4 Useful Tips on Providing Tech Support to Premium Players

Most free-to-play game developers live off the money which players spend in their in-game stores. The percentage of payers is not that high, that’s why their qualified support is very important.

Who are paying users and how they are different

Premium players are all those people who have made at least one purchase in your game. They liked the app, they became very engaged, they want more of it and that’s why they spent their money on it. But in return, they want to enjoy it without a hitch, and if a problem arises, they want it to be solved as soon as possible. That’s why their behavior may be a bit different from the non-paying players:

• They feel free to contact support and they do it more often. Paying users may even like the work of a specific support agent who once helped them with a difficult problem or just was very polite, and they may agree to work only with that agent.
• A paying user wants their agent to be more involved with their case — they want to get a well-thought-out and clear reply to avoid further waste of time.
• They want to see their money well spent that’s why sometimes they become very involved and give advice on how they see the game’s future, or on what they would like to be improved in it.

How to interact with paying users?

Based on the experience of our support team and on paying users’ demands listed above, here I’ve made a list of tips on how to interact with them.

1. Assign specific agents to handle requests from paying users
   If you have a fairly large request volume, it is better to allocate all paying users to agents, who have extensive tech support experience. In this situation the VIPs will get the support of the best possible quality and, in the meantime, every agent will work with a certain group of users and will better understand their demands.
2. Don’t make paying users wait
   Paying users expect that their questions and requests will have the highest priority and they will get an answer much faster than non-paying users. That’s why, if your average response time is about 24 hours, you need to answer the payers’ questions within the first 12 hours. The response time for whales (high-spenders) should be even faster — no more than 5 hours. If you make them wait for too long, you risk decreasing or even losing their loyalty.
3. Provide compensations
   You have to approach compensations very carefully because you risk running into problems with them. If you are generous with compensations to the premium users, they will talk about it in communities and then the non-paying users will ask for them too. Compensations should not be something that happens every day but should be rather an exception. You can provide them in the following situations:
   - dissatisfaction with new features leading to a potential refund request;
   - request from a loyal paying player to provide them with some sort of a bonus for their investments;
   - waiting too long for a problem to be resolved.
   Anyway, every company should have rules on providing compensation.
4. Stick to an informal communication style
   Your communication style should depend on the situation. In a standard conversation, you need to stick to a less formal communication style, otherwise, users may think that they are talking to a bot and that may frustrate them. But in a conflict situation, your communication style should change to more formal otherwise a user may perceive answers of their agent as negligence. Also, there are cultural and age-based differences that an agent also needs to take into consideration.

Follow my advice on providing quality support to your premium users and they will pay you back with their loyalty and money!