Help will always come: both in battle and in barracks
Building an integrated support channel for hundreds of millions of warriors from around the world
Task
"Why not struck?... Rush in the center!"
We think even those who have never played the famous on-line game "War of Tanks" can guess what these phrases are about when the players at the peak of their emotional strain are going into battle for victory, recognition, and all the other things important in our life.
The company, which has become a global company with dozens of offices worldwide and hundreds of millions of subscribed players from a student idea in a two-room apartment in Minsk within 20 years time, has always focused its business on its players and their wishes and problems.
An average tankman WoT in normal life is usually an adult who starts playing for playing and not for solving problems. There is a strong competition for the little free time the today's adult person has between cable channels, tv shows, gaming companies, and, finally, their families.
That's why when the company started its expansion to the markets of Europe, the USA, and Asia the question came straight up: how to make player support a part of the game itself so that nothing would distract the player from their mission regardless time of the day, country or language.
Moreover, don't forget – we're talking about the support of millions of users of different nationalities and cultures playing at the same time!
By that time, the company itself has had 4 separate home-deployed support systems with accumulated history of more than 70mln tickets and their solutions.
It was necessary to create and bring into operation a universal centralized player support system quickly and without breaking the support process (battles taking place in global playing fields non-stop). It was not only to solve today's tasks but also to lay the groundwork for the company's business future expansion.
Solution
Initially the project was meant to be multinational and was being developed by ZenDesk global team and its partners on different continents. For the platform a multichannel solution Zendesk Support was chosen. It can effectively process more than 350000 tickets of various complexity a month.
At the first stage of the project 4 global support hubs on Zendesk platform (the CIS, Europe, the USA, Eastern Asia) were created. A well-developed SDK and API played a large part in it as they allowed to integrate the player support channel directly into the game console and on different platforms, including mobile application. As a matter of fact, the player got an opportunity to request assistance and get it without quitting the session, still focusing on the battle scenario and not wasting precious time on holding the line or waiting for a reply to the email.
At the same stage the task of migrating and transferring of the accumulated 70mln tickets was solved.
During the project Zendesk Support standard channels (contact center, email) were supplemented by social media support in VKontakte, Twitter, and a chat and problem escalation forms were implemented in mobile applications.
At the second stage of the project a task was set to centralize the 4 support hubs into a unified center that now supports players by efforts of more than 400 agents on 14 languages, having made response times 5 times less.
There is also a prominent result e.g. closing tickets about "player's lost, sold or stolen tanks, planes or weapons" takes not more than 15min now comparing to hours and days before.
BI solution Zendesk Explorer (in-built tool of business intelligence) provides company managers and analysts with tools for timely support quality assessment, allows them to identify product quality bottlenecks, players problems, and make timely recommendations for game developers.
This way Wargaming has successfully solved its task to be with the player all the time, to solve their problems faster than the battle lasts, and to be ready for further expansion with new products in the global markets.
From 2012 the company is permanently awarded Golden Joystick Awards 2018 in «Still Playing» for «World of Tanks».
Players love Wargaming, and the company loves and respects its players opinion.
Can the secret be hiding here?
Result
Building a universal global platform for online support of hundreds of millions of players in 14 languages, playing in more than 15 projects, updated up to 20 times a year.