Roughly a couple of times each month, some large Second Life account (an estate owner or large landholder) has some sort of billing issue that threatens to shut them down. These generally fall into three classes.
- Linden Lab fails to generate a charge against a payment method. We’re talking about systems built out of software, actually multiple layers of them, through multiple companies. Sometimes things don’t go perfectly, end-to-end.
- The system fails to accept new payment information. Grid status notifications indicate numerous problems with that, especially in the last six months. It isn’t clear if the incidence of problems with that is higher than before, if if the problems are just being announced more frequently by the Lab.
- Something goes wrong in transfer-of-ownership in the case of a sale or a death by the original owner (since Second Life users do rather trend towards the elderly or infirm), and the Lab can’t figure out what’s going on, who should be billed or who to talk to and drops the ball.
In each of these, weeks or months can go by while the customer tries to sort things out with Linden Lab. I’ve been BCC’ed in on a lot of conversations with Linden Lab, Support Tickets and so on, and it is baffling and frustrating seeing them play out and getting nowhere.
There should be a process for these situations. Unfortunately, the successful process over the last year or so has been to contact a user who knows one or more senior people at Linden Lab, get them to pass along the information with names, dates, particulars, support-tickets and so on, and have that senior person at Linden Lab shake the tree.
Once that’s done, resolving the problem generally takes less than a couple of hours for issues that have otherwise been in limbo for weeks or months in the hands of multiple Support staff.
Now, that’s the wrong process. Elf Clan’s recent troubles (there are other issues there like sim costs, but they’re not really relevant to this discussion), and recent solution didn’t quite follow the usual path – I presume that they didn’t know who they could contact to get the Lab to take notice – but their pending public exit caught the attention of Linden Lab CEO, Rod Humble, and the problem was apparently quickly fixed.
That’s the wrong process too, though. It should never have come to that point.
When you can’t get action from Concierge or Support, who do you turn to? When these two run into stumbling blocks, they don’t think creatively; they don’t operate outside their scripts. Situations inevitably occur that are outside of the normal parameters, and aren’t necessarily anyone’s fault.
That’s the point that you need someone with the authority to troubleshoot issues outside of the usual scripts and parameters, to whom the incident can be escalated.
Right now, that’s … well, nobody. Or Rod Humble, I suppose.
Not the right process.
If there is any proper avenue for escalating these issues – so that they can be resolved, if they are genuinely valid – then nobody seems to know about it.
There needs to be a process.
Maybe, since this very obviously wrong, and even more very publicly noticed problem has gotten the attention of Mr. Humble, a process will be developed. After all, public embarrassment can be a superb motivator.
A process is only as good as the people that are supposed to execute it.
Perhaps LL could benefit their customers by changing into a standard corporate organization that reduces distractions (change to cubicles), rewards positive revenue enhancements, and trims people that are not adding value.
@Ann That is very true.
There is phonesupport for billing issues afaik…
I watched this unfold on Twitter – Rod Humble is trying to be somewhat available and it is heartening. But this was resolved because it was retweeted to him by multiple people repeatedly. Why does the CEO have to do Support supervisor stuff? And again, what about all the folks who cannot get their outside the US payments to process due to LL process issues and get locked out, and who say “screw it”. The only people getting issues resolved are the ones who are invested enough to raise hell when they get locked out.
Linden Lab stinks of a company that lacks process in so many areas of operation. I infer that because process is the business protocol that goes some way towards solving “the left hand not knowing what right hand is doing” disease , and Linden Lab has a severe case of that. I don’t envy Rod Humble having to deal with that – it’s a very hard slog. I wish him well.
Linden Lab is a company which is dominated by techies and accountants. As a result LL as a company lacks any kind of sensitivity for customer motivation, customer needs, customer attitude and what the SL “culture” is all about. They are only in it for collecting the money and their techie toys by their own corporate attitude. As a result the SL culture is exclusively driven by their customers and VR enthusiasts, who are willing and able to steadily work around all the rocks LL techies and accountants planted all over the place. The processes within LL, as they exist now, are a logical result. As long as LL and LL staff does not re-discover what Second Life is really all about and as long as Linden Lab lives a life of it´s own outside of the SL customer reality, no process will ever work.
Just a week ago a long time member of our community closed down her store and moved to Inworldz because her main account had been held hostage by LL due to payment info not being accepted.
I read the support conversation and was completely baffled by the lack will to solve or acknowledge the problem. This combined with all the messages I get weekly with people having problems with simple things like buying L$ is mind-bogglingly.
If your customers have trouble buying your product it should be a top priority. Right now it’s a mess with failures and often so complex that people have to go through knowledge base or ask inworld just to figure out how to buy L$
I suppose this is the job of the new Support Director. He is the guy who should establish procedures to deal with such cases. I really hope the new director closely monitor social networks as well and get in touch the way Rod does. LL not only needs procedures, it also needs damage control.
I totally agree with your article Miss Tateru.
I also have to add that some other problems should have rapid solution, the main one being:
A quick and efficient way to permit us to pay Linden Lab,
a quick and efficient way to appeal undue bans from Second Life.
The french speaking community of Second Life is plagued with residents unable to pay SL, and having problems up to not being able to pay sim fees because of that.
We have also more and more seen well known honorable persons (some of them sim owners) being banned and not having any means of coming back, one of the reason being “their inventory has been erased”. I will only give as example two cases were long time residents, well known of the community, who both have invested time, money, creativity, and reputation in Second Life, have helped newbies, that I cannot believe at all, objectively, being griefers :
Riona Rimbaud who has been banned, and lost her legendary reporter avatar and gigantic inventory, only to be told after a long fight with the support that “she could now create another avatar” (she is now Riona Fallen on SL).
and PouletFritesMayo, who has been banned on the spot by a Linden for crashing a sim as he was testing an anti-spam script on an empty sim with the owners permission, and as “repeted offender” because he had been AR-ed as minor before (he had have ID verification done by LL to come back). Now he receives answers telling him is inventory has been erased (there is a “Save PouletFritesMayo Boucher” group on Facebook).
If Linden Lab really believe in the “gamification of SL” has a way yo solve it, they should have a gamer-friendly customer service to help us pay them, stay with them to pay money, or rent their highly priced sims.
It seems you need a CEO to step in to solve problem with customer service when you are a recurring 15000$ per year customer (see Tateru’s Elf Clan links) what could I do for my friends, know that I decided not to pay anything in SL anymore after more than 4 years in SL ? Go see Philip Linden’s typist and try buying him a beer and talk about it ? I would surely do it if he come to northern France, near Lille (come on Philip, Belgian beers are very good, and if it’s not your taste, I am sure I can find you some good vine, or coffee, or smoothie… with cookies too ^_^)
[...] di non poter ripristinare l’account. A giudicare da questo ultimo articolo di Tateru: http://dwellonit.taterunino.net/2011/05/07/there-needs-to-be-a-process/ il problema è più diffuso di quello che si [...]
I’m glad Humble stepped in. Now he knows one reason the Lab has lost trust.
They are not that big a firm. With a competent accounts-payable department, this would never happen.
Perhaps it’s the price one pays for building a company with IT types, fiefdom-makers, and visionaries instead of mixing in a few adults.
Mr. Humble is clearly an adult. Bringing back recognition for mentoring groups is another good sign that he “gets it.”
I hope he brings more adults aboard.
Excellent post Tateru. Great comments following too. I’m pleased folks here understand what’s involved… and therefore am amazed LL doesn’t understand. Fogwoman kind of summed it up when she said:
“The only people getting issues resolved are the ones who are invested enough to raise hell when they get locked out.”
Or as SecondLie stated on Twitter: “Before trying to pay us, please purchase the copiable “Flaming Hoop” from Marketplace, rez a dozen of them, and jump through them all.”
Sure, we could have done the “flaming hoop” dance and gotten this resolved. But after 6+ years of repeatedly fighting this kind of stuff, Elf Clan got tired of that nonsense.
I am pleased Rod jumped in and fixed this. As Tateru points out… it’s a shame he had to. That indeed is not the right method. The main issue isn’t that our group had this problem. It’s that many, many others have had this problem before us… and that we had to actually announce we were leaving SL and the CEO HAD TO STEP IN… before anyone else at Linden Lab paid attention. As someone said above– there needs to be an accountability system here.
We spent a rather agonizing couple of days as our entire group geared up to migrate. People started closing down builds. And just as we’re ready to step out the door… the CEO of Linden Lab… who heard about this matter not from staff– but from numerous tweets on Twitter– has to set things in motion himself. Because of that, our group leaders had a long hard talk… and with great reservation decided to stick with it. That is simply a very poor way to run a business.
Good for Rob. Kudos. I enjoyed his sense of humor too. But we can’t expect the CEO to step in every time a customer has a problem. Like Tateru and eveyrone else here points out– this is a system that is broken. This is a system that needs fixed.
If it doesn’t get fixed, it doesn’t take a Tateru to foresee the very predictable consequences.
Going back through the grid status pages, I see 11 instances reported where one of the major functions was broken in the past month, sometimes for nearly a whole day. To me this is just an unacceptable way to run a business. Several of those broken items were billing. That’s just suicidal when you can’t take your customer’s money.
Exactly a year ago I had a series of 20 Lindex transactions where they delivered more L$ than I ordered, to the tune of L$ 5,061,859 extra. That took a month to correct, and they are lucky I’m honest and didn’t run off with the money, These sorts of things show there are fundamental problems with how they run the business
How many times has Elf Clan left SL and come back? I mean, I sympathize and all but they are noisy when they go.
@bubblesort : it seems being noisy was the only solution to obtain an answer from Linden Lab, insn’t it ?
@DD Not exactly the message anyone wants to convey or to hear, I think.
Valid question bubblesort. To answer it with respect:
We left once. We came back 7 months later when our members repeatedly asked us to re-open it because they felt we left a hole in SL that no one else was filling. (in their words, “we miss our home and haven’t found another like it”).
We checked and it appeared (at that time) Linden Lab was improving. Unfortunately that proved to not be the case.
For the record… we’ve been on SL since our return for over four years. So you’ll understand I think the presentation of your question is a bit over-stated.
As far as “being noisy when they go”… we’re a well known group with some 2,000 members. Exactly what do you recommend… that we keep things hush-hush and try to sneak out the back door?
I announced the matter on Twitter for two reasons:
1) We have many members who use Twitter and it’s a good way to notify people of major group happenings
2) I knew that several Lindens use Twitter… and lacking the ability to catch their attention any other way, I hoped that maybe someone at Linden Lab would take note and perhaps take steps to prevent this happening to any other group. To be honest, I fully expected Linden Lab to say “meh”… a typical response from that company. Frankly I was rather surprised when Rod jumped in.
The only other place this was announced was on the Elf Clan blogsite and in our group notices. Surely you don’t object to using our own site and group notices to announce our leaving.
If you’re interested in what was really involved in our thought process and considerations, feel free to visit our site and read not only the two blogs, but the comments from members and Eldars. http://elfclanvr.grouply.com. You may be surprised to see what all was involved in this decision and what brought it about. As with most such things, there is more than meets the eye. I think you will also be surprised to find how much money a large group invests in Second Life over a period of time. In such circumstances, I don’t think just shutting up and leaving is a warranted or balanced response, do you?
But most of all bubblesort, I encourage you to consider: if anyone believes Elf Clan is alone in this situation, that groups aren’t leaving SL right and left, that people aren’t closing down sims and abandoning Second Life at a significant rate… well, I’d have to state that person is severely uninformed. In this case, Rod Humble pulled things out of the fire. Linden Lab can’t expect him to do that every time. Elf Clan wasn’t the first nor I doubt, will we be the last group to be impacted by what is (to be blunt) incompetent and mismanaged Linden Lab operations.
So all that considered, I don’t really think we were all that “noisy”. We announced we were leaving, we told our members, on our blog, why, and that was it. If Rob himself hadn’t stepped in… as of the 18th of this month we’d have been gone.
So for the benefit of the continued future of Second Life… how much noise do you think such situations deserve? How many groups should just quietly leave SL before Linden Lab takes notice?
Yes.
Not much more to add.
Phoning customer support from some parts of the world would be a nightmare, an employee in Europe would surely not break the bank… I’ll do it for a nominal wage..:)))
Good catch, Rodvik. I’m glad Elf Clan is sticking around.