How one of the world’s leading video game companies improved in-game experience, by using its own players to provide timely, knowledgeable support to its community of players the world over…
Wargaming is an award-winning online game developer and publisher, a global leader in the growing massively multiplayer online (MMO) market. Millions of players worldwide enjoy its free-to-play multiplayer online action games which include the massively popular World of Tanks and World of Warships.
Whilst brilliant for the company’s bottom line, this significant growth meant scaling and upskilling its customer service operations to meet the ever-increasing demand from the gaming community. With players spread across the globe, not only do customer service agents need to have in-depth knowledge of gaming mechanics, but they need to be able to skillfully communicate in multiple languages. Wargaming was keen to adopt innovative and flexible customer service models which helped enhance player engagement across all its markets in a cost-effective manner, helping the brand stay ahead of competition.
Enter Limitless! With the aim of redefining customer experience strategy, in May 2018 Wargaming partnered with Limitless and began using the SmartCrowd™ platform to source flexible, on-demand talent.
SmartCrowd™ is a platform offering AI and crowd sourced customer service solutions, allowing brands to easily source talent and maintain a flexible, 24/7 on-demand customer service pool, in any language. Using SmartCrowd™, Wargaming was able to invite Experts, who are customers of Wargaming’s various gaming brands, to provide on-demand customer support.
“Inviting our own customers to help other customers was a significant step for us in improving our customer engagement. As a business, we’re constantly looking for ways to improve our in-game experience so that players stay around longer and enjoy our games more. Using our most loyal customers to help others is a clever way to boost advocacy, as we’re rewarding some of our best players for their knowledge, passion and loyalty”, says, Jean-Marc Codsi, General Manager – Europe, Wargaming.
Experts who are freelancers, simply log on to the Limitless SmartCrowd™ app to answer queries from their fellow players and receive cash rewards for successfully resolving them. The platform’s reward and rating mechanisms drive high quality standards and ensures that the best performing Experts get access to more tasks and more earning opportunities.
In-built AI features like ‘Suggested Answers’ help Experts answer queries faster and with a higher rate of accuracy – and since the AI learns from the Expert crowd’s historical conversations, the more active the Crowd stays, the more predictive accuracy the AI attains.
What’s more, the platform connects to Zendesk, Wargaming’s CRM, via simple API calls to maintain a single customer view across in-house agents and crowdsourced Experts.
Limitless was quickly able to attract Wargaming customers spread across several countries and build a scalable pool of on-demand talent to serve players in markets including the UK, Germany, Poland and France.
Experts can work from anywhere and in doing so, ease the pressure on Wargaming’s customer service teams, helping manage planned and unplanned spikes in demand. Experts are further protected by Limitless’ GoodGig™ platform terms which are compliant with the regional legislation for freelancers.
So, has it helped at all? Deploying a gig-based model of customer service has proved to be very effective for gaming brands like Wargaming which command a huge base of loyal fans with a high level of native, in-game knowledge.
As players are typically very passionate about their hobby, they have proven to be huge brand advocates who are keen to share their knowledge and expertise with the rest of the community and be financially rewarded for it. The results speak for themselves.
- Over a year on, Wargaming now has a pool of talented Experts providing multi-lingual support in several regions across Europe.
- Customer/Player Satisfaction Scores have improved 5% points in average due to the highly personal nature of the player-to-player interactions.
- Expert are able to resolve customer queries 2X times faster – which meant happier and more satisfied customers.
- Leveraging the expertise of crowd sourced freelancers, Limitless was able to deliver a 20% reduction in cost per case.
Most importantly, it has improved in-game experiences as observed by Jean Marc Codsi, “Wargaming’s multi-player game brands command a massive following – our customers are evangelical about the games they play and their status within the gaming community. They have in-depth knowledge about game mechanics, and an unmatched passion and loyalty for the brand that is frankly difficult to replicate. Which is why the Expert programme is great fit for our community – it allows our customers to share their knowledge and love of the game with other players and in turn get rewarded for providing good advice. At the same time, we’re able to drive advocacy and engage with some of our best players in a way we haven’t been able to before. Overall, a win-win situation for us!”
Looking ahead: Following the successful implementation of CrowdService™ in Europe, Wargaming is considering expanding this into North America. Wargaming is also exploring CrowdAdvise™, a solution which will leverage its Expert players to improve the early life cycle experience of players.
Roger Beadle, CEO at Limitless says, “Crowdsourcing is a great fit for the gaming industry. A game like World of Tanks is characterised by highly knowledgeable and zealous players who can provide world-class support, and massively improve in-game experiences.
“Our GoodGig™ model means our multi-lingual Experts are protected through localised terms. This has been highly beneficial for Wargaming as it’s allowed them to rapidly expand the platform across multiple countries whilst staying compliant with local rules and regulations. Crowd sourcing is a nod to the changing nature of work, and we are delighted to be able to help global brands like Wargaming modernise their workforce and attract flexible talent in line with changing business needs.”
“Crowdsourcing is an avant-garde service model which is redefining CX and transforming businesses. It had a positive impact on our player engagement and allowed us to give back to our community of players.”, says General Manager-Europe, Jean Marc Codsi