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In-app Player Support For The Win

October 15, 2021 in Games | 4 min. read
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Gaming is always a good time until an app crashes, a player forgets their password or hard-earned points are not awarded as expected. That’s why there’s a huge onus on gaming studios – more than in any other industry – to facilitate the process of contacting support so that it’s quick, efficient, and friction-free.

The alternative is a rapid rate of churn and a hit to your player retention numbers, which is a significant loss in itself. After all, it can cost as much as six times more to acquire new players than it does to satisfy the ones you already have.

Reach your players right where they are

Gamers expect every aspect of their mobile experience to be fun and frustration-free. Why should support be any different? 

When players have to leave their game, wait for email assistance, or get dropped into a clunky live web chat, it’s no surprise that they become impatient. Response times can get long, and many issues often remain unresolved. As a result, players go off in search of their own answers, which means you’ve not only driven them away from your game, but you’ve set off a chain of unfavorable events that can affect everything from your App Store reviews to your CSAT scores – and more generally, your brand.

By thinking about customer support as part of your game’s UX and allowing players to access it directly within your app, you create a better customer experience all the way through.

Understand the value of happy players

Today’s gamers continue to raise the bar, setting new expectations for mobile experiences across gaming, social media, and other forms of entertainment. One major way to reduce player churn and keep them coming back for more is to show that you value their time.

By enabling in-app chatbots, you can reduce resolution time on common, day-to-day issues. Data shows that implementing help bots alone can resolve over 90% of player issues. Plus, the more questions you can answer upfront, the fewer tickets you can expect to pass through your customer service team, which saves you resources in addition to your customer’s time.

When a live agent is needed, bots have already served an important purpose by collecting player details like their name, player status, issue, OS, and more. This eliminates the need to ask gamers to repeat themselves, and further streamlines the resolution process.

In-app resolutions that help cultivate happier players also solidify brand loyalty. According to Peter Gerson, Senior Manager of Player Solutions at Keywords Studios, “Players are five times more likely to purchase again if they’re happy. And loyal customers are four times more likely to refer a friend.” Now, that’s priceless.

Scale support as your game grows

For gaming studios on the fast track, in-app support, automation, and bots can help customer support teams scale without a large increase in agent headcount. With customer service chatbots, more specifically, you can assist a growing and global customer base with localized and multilingual support.

And this is help that never goes offline. Using chatbots empowers customers to access support 24/7, regardless of your office hours. If a customer engages with a chatbot and the issue is too complex for the bot to resolve, then it can escalate to a colleague and let the customer know when to expect a response. 

With bots, you have an initial investment that eventually pays for itself, whereas every time an agent touches a ticket, it costs. When scaling without bots, you must determine who will train your live agents (or if you’ll outsource), whether you’re going to support multiple languages, and who’s going to manage the center. Consider these management costs before you embark on scaling live agent support or add bots to scale up or down.

What is Helpshift?

Helpshift ensures that customer support is as easy and seamless as the rest of your game. By integrating self-service help centers and in-app chat directly into your game’s UX, Helpshift lets you automate common player issues, deliver faster answers, and reduce costs as your game scales.

Learn more about Helpshift and request a free trial here.

October 15, 2021 in Games | 4 min. read

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