In a latest interview with video games news website Kotaku, Valve business development authority Erik Johnson talked about the terrible customer service of Steam and what Valve is doing to improve it.
In dealing with Steam's support department, customers have experienced many support tickets that were left unanswered, with months of silence being a source of frustration for troubled users. Johnson did not deny the fact, and even admitted to the bad customer service currently being offered by the online game store.
"I think it's technically gotten a little worse on the user side of things - at least, overall in terms of current ticket times," said Johnson. "That peaked a few weeks ago, and it's starting to get better now."
Johnson said that there is progress on the side of Valve, but the progress is just not visible to customers yet. Recently initiated features that are centered on customer support such as Steam refunds, according to Johnson, are only the start of a bigger initiative to improve Steam's customer service.
"We started by realizing we had a lot of software to write to build a new support system," explained Johnson, adding that starting with the Steam refund system made the most sense. Customers that purchase something that they turn out not to like would be able to have their money returned in a transparent method.
However, the refund feature, Johnson admitted, will not single-handedly fix customer support for Steam, as that required more long-term initiatives.
The second issue that Valve is taking a look at is security for user accounts to prevent account theft, which led to updates on Steam's mobile apps along with the implementation of two-factor authentication. Johnson admitted though that some of Valve's own games such as DOTA and Counter-Strike, where there are a lot of transactions, are creating more support load.
To address the issues, Valve is tapping third-party companies to make the support queue more streamlined and effective. However, some of the tapped companies were only interested in reducing the queue, and not so much in actually solving the problems presented by the customers.
Valve is not looking to be able to answer customer support queries but not actually solve the problems, and so the company is now training people to be able to address customer-raised issues, but such training is time-consuming.
Johnson believes that the training should bear fruit by Christmas time, when the wait time should be down to an acceptable level. Until then though, it seems that Steam customers looking for support will have to make do with what they are getting right now.
