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00:00:01
How Player Support Shapes Gaming Communities with Danielle Shneor
48 Plays8 days ago
Summary:
In this episode, we sit down with Danielle Shneor, Head of Player Support and Strategy at Ilyon, to uncover the secrets behind her remarkable success in the gaming industry. From her early days as a D&D and LARP enthusiast to managing player communities in casual gaming, Danielle shares how her deep understanding of player emotions and needs has transformed customer support into a competitive advantage.
We explore how Danielle tackled a 40,000-ticket backlog upon joining Ilyon, built a player-centric process from scratch, and elevated CSAT scores from 39% to an impressive 87%. Through anecdotes like converting a frequent complainer into a lifelong advocate, she highlights the importance of empathy, data-driven insights, and treating players as people—not just users. Danielle also touches on the evolving role of feedback, loyalty, and community-building in the future of gaming.
Whether you’re in gaming or any customer-focused industry, Danielle’s lessons on creating meaningful connections will leave you inspired.
Key Moments:
- 00:01 – Meet Danielle and her passion for blending gaming with people-centric roles.
- 01:41 – From D&D to Ilyon: Danielle’s path to professional gaming.
- 07:01 – Tackling a 40,000-ticket backlog and reinventing player support at Ilyon.
- 10:26 – Understanding the emotional journey of casual gamers.
- 26:43 – How Danielle turned a frequent complainer into a loyal community member.
Highlights:
- “We don’t call them users; we call them players. Respect matters.”
- CSAT jumped from 39% to 87% in three months under Danielle’s leadership.
- “To truly improve player experience, understand how your players feel while playing.”
- The value of closing the feedback loop: “Let players know their feedback drives change.”
Mentioned Resources:
- Danielle’s LinkedIn – Connect with Danielle for insights on player experience.
- Ilyon’s Games – Discover their community-driven casual games.
Closing Thought:
Danielle’s approach reminds us of the power of empathy and human connection in gaming. This episode is a must-listen for anyone looking to transform player experiences, foster loyalty, and build thriving communities.
Recommended
Transcript
Importance of Empathy in Player Experience
00:00:01
Speaker
Welcome to Player Driven. Here's what you're about to listen to in today's episode. Today we're talking with Danielle, the head of player experience from Iliad. We talk about how empathy and word choice really helps shape the player experience and how these little touches here and there can really make a difference for each player.
00:00:18
Speaker
how building a high performance customer experience team starts with people. You need to make sure you have the right people to help there, to help build what you're trying to build. And finally, we talk about how human connection builds loyalty, even in a digital world with AI and bots and everything coming in here. The human touch still matters and players notice that.
Human Connection vs. AI
00:00:36
Speaker
So how do you work with that to make sure that people recognize this? There's a lot to learn in today's episode. Danielle's a ton of fun to talk with, and I hope you guys enjoy the episode.
00:00:50
Speaker
Good afternoon, everybody.
Danielle's Diverse Career Path
00:00:52
Speaker
Welcome to Player Driven. Greg here. Today we are joined by Danielle. She is the Head of Player Experience at ILLION. She has a great background of all different types of jobs and all different types of verticals. It's really cool because you can kind of hear how this player experience culmination of all her past activities come together. Really excited about this conversation today. Danielle, thank you for joining me today. Is there anything you want to say about yourself? Let the people know what you're drinking over there.
00:01:20
Speaker
Hey, Greg, good morning to you. I'm drinking espresso with milk, hazelnut espresso with milk. Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure being here. Let's talk gaming. Let's talk gaming. I too was drinking my espresso with milk earlier, but I put protein in mine and I kept it kept it a little cold. Do you put like a powder, protein powder inside? I do put protein powder in there. Does it make it thick?
00:01:49
Speaker
It makes it a little thick a little little thicker, yes, which I like because it's ice, you know, and it's 20 degrees Fahrenheit here, which I think we determined is like negative six yeah Celsius. So I figured what's better than an iced coffee in this beautiful morning.
Career Journey to Iliad
00:02:05
Speaker
So Daniel, let's hear about you. i Favorite part of the learning experience was your whole breadth of careers you had before getting into ILLION, the head of player experience. Can you tell us a little bit about what your background is and how you think that shaped you to becoming a head of player experience? Oh, wow. My experience goes all the way back to when I was 15, when I started my first job as a waitress.
00:02:31
Speaker
But ah I think I've been working in the food industry for a while, both as everything. I washed dishes and I was a manager and a pastry chef and everything in between. I was a flight attendant. My academic studies actually are Asian studies and business management. And I think that let's say 90% of the jobs I had during my life were customer facing jobs. But as a gamer and a role player, somehow my old path leads to gaming company and experienced job.
Impact of Word Choice in Customer Interactions
00:03:20
Speaker
I, you know, it's funny, we we were talking a little before I read about the whole waitress thing and how
00:03:27
Speaker
you know You always gotta be on your toes. You always gotta be alert. You gotta be what's happening. Same thing with a flight attendant, which I'm gonna make an assumption here, right? You gotta make sure that your players or your customers in this case are treated well. They're getting what they need. um As someone that's now leading a team in the head of player experience, are there any previous stories or anything that you've learned in these past careers or past jobs that you've kind of keep top of mind to anytime you make a decision, you think back to that experience?
00:03:54
Speaker
I think that everything I learned during during my life led me to that. At the end of the day, when you work with people, you work with people. It doesn't matter if these people are are gamers. It doesn't matter if they are ah travelers. It doesn't matter if they are there just to have a meal. People are expecting to have good service. They're expecting to have good experiences. And they are expected to be seen. And that's what we do when we deal with people.
00:04:24
Speaker
Experiences I had that shaped my the way I work as a player experience, as a service giving person, um is was shaped greatly with every job I had, but mostly with the flight attendant job. Because not only I've seen so many things, I had professional to teach me what it means to give a good service.
00:04:52
Speaker
And this is the little thing, how you talk to people, what word you say to communicate um what you want to communicate with your passengers. For example, I remember one thing that stuck with me for a long, long time. And then in the Hebrew, when the most minor thing, you have a trash bag, right?
00:05:22
Speaker
And you can say trash, which we say civil, which is harsh word. It's not nice. And you can say waste. And which is a spa, which is more, you know, it's nicer. It sounds nice. It's not more polite. So when you choose to say someone, Hey, do you have waste rather than a trash? It sounds better and people.
00:05:50
Speaker
react differently to to the way they respond difference to difference, to the words you choose to tell them. Same with if someone asking for something and instead of saying, yeah, sure, you say, I would love to. It's my pleasure. It's different than than say, yeah, of course, I'll i'll do that.
00:06:13
Speaker
I was gonna say it's funny because this all really comes down to delivery, right? How do you deliver the message to your user, your passenger, your player, right? Because, you know, again, it it all comes from delivery. If I am short with you, you're gonna be short back with me. If I am kind and respectful to you,
00:06:32
Speaker
there's a good chance you're going to be kind of respectful to me. Right. And I think this is in every aspect of life it has nothing to do with gaming. It has nothing to do with flying. It has nothing to do with its basic human emotions. Give the respect to someone that you would expect to have the respect given back to you. It doesn't mean that you have to be not rude or anything like that. Right. It's just, again, your delivery is very important. I think you picked up on that. Yes. Also, I would say no, because it's okay to say no.
Handling Customer Denials Positively
00:07:02
Speaker
boundaries are very important in every relationship we have in our lives. If it's your friends, your family or customers, it's important to put boundaries. But if you know how to say no properly, then the the other person will say thank you and will respect that. Usually, not always, usually.
00:07:27
Speaker
So we all know that one person that doesn't agree with boundaries. It's ah it's funny, I learned the kind of the same sale about when I was doing sales engineering is it's okay to say I don't know, right? It's okay to say I'm going to look into this and come back to you later. And I think this is something that's important for anyone in customer success, sales engineering, anyone that's dealing directly with customers is that They don't expect you to know every answer They expect you that if you don't know an answer that you can go ask the right people You can go try and figure it out. It's okay to come back to me later But don't lie to me or try and take a guess and be like oh I think this is the answer because then you're gonna look like a fool you're gonna be
00:08:09
Speaker
If you're wrong, you're going to be a jerk, for lack of better words. I don't know. But like, it's OK to say, I don't know. It's OK to say no, right? You can deliver these messages in good ways where people won't get angry at you. And and you'll always have outliers, which will be my next question to you. And this is just more fun, right? Like any fun stories from flying where you can share kind of how you had to say no and maybe a passenger that just didn't cooperate?
00:08:34
Speaker
I'm the most sarcastic person ever, ever. Everyone that are friends with me know that. And and that's why I'm fun at parties. But um I remember, I can give you a funny story and I can give you a real story. Which one do you want to hear? Oh, we've got enough time here. that's wide story Okay, so I remember, i went to it's wear israeli we are we are all f no boundaries We have We are super sarcastic. We are overly friendly with each other. So it's part of the story. It's important to remember that you need to know what to say to who, because I can't say the same thing to to every person I see. And if im I joke around with one person, it doesn't mean I can do it with another. So it's important to know who you're talking to and how to read the person in front of you.
00:09:32
Speaker
So I remember this one time, I had this guy, hope we fly we had a flight to Johannesburg, South Africa, and this guy would ask me every five minutes, what's the time, what's the time, what's the time? And I would go, and and at some point I just like, I can't anymore, I just can't. So I took the duty free, we had a newspaper for duty free with all the prices and stuff, and I went to him,
00:10:03
Speaker
we sell watches, would you like to buy one?" And he laughed and that was the last time he asked me for the time.
Explaining Policies to Customers
00:10:12
Speaker
It's too bad you could have ah worked on your upsell game right there. Yes. if If we want to take more serious example, we have lots of challenging flights and I always keep in mind that People when they get on the airplane, they are super nervous. um they They are going through an experience that most of them don't do on a daily basis or even an annual basis. If they move around, especially if they're with their children or elders and around them, it makes people um stupid. You know, they don't think
00:10:59
Speaker
logically sometimes and they are very nervous so they don't know what to do in in different situations and many times um like it It comes from a good intention. I add to explain it to to many, many, many passengers or other things like why to pick up the baby from the bassinet when it's traveling or why not to why to wear a seat belt or or why to put your bags under the seat in front of you. And if you just go and tell people, do that,
00:11:37
Speaker
They're like, fuck you, I'll do whatever I want. But if you explain the behind every action, it's like, hey, by the way, can you please put your bags under the seat in front of you? Because if something happens, we want everyone to be able to um get out of the airplane within a certain time.
00:12:00
Speaker
or um or you have to pick up your baby from the bassinet because if if we have turbulence, something can happen to the baby. if if you know ands That's why we need to put seat belts on. um I've seen stuff. I've seen... Yeah, that sounds like it. I've seen a suitcase flying in in airplanes like once or twice during in my life, so it's important to...
00:12:29
Speaker
to to keep safety procedures. i since I like how you said it, right? Because again, it comes down to explaining the why behind something. And quite frankly, sometimes it gets annoying, I'm sure, right? Like, I don't need to explain to you why you shouldn't have your kid in your seatbelt with you, you're gonna smush them in case something happens, right? Like, it seems like it's common sense. But sometimes things are just common sense. Because we do it all the time. Right? Like, I understand. what you all tipping the bread on on Exactly. Right. But like that with that one, maybe is more logical than people should pick up. But sometimes it's just these things that I can't do this for you. The answer is no, I'm sorry, because this, this and this. They may not realize that this, this and this are blockers to a bigger project or something else. Right. Maybe you can't change this feature in the game because it's going to break something else as well. No matter how many times you say you want those free lives. Maybe we just can't do it.
Providing Alternatives to Customer Requests
00:13:20
Speaker
The answer is no. And here's the why. The why.
00:13:22
Speaker
You shouldn't have to always explain yourself, but the why is important to tell that story. If you want that person to stop annoying you and stop telling you this stuff, tell them the why behind the reasoning and behind it. And if they're still pestering you, then blap, ban them, block them, who cares right now. But like, the why is an important part of this story. And not only the why, when I always when I say no to a customer, and it happens a lot also in in My current role as a player experience manager, when i speak to when I speak to a customer and I say no, I always try to find a solution on the same breath or say no. Say no, we can't do that because A, B, C, but this is what I can do. This is option one. This is option two. I always try to give, if I can, two options.
00:14:19
Speaker
because then I give my customer are a choice. And when people have choice, they feel more of control in of the situation. And you want that, you want it. They appreciate it better. Like I think all of us, if if someone say no, but this or that, what do you prefer? You forget someone told you no. So just like, okay, I like this option, give me this option.
00:14:45
Speaker
It's funny you say this because I just went through this experience last week. I was, I downloaded a new game and I was enjoying it. So I put some money into it and I was trying to go through this event to get this item. And then with one day left or sorry, with one more day, I had to go left the event ended. And I was just like, that's frustrating. Like I've been doing this for six out of the seven days and now the event's over. So I emailed support and support was like, sorry, the timer was very clear up top. We can't do anything for them. Just like, well.
00:15:14
Speaker
That's kind of shitty. Like, I spent money in the game within the first few days of me downloading this game. I liked the game. And you know what? I was kind of burned. I was kind of bummed out and I uninstalled the game. I didn't expect the item for free in the slightest, but at least show a little compassion, not that the timer was there and I missed it. Like, okay, you're right. This is on me. Screw you. I'm going to go play another game. Like,
00:15:37
Speaker
Again, it's this weird thing. How do you show that compassion for something? And this is why in a bigger thing, right what is AI and what are bots going to do? right Are they going to automate that neutral sentiment towards me where it's just like, a sorry, no, you missed it? um And that's just kind of a ramble where like, all right, I didn't have any other options. You just basically told me, go kick rocks. And I installed the game because as a player, I have that ability to, I have that choice to. I 100% degree, I left companies for much less like services. um This is, this is bad customer support. This is bad experience. When, when you pay, when you invest time, time is a lot. Time is expensive. And when I choose to, to spend my time, my free time over something, and I choose to spend my money over something, I expect the service to give, to be fair, at least fair.
00:16:37
Speaker
And if I almost reached that point of receiving that the currency and then I expect the company and I already did the act and reached support and saying, this bothers me. This, this is something that is important to me. I expect a sports person to, to, to see me, to see me and find a solution personally in most, most I would, you i usually I give i give ah the player, but like if someone was in your situation, I would give you just the gift, you know? you You were working so with coins, I don't know, so with resource, right? ah yeah I think that they should give it to you personally, because it's not like you go online and say, hey, everyone that didn't reach us,
00:17:33
Speaker
Take it for free. It's one person that cared enough to email me and say, this is annoying. Please help me. I would give you the points, especially if you're a paid user, especially if you're a new player and you already showed good retention rate.
00:17:54
Speaker
No need to be an asshole. I think that's a perfect segue. And I want to table this for now because, you know, we're going to go into the concept of VIP support.
Passion for Gaming and Role at Iliad
00:18:04
Speaker
Right. And and there's no way I was a VIP yet. Right. Because I just downloaded the game. Right. But when you start seeing these data trends of, hey, this person has the game, they've already spent money. They've been in the game. They've been grinding. They've been doing this stuff. Right. Like.
00:18:18
Speaker
what What's it off their back to say, you know what? Greg reached out to us. We're just going to give him this one item, right? Because it's one item, right? like And he reached out to us. What are those signals? And I think we should come back to that because I want to get into the story of how you make that transition into the gaming world where you are today, right? You have server server experience. you have You have airline experience, right? You have all this experience with users.
00:18:47
Speaker
how does that All that experience transition you into the world of gaming. How how did this role come to be at ILLIAN? So I'm a role player. I LARP, I DND. I didn't DND in a while, but I say DND is tabletop placeholder.
00:19:06
Speaker
you know please holder I do mage right now. I usually play Lord of Darkness. Nevermind geeky stuff. um so i I had a miserable bull job with constructor, whatever. I was a account manager for some place that was boring. And i my friend worked in this awesome place. He was the COO of Elvich Foundry, which created 3D printed custom minis for table toppers.
00:19:46
Speaker
And he told me, we need someone to, we call it in Hebrew, kolboynik, kolboynik. It's a slang of, you know, when you have like this bowl in in in the meal that you throw all your trash inside, your waste inside. So we call it kolboynik. And this is a slang for someone that does a little bit of everything.
00:20:12
Speaker
jack-of-all-trades. So you can do the success, you can manage the office, you can do the customer support, you can do the business development, you can do a little bit of everything. And I got there and I was with them for, I think, two years or something like that until COVID hit everyone hard and I had to find another job. And Ilyin had an opening and I applied it and I got a So this is how I got into Alien. So I want to thank my friend from Elgich Foundry for for giving me this opportunity because now I have a really awesome job in the gaming industry.
00:20:55
Speaker
of So now you're in the gaming industry. You go from from jobs you don't like to Eldritch Foundry, where you can create miniatures to to appease that side of you. That's the tabletop RPG or larper. And now you have, I'm sure, a tabletop full of minis. And now the the job at Iliad opens up. Sounds like a good experience. You you go for it. You get it.
00:21:18
Speaker
Well, not how much detail you want to go into here, but what are those first couple of days at ILLION? What is the process that's already in place? And how do you take a look at it and say, hey, we need to update this or do better here? OK, so this is
Challenges at Iliad
00:21:32
Speaker
not a secret. When I joined ILLION, customer support was very basic. They had an email and some in-game SDKs.
00:21:47
Speaker
and and like in-game chats. And the person that I replaced, i I never met him because he left before I joined. And so I joined, I had one and a half person in my team. And because one girl was part-time with me, part-time doing other stuff. And one girl was part-time with me remotely.
00:22:17
Speaker
and um And we had 40K unsolved tickets. Sweet. time Yes, nice. I didn't have any protocols, none. So my training was basically answering all these 40,000 tickets, or I didn't answer everything because we had with some of them were too old to answer. It doesn't make sense like that someone will write back to you six months after you emailed them, hey, how can may I help? It's like, who are you? I'm not playing this game anymore. But I did ah play all game with Illyonez.
00:23:03
Speaker
Dozens, if not hundreds of games. Okay. And this is how I learned all of them. because with every ticket I had to open my my phone, I have to play the game, I have to understand what the person is talking about. Even if I didn't answer, even if I didn't reply, I wanted to understand the game so I can do better now on. It took us something like a month to zero our inbox. And within three months, ah we turned
00:23:39
Speaker
it I think it was 34% satisfaction rate to 87% satisfaction rate within three months. And we've been holding 90 plus percent satisfaction rate since then.
00:23:59
Speaker
so Yes, I'm very proud of myself and my team.
Achieving Customer Satisfaction without AI
00:24:04
Speaker
Amazing how in a month you dropped the support backlog from 40k to almost none. Let's just assume almost none. We don't have to get into the details there. And you've raised the CSAT over 50 points from 30 something to over 87. Now you're a holding high in the 90s.
00:24:22
Speaker
That is crazy success. No AI. No AI. No AI. No, just Danielle. No AI. What, I guess, to how does someone attack 40,000 tickets when they come? and this Is it just one at a time clicking? Is it, hey, triaging? Is it working together with your two and a half-ish agents. Well, when I ah just started, like first, I think that this should be true to everyone. When you are a new, especially if you're a manager, and you come to somewhere new, you don't make changes until you learn the current processes.
00:25:06
Speaker
until you see what's going on. You can come and make changes before you understand what's going on around you. So the first month was really to observe what's going on around me, to see who's doing what, what's their strengths, what they can do better, everything. And after one month, okay, for example, um if if I add one person working on certain suronm games and the other one working on certain games or one person working on on specific issues and the other person working on specific issues because we are a small team, we can't do that. Everyone needs to know everything, everyone needs to be professional at everything because if someone is taking a day off, I need the other person to fill in.
00:26:02
Speaker
If someone a is done with their job, with their task at two o'clock, it doesn't make sense. The other person will work in until six. yeah but you have like You need everyone to do to be able to do everything. It doesn't matter their title. It doesn't matter how long they've been there, their seniority. Everyone needs to do everything, especially when you're a small team. So that's the first change I did was to make sure that everyone know how to do everything.
00:26:32
Speaker
at least, and start working and covering for each other. After you understand what's going on, and after we we have everything under control, we can see where we need to improve or what our goals are. So when you have your goal, you can you can just like you know keep your eyes on the prize and understand which way you should go, what you should do.
00:27:01
Speaker
And when you say, okay, my goal for now, for for the next three months, for the next quarter are to bring satisfaction range from X to Y. I know what, so that's what I have to do ABCD 3. And then, um then let's say the next goal after I'm done with that is to improve my timing or to improve my whatever.
00:27:31
Speaker
and then And then I know what to do after, ah because I create my own tasks. I know what I want to do. I know the path I need to take. So I do that. From doing only customer service, we are doing now newsletter campaigns.
Feedback and Team Management
00:27:49
Speaker
We're doing social media management. We're doing VIP program, now transitioning and adding more pause and AI. and doing different stuff to the game. And of course, feed like feedback loops to improve our games and yada, yada, yada, so many things. And I think that strong a customer experience team should do all customer facing activities to improve because you can see such an improvement when you do that to the game when
00:28:28
Speaker
when you manage a community properly, when you listen to your players, when you create a feedback feedback loop, I think is the most important thing we do as a team. and And, you know, to each their own, like because it's it's different. For and for example, with With my past jobs, we had convention or conventions, or we took part of of of different activities that don't suit Elion, but suits to the specific product. And you need to understand your customer, you need to understand your players, and you need to think, okay, how can I make the best experience to them with,
00:29:17
Speaker
with the budget slash tools slash experience I have what they can bring to the table that don't have it. Your journey here was a very fascinating one and I want to kind of talk through through it here and make sense of it.
00:29:34
Speaker
you You got there, you were, for lack of better words, we say, you were in the hole. You were in the hole 40,000 tickets. And you realized the only way to get out of this from where we are is to have everybody working on it. We don't need specialists per game. We don't need specialists per specialty. We need everyone to just hit this 40,000 tickets and clean up the backlog.
00:29:57
Speaker
within a month, you cleaned up the backlog. Now you got to start thinking, how do we scale, right? Because having everyone do everything won't let you scale very well. But what we will do is it will clean up that mess. Now you start thinking, how do we scale? All right, let's put VIP programs into here. Let's understand the metrics and what metrics what we have, something that And I'm doing something completely different than you, right? I'm trying to build up this podcast platform here. And i just like my friend just yelled at him. He's like, look at all your metrics and choose which ones you want to focus on. Is it awareness? Is it engagement? Because you can't do all of them at once. So so he's been yelling at me that. And the same you said the same thing kind of right there, how you focused on one metric and then went to the next one. And I was just like, wow, this is really translating from one to the next. like Focus on what your goal is. And we used to have OKRs. And I don't know if you do OKRs. I hate OKRs. But it's like, all right.
00:30:47
Speaker
I'm going to set up my actual goals. These are the numbers I want to pay attention to this month. It's this, this, and this. And then when you hit that, then you can start scaling. And I think you went through, whether it just be a learning process or a, Hey, I know this is what we need to do to catch up. You were able to logically take a look at that, put everyone on the, on the 40,000, catch them up and then build out this system. Does that seem accurate? Uh, yes. And one more thing is that, um, I see potential in people.
00:31:17
Speaker
Because when a I hire a new team member, I always, um during the interview, it's not like I sometimes I don't aim to do certain thing. But when I see the person, I get inspired. Because sometimes, like, for example, I add It's not worth, uh, in my team anymore. But one of my, one of my, uh, really is, is a friend and, and he was one of my, my, my best team members. He was not only, um, a great service person or a great communicator or a great employee. He was also, um, graphic designer and, and.
00:32:09
Speaker
I say, I use them because I say, okay, we have someone with talent here. Let's see how we can take this talent and turn it into profit, to turn it into something that will be both interesting to them and beneficial to us as a team. So when I started the newsletter.
00:32:32
Speaker
Of course, he was in charge of the newsletter. He designed it. And when we do social media engagement posts, we have our art team to to do our art project. But if I need something fast and I need someone to do it, you know, i don't they don't have enough time to to do all of our tasks and stuff like that, I know I can ask him to do that.
00:32:58
Speaker
Or if I have someone that is an amazing communicator and can speak to people for hours, like me. And it's like, I'm um like that in person, but when i when I talk to people, the computers are just like, I don't want to talk to them. But I have one person that can speak for hours to everyone.
00:33:20
Speaker
And she's going to be my VIP manager because because she's a great communicator. And if I have someone that is very tech savvy and can can understand bugs in one second and understand the technology and stuff, then they can be, and they're very organized. So they can be um the project manager or they can be in charge of bugs and communicating with the QA team. So when I talk to people,
00:33:50
Speaker
I always try to understand what are the strengths and where they can contribute and what they can do better than others. So it's not only about, um about everyone has to do everything. It's about what one specific person can do better than anyone else and how they can feel more valued inside the team. And ownership is the most important thing for me.
00:34:21
Speaker
I, right now I'm in an hiring process and I have lots of interviews with people. And one thing I've been asked a lot by people is, what are your KPIs? What do you expect from me? How are you going to measure my success? And my answer is always, I don't do KPIs. It's like, I do KPIs when I look at data, but I don't do KPIs.
00:34:49
Speaker
When I see people, I care about two things. I care about if we are as a team, we can keep SLA because I don't want any any customer, any player waiting for over a day for a reply. That's that's something I will not have. And if we have who have a ticket over a day, I don't care. Everyone has to stay extra time until there's zero doubt because no one is going to wait. That's one thing. The second thing, I care ah care about quality.
00:35:18
Speaker
I care about what you can bring to the table um to improve us as a team. I care about what you can contribute to to that others can. I care about how you um deal with crisis, how you deal with feedback, how you deal with um ah with problematic players, because I don't expect if like I don't expect my team to be, you know, to know how to deal from day one with all the problems problematic and challenging situations, but I do expect for them to be able to to communicate well, to understand difference and not to to be shocked by by every ah feedback they receive and to be able to to
00:36:14
Speaker
to treat people well, you know, to treat to communicate well and to treat people well. So if I see they have quality in their support, if they can contribute to something new, something different to the team, and if they are hardworking people, this is it. They have me. I'm not sure about you guys.
00:36:39
Speaker
You said a lot there and a lot in terms of ah digestible content, right? I mean, first off, when you take a look at your next employer, right? Don't look at someone that's good at tier one support or trust and safety, right? Look for what their bigger goals are. And I think this is a, I mean, we talked about recently one-on-ones and what the importance of one-on-ones are. And I think most people can say they've never had a good one-on-one, right?
00:37:02
Speaker
Because so you don't make it clear what you want your goals to be. Where do you want to be when you grow up, right? What's the next step for you? A lot of people don't know what my next move is. But if someone like you, Dan, you'll notice, hey, Billy's really good at design, and he likes this stuff. And you know what? He's still got to do his day to day, but we also have room to start building out this newsletter and this thing here, right? And maybe we can start utilizing his talents here as well. When Billy moves on, right, maybe he moves ah up in your company out of customer experience and maybe he moves to marketing. That means you have an ally in marketing, right? Because you helped him transition from where he was and helped him see, hey, I love to do this. When you have someone that's really good at communication, you say, you know what, we're going to put you in charge of VIP support, right? Like you're understanding where these persons, these employees strengths are.
00:37:47
Speaker
what they love to do, and you're helping enable them to get to this position, right? Like it's all their work, right? But you're just sit listening and you say, hey, I know how we can help you. We have roles for this, especially in the world of customer experience, right? Because it's not just tier one support anywhere. We have VIP support. We have trust and safety. We have all these different things that require different skill sets.
00:38:07
Speaker
And you can really help other people polish these skill sets by understanding where they want to be, where they shine, as long as they're putting the effort as well, right? It's not just going to fall into your lap. You need to be able to do that work. And I think, again, the sign of a good manager, like you're saying, is listening to where these people's skills are seeing and identifying and helping them put them in the position where they can step up. Yes, 100% agree. Also, to teach them ownership, because When I assign someone a new project, and especially with juniors that don't have much of a work experience, um I teach them how to take ownership. We do weekly meeting. we We start a project. We set a goal to the project. We do weekly meeting. And weekly meeting, we talk about what we should do to reach our goal.
00:39:04
Speaker
um if we need to check different tools, if we need to research certain certain things, if we need to write certain things, if we need to talk to certain people, we make a list of what we have to do and we create assignments for each week. I don't tell them what to do. I talk to them. i We talk together and and we we set goals together and we understand what we have to do to reach this goal together, and I try not to do their job. you know if if i If I tell ah you have to do that and that and that, and let's talk next week, and we'll see where you're at, then and then I forget about it. It's like, it's yours. It's your project. You have to be responsible for this project. Let's talk next week. See where we're at. And we do it once a week, because it's important to, at least at first,
00:40:00
Speaker
um to see that date they understand what's going on around them, that they are going the right path, that they are not confused by anything.
Using AI Effectively in Customer Service
00:40:11
Speaker
And you said one-on-one meetings, and this is the most important thing ever. And I try to do it both personal one-on-one and work-related. We do it together. right I do one hour a week with each employee, and we both talk about goals, life,
00:40:32
Speaker
and and work related things. So if someone has an issue or need help with something, it doesn't matter if it's help with life problem, you know, personal problems, or if they need help with with something that is job related, they need to know that my door is always open. And you can say my door is always open and never talk to your team members. You have to actively talk to them.
00:40:59
Speaker
um so this is super important to me
00:41:05
Speaker
How, you know, in the evolution of support is continuing to change, right? We had the rise of AI embocked, which we're kind of in the middle of, which I think will be good and bad for the community. But I think it's something that's inevitably coming, right? We have the idea of VIP support, which is coming, which more and more studios are implementing, right? How do you stay on top of the current trends of what's happening in support and determine when it's time to go? First of all, everyone, follow Greg to stay up
00:41:39
Speaker
yeah Yeah, you have to, to we are we live online, you know, you, I, and everyone our age, that don't live under a stone. We live online. We see what's going on around us. We're on LinkedIn. we If we care about our job, then then we do our best to stay on top of things.
00:42:03
Speaker
And you see what's going on around here. You see, you can't stay behind. It doesn't matter what you do. So bots AI. I think we've all been using AI for the past year at least. But I think the challenge with bots and AI, and you talked about it before, is how you craft good experience and good customer service use it using bots.
00:42:32
Speaker
I think first you have to be very clear with your player, with your customer, it doesn't matter what industry you are, that they are not talking to a human being right now. It's like, hey, I'm Billy, I'm your bot, and and and um I'm going to help you throughout the whatever, that any time you can speak to a human, or I'm where humans work between nine to five, and I'm going to help you for now,
00:43:02
Speaker
or let's see if I can answer your question, whatever. And and first of all, yeah you have to make sure to to like not to end the conversation um when they're speaking to a bot. For example, I hate when it happens. Sometimes I see, I speak to bots, as someone that receives service from other places.
00:43:31
Speaker
And I really want to talk to a human being because I hate talking to bots. And I think that if you work with older um players or older communities, customers, they they can't stand bots either. They want to speak to a human being. It's easier, it's nicer, it's its It might be less effective sometimes, but but you want you want to be seen. And it's okay when when you start a conversation with with a bot, but it's not okay when you can't reach a human after that. If I end a conversation and I don't have the option to speak to a human being, it's a no-no. We'll start with this. You always need to give the option
00:44:21
Speaker
for the bot to to to transfer you to to speak to to a real agent. That's one. Second is is try to make the the flow as short as possible. Because if you have to just like okay what's your problem and then you have to go technical purchases blah blah blah blah blah blah blah then you choose and then you have 10 more options and then you have five more options and then you have six more options like oh shut up just give me my answer please you so that's that's better experience
00:45:05
Speaker
I guess the question goes back to, right? I'm trying to think where we where we were. right like How do you stay on top of the latest trends? You said to me, right? you Is it all online? Is it all? ah So mostly online and research. We always research.
00:45:23
Speaker
research what others do. Sometimes they I play games and and I contact support with stupid questions just to see how they reply. Shocking shocking knowledge. I think that 90% of my my emails or my tickets, they don't even answer that even once. So I don't get a reply usually.
00:45:48
Speaker
And sometimes it's like most both give pet service. So it's it's maybe it's not a good way to keep on top of things. But the good companies, they can give you great insight. And I don't only ah look at their customer service or customer support or social media pages. I also look at a product because this is super interesting.
00:46:18
Speaker
because if someone asked me, or give me faith give me feedback about certain things, and I know what others do, sometimes I can understand the why, behind why their complaints. So when I give feedback to my product team about certain things, but then and I add this, I played similar feature, it's usually not the same feature, but it's like similar features,
00:46:46
Speaker
um on other games and I see how they work and I understand the difference and I understand what I enjoy better as a player, I can give better um feedback to our own team. So that's something interesting. One thing that we didn't I didn't mention, is because we started talking about it but then we moved to something else, is
00:47:15
Speaker
I've noticed many times that when you give good support to non-payers or small payers, many times they tend to become dolphin, whales, VIPs. I hate using these terms. I really hate using them, but that's what everyone knows. So they they became more loyal, let's say, loyal payers and players to your game.
00:47:41
Speaker
because they see you as human. When people see you, like, really see you and have a face and a name, and they don't see you as a game, as a company, as a big, unknown thing.
00:48:01
Speaker
then And they see you as a human being. they They keep loyalty, you know? They become loyal. They become friendly. they become more understanding to to you because they see you, not not the company. So that's interesting thing I've seen.
Impact of Human Connection in Service
00:48:23
Speaker
I think that's extremely spot on. I think that kind of goes back to what my issue was with the company I reached out to. It's the fact that like no one even took a look at the account. And again, I'm no one special, right? But like if someone's putting in the time and effort, and like you said, if the person took the time to reach out and you see these signs, right? like
00:48:40
Speaker
Maybe you just do it because this person might be that next to whale. We don't, we can't predict what a whale is, but they bought stuff before, right? Like you think these trends would be dead simple to say, let's just automate, even if it's automated, right? Let's just give this person this because they tried within their first amount of days, right? It's, I don't know, it's an interesting call. I think it's something that should be paid attention to is, hey, every person that's reaching out to me for the most part is a human on the other side of that phone, right? So I either treat them so with respect or I don't. and they'll make that next move, right? Because I can only make, I can only respond the way I respond. It's up to the player to determine what they want to do next. And it all comes down to the action, but you, the customer support rep at that, right? It's all has you reply to that person.
00:49:27
Speaker
Also, oh what a different, that's something I've learned as a flag attendant, what different it makes when you go to someone and say, hey, my name is Danielle, I'm here to help. Can you please elaborate on your issues so I can better understand?
00:49:49
Speaker
the situation and can help you better. Or just enough to say, Hey, I'm Danielle, what's going on? That's enough. Because because I put in even if they can see my name, I introduced myself. its It creates connection. but It doesn't seem a lot to many people, but I can see the effect it has as a person that gives support or give service to to to people. How much different it makes.
00:50:18
Speaker
We learned so much about the player experience today. I think there's so many more topics. I'd love to continue that discussion about things again, like data, player experience, loyalty, retention, how that all kind of builds into that. And maybe that's a follow-up call. um I appreciate all the stories you shared. I think going from server to to flight attendant to to miniatures to gaming, right? You really got to experience many different sides of the human experience, the player experience, the user experience. I think that's awesome how you put it all together to help build a winning program at ILLION. Going from 40,000 tickets down to a, to call it none and having CSAT Rise is amazing. So congrats on all that success. ah Before we do end today, can you let us know where our listeners can find you or ILLION and any other final words you might have to share?
00:51:09
Speaker
ah First of all, thank you for having me. It was a pleasure. I love talking to you all the time, so thanks. And course people can find me on LinkedIn because I don't do social media anymore. And Ilya, you can go to our website or you can talk to me as well on Ilya's LinkedIn page.
00:51:31
Speaker
We will have links on our player-driven account going to Danielle if she wants. We'll figure it out. And to Iliad's page for sure, so you can check out what games they have, what they're building, and all that stuff. Again, Danielle, thank you so much for coming on today, sharing your stories and your experience. They're amazing, and I can't wait to one day continue this conversation. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Have a wonderful week, and good morning.