response times to one day (24 hours), those users increased their gameplay by 11%.
How Can Gaming Studios Improve CX?
Digital customer service is one of the most important growth levers for any business. Studies show that 89% of consumers are more likely to make another purchase after a positive customer service experience. A Zendesk report shows that 64% of the survayed business leaders say customer service has a positive impact on their company’s growth, and 60% say it improves customer retention. Good CX also brings more referral business. 94% of consumers who give a company a "very good" CX score are likely to recommend the company to their friends.
A lot of companies get overwhelmed with customer inquiries and are simply too busy to properly service every customer. What brands need is an outsourced customer service solution that can support multiple channels (whether that's email, messaging, or inside the app interface). Customer service reps need to be able to support customers in multiple languages and be well-versed in all the various systems and tools the company uses.
Some portion of customer service should definitely be automated. Brands could benefit from a mix of advanced technology, like chatbots and automated sequences, as well as human support from trained professionals. And most importantly, outsourced customer support teams should be able to grow with the company. They should be able to offer on-demand capabilities, expand or reduce the team's size as needed, and have available reps across different time zones.
Unlock stellar CX for your gaming company
Gaming companies have a long way to go to ensure their customers are being serviced properly. Response times are really low, a lot of companies don't even bother responding to their users, and when they do, the responses are often generic, not personalized, and don't show any empathy.
The best way that gaming brands could solve the issue is by hiring an outsourced customer service team. Helpware has a team of experts around the world that are versatile and highly trained. They can quickly learn the ropes of the systems and channels you're using and can begin to communicate with your customers on time, in multiple languages, and across time zones. Want to unlock stellar CX for your gaming company? Get started today!
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