We’re excited to announce the launch of our latest Customer Service Benchmark Report! In this edition, we’ve dug in deep into the highly competitive gaming industry. We’ve analyzed how 3,000 of the largest gaming companies worldwide – including Sega, 2K and Epic Games – provide customer service on the most popular digital support channel: email.
The results are in and the leaderboard is set. Overall, gaming companies leave a lot to be desired on email. The majority of gaming companies are not meeting player expectations for immediate, effortless and personalized support. Companies like 2K and Gameloft are stepping up to the plate and provide some of the best email support of all gaming companies.
Customer Service Benchmark Report – Gaming: Key Highlights
In our Customer Service Benchmark Report – Gaming, we wanted to understand how effortlessly players can receive support if a question or issue arises on email. We were surprised that only 54% of gaming companies worldwide have a readily-accessible email address, and of those, 30% ignore a simple customer service email asking for a game recommendation. Here are other key findings:
- 76% of gaming companies with readily available email addresses ignore customer service emails
- Of the gaming companies that responded, nearly 33% don’t provide a meaningful response
- The average response time is 39 hours
- More than half of gaming companies that respond to customer emails don’t show empathy
- Mobile gaming companies are 1.7X faster at responding than console game providers
- Asia-Pacific companies are the fastest to respond, with an average response time of 10.3 hours, while companies in EMEA responded in 2.4 days, on average
Gaming Companies are Away from the Keyboard
Even though email is the preferred channel for customer service, only 54% of gaming companies provide an accessible support email address. Of the companies that have an email address, 76% never respond to a simple customer service email.
Of the few companies that took the time to respond to customer service emails, 12% didn’t provide any relevant information and a whopping 30% scored less than 5 points (out of 30 total) on our Relevance Analysis, which indicates that the responses were not thorough or include the necessary information.
Mediocre support is the standard according to the Support Performance Index (SPI)
Our SPI is designed to look holistically about the quality of support provided by a company, measured by response time, personalization, empathy, and the relevance and thoroughness of a response. On a scale of 1-100, 33% of the companies that responded to a customer service email are concentrated in the 50-60 range. The highest-scoring company on the SPI was Gumi Asia PTE (Singapore, 81.08), followed by: Game-U (US, 80.19); Gameclub (US, 79.33); 2K (US, 78.25); and Ggtech Entertainment (Spain, 76.92).
The top 25: Gaming CX from the Top Brands
Of the most well-known gaming companies globally, 54% don’t offer email as a customer support channel. Shockingly, 31% of these big brands ignore customer emails, failing to follow up on a simple customer question. 2K, Sega and Gameloft are among the 15% of the top 25 gaming companies to provide a personalized, meaningful email response.
Supersonic Speed: 3 in 4 respond within 24 hours
Over 3 in 4 gaming companies respond to customers within the first day of receiving a response. Many companies are even faster: 26% respond within the first hour, 18% within 1-3 hours and 34% between 3-24 hours. Some are even faster: 101xp (1 minute), Cobra Mobile (2 minutes), ABCya.com (3 minutes) and Manavoid Entertainment (3 minutes).
Assaf Cohen, who runs Solitaire Bliss, explains, “Many gaming companies neglect response time simply because they’re overwhelmed with support tickets. We found that when we reduced our response time to one day, those users increased their game play by 11%. It’s a worthwhile investment to make.”
What empathy? Gaming companies lack a personal touch
In our email to gaming companies, we asked for recommendations for a child who was socially distancing because of the Covid-19 pandemic. We analyzed whether companies acknowledged the pandemic or inquired about the child’s interests to provide better assistance. Only 7% of companies acknowledged the pandemic, while 50% inquired about the child’s specific interests.
These are just a few of the key gaming CX stats that we uncovered
Gaming companies are falling short when it comes to offering meaningful support on the most preferred digital support channel: email. Gamers are notoriously loud – quick to complain amongst peers and online when something doesn’t meet their expectations. Whether it’s bugs in a game, hacked accounts, missing rewards or account assistance, gamers expect quick and convenient support.