Valve is trying to make Steam support work more transparent and efficient.
Valve is gradually optimizing the work of its Steam Customer Support division, while at the same time making its operation more transparent to users. In particular, now support has added the ability to see how many user requests came in technical support during the day and how much was decided during the same period of time. The new page, called Steam Support Stats , shows that every 24 hours technical support receives about 75,000 requests. Most of the requests staff decide within 1-2 hours.
In most cases, about 8000 applications “hang” per unit of time. Interestingly, most of the requests from users relate to refunds. So far, the page mentioned above is useless for a single user - it is impossible to track the fate of your own query on it. On the other hand, the company's clients see that there is a lot of work, but most of the problems are solved by the company very quickly. Valve thinks it will help people better understand how technical support works.
The company also appealed to users with an official appeal. In particular, it says that over the years, Valve has constantly tried to improve the interaction of technical support with players. The site has been completely redesigned, a whole range of improved tools has been added, the company has abandoned the separation of support accounts and Steam.
The result of 8,000 hits (at the time of writing this news is already more than 10,000), waiting for a response is a consequence of the optimization of the support work. So, earlier this year, the number of such requests was about 50,000 per unit of time. "In the future, we want to reduce the usual response time to all requests even more significantly: from a couple of days to a few hours," Valve representatives said.
The usual response time for different categories of requests is from several tens of minutes to several hours. For example, refunds are resolved within approximately 2 hours. Questions regarding account protection or recovery are from 2.46 hours to 15.46, requests for technical support from Steam and games range from 5.14 hours to 22.82 hours and, finally, support for inquiries regarding purchases and payments is answered from 4,18 hours to one and a half days.
It would be useful to say that Valve is hoping for user feedback, offering to share their views on the work done by the company.