En Masse Entertainment - Support Content, Wikis, Policies and Procedures

Problem

En Masse Entertainment’s flagship game, TERA had 10 years of support content that was poorly organized. The website was unpleasant to use, with an outdated search engine, poor UI and out of date content. Some of the content had significant sentimental value with people who had been involved with the product since its inception. We needed to migrate our user support platform and knowledge base from an in-house solution to Zendesk.

In addition, User Support did not have an internal wiki or clear policies and procedures for a range of issues, relying on organizational memory of user support agents who had been with TERA from the beginning. We needed to create consistency of user experience between offshore user support agents and agents in the USA, and ensure agents had sufficient product knowledge about our large, complex MMO as well, as new releases.

Actions

As the Content Manager and Customer Service's Technical Writer, I audited existing content and created a plan that used change management best practices to work with staff and stakeholders to overhaul the content. I designed the content architecture for the new site and worked with the design team to create a Zendesk KnowledgeBase site that supported localization. As part of this effort I created style guide, based on Microsoft’s Style Guide, and worked with our technical team to ensure our UI provided a more streamlined experience for different platforms.

I monitored analytics (Zendesk and Google) to look for emerging issues and worked with Player Councils to troubleshoot and fact check difficult issues. I also monitored social media for support issues and was a friendly support voice for TERA & Closers on Twitter and Discord. I de-escalated players experiencing severe game issues and distress.

While managing multiple projects and localization challenges, I led the creation of the Customer Service Team’s space on Confluence. This included internal release notes, blogging about immediate issues, creating extensive documentation for our games (especially technical issues) as well as creating policies and procedures

I created the first comprehensive training for our global user support teams and vendors. The onboarding course included communication in customer support, de-escalation, problem resolution and exercises to develop in depth game knowledge.

Outcomes

Documentation was updated and migrated in a way that respected the past and was positive and empowering for staff and stakeholders. Approx 40% of legacy content was cut, all remaining content was revised. Site traffic more than doubled and ticket deflection increased by 30%.

The website architecture made it easy to add new games as they were released as well as add localization for multiple languages. When new issues emerged, we were able to respond fast, effectively and consistently.

Overseas Tier 1 agents were able to operate effectively at Tier 2 proficiency. The onboarding training program enabled agents to gain comprehensive knowledge of procedures as well as the game. Korean MMOs can contain a lot of depth and some agents who had been with the company for years reported finally understanding complex parts of end-game.

Support site content

Closers Patch Notes video

Faced with the challenge of promoting release notes that were complex and often required in-depth game knowledge, I leveraged Kit Tea Cup's brand to write short fun scripts for Closers that even got our beloved Product Manager dancing.