For Electronic Arts, Inc
Our Professor
Transmittal
Andrew Wilson, CEOElectronic Arts, Inc.
209 Redwood Shores Parkway
Redwood City, CA 94065
Dear Mr. Wilson:
As agreed during our meeting on November 15, 2013, attached herewith is the report on the customer service problems being experienced by your company.
The report examines the causes and effects of the company’s customer service problems and provides recommendations on how these problems can be addressed.
I hope you find this report satisfactory.
Sincerely yours,
Executive Summary 4
Introduction 5
Problem Statement 5
Method Used 5
Findings 6
Product 6
Service 6
Management 8
Analysis 9
Conclusion 9
Executive Summary
This report provides Electronic Arts (EA) executives with information on the customer service problems being experienced by the company. Such information is obtained both from primary and secondary sources, the former consisting of interviews with EA customers and the latter consisting of online articles, customer reviews, and employee reviews.
The findings show that problems exist in the product design and quality, the quality of the customer service, and the management of the customer service employees.
The main product design issues include the unavailability of an option to play a game offline and the microtransactions that the customers are forced to make.
The customer service issues include the following: service issues; sales practice issues; repair issues; refund or exchange issues; product issues; guarantee or warranty issues; delivery issues; customer service issues; billing or collection issues; and advertising issues.
Finally, the management issues include the lack of career advancement opportunities; the lack of employee incentives and employee motivation; and the lack of employee training.
In this regard, this report makes the following recommendations:
- Establish metrics and service level agreements for customer service response times.
- Establish a more secure online payment infrastructure.
- Provide customer service employees with sufficient training.
- Establish an effective performance appraisal system
- Promote a customer service-oriented organizational culture.
Introduction
Established in May 8, 1991, Electronic Arts, Inc. (EA) is a company engaged in the development, marketing, publishing, and distribution of game software services and content that consumers can play on various electronic devices and video game machines (Thomson Reuters, n.d.). The company also provides Internet-only and mobile devices, as well as multi-player online games and game services that are available on both a subscription and free-to-play basis. Among its popular games are Plants vs. Zombies, Bejeweled, The Sims, Need for Speed, Mass Effect, and Battlefield (Thomson Reuters, n.d.).
Although EA creates some of the most popular games in the world, it’s still named the worst company in 2013 by the Consumerist’s poll (Tassi, 2013). It was also named the worst company in 2012 (Tassi, 2013; Cheng, 2012).
In this regard, this report aims to provide EA executives with detailed information on the customer service problems being encountered by the company so that solutions to remedy these problems may be developed.
Problem Statement
Although it cannot be denied that Electronic Arts has made many mistakes, Tassi (2013) contended that these could not be enough to make them the worst company as surely there are many other companies that can be considered worse than Electronic Arts. However, the company is being placed in the limelight just because most of its consumers use their products online, making the online presence of such consumers more predominant than those of other companies.
On the other hand, though, the real problem may be rooted in the public’s perception of the company, which is that it does not take responsibility for its failures and for the mistreatment of its customers (Tassi, 2013).
In this regard, this report aims to answer the question of what customer service problems or complaints customers have against the company.
Method Used
A qualitative approach is taken to determine the answer to the question posed for this report. This approach will use both primary and secondary sources, the results of which will be consolidated and summarized in order to provide a comprehensive response to the problem statement, in turn enabling the author to make recommendations on how the identified customer service problems can be resolved.
The primary source for the qualitative data will be obtained from 10 EA customers who were interviewed either in person or via online chat using Skype. Purposive sampling was used in the selection of the participants who were mostly among the author’s acquaintances and who were avid players of EA games.
A semi-structured interview that included open ended questions was conducted. In-person interviews were tape-recorded and transcribed before being analyzed while interviews that were conducted via online chat were printed and analyzed.
Coding for the results was conducted by classifying the main ideas identified from the interviewees into the following categories: Product, Service, and Management.
Secondary sources will also be used in obtaining the answers to the question posed for this report. In particular, these secondary sources would include Web and news articles, as well as online customer and employee reviews from the last five years. The findings from these secondary sources will be summarized and categorized as Product, Service, and Management issues. These will also be consolidated with the findings from the primary source and the overall results will be summarized.
Findings
The following is a summary of the findings obtained from both the primary source and secondary sources used for this report. Since both sources lead to the same findings, these findings will no longer be discussed separately; rather, they will be integrated into the discussion in this section.
Product
One problem with the product pertains to SimCity’s always-on requirements. This means that an Internet connection is always necessary to play the same and that an offline option for playing the game is not available (Tassi, 2013). According to an EA executive, this setting is for DRM reasons (Tassi, 2013). However, most consumers perceive this as either a poor game design or a shrewd decision on EA’s part. Another complaint that consumers have is the implementation of microtransactions even for its fully priced games (Tassi, 2013).
Service
The Customer Service Scoreboard ranked Electronic Arts as 169th out of the 207 companies that the group rated (Judhudson, 2010). In particular, the group gave a rate of 24.15 out of a possible 200 to Electronic Arts’ customer service and customer support, making them labeled as terrible.
In particular, the customer service issues that customers have with Electronic Arts can be classified into the following categories: Sales issues; sales practice issues; Repair issues; Refund or exchange issues; product issues; guarantee or warranty issues; Delivery issues; Customer service issues; Contract issues; Billing or collection issues; and Advertising issues (Judhudson, 2010; BBB, 2013).
The service issues include unauthorized service; improper or inferior service; failure to honor service agreements or estimates; and delayed completion of service (Judhudson, 2010).
Sales practice issues include the employment of dishonest sales practices during sales presentations; advertisements being inconsistent with sales presentations; a misrepresentation of the service during sales presentations; ac misrepresentation of the product during sales representations; and a nondisclosure of an offer’s key conditions during a sales presentation (Judhudson, 2010).
Repair issues include additional damage resulting from repairs; inferior or improper repair, and delayed completion of repair (Judhudson, 2010).
Refund or exchange issues include failure to honor exchange, credit, or refund policies, and failure to honor promised credit, exchanges, or refunds (Judhudson, 2010). Product issues include damaged, defective, or incorrect products received (Judhudson, 2010).
Guarantee or warranty issues include failure to provide promised written guarantee or warranty; failure to honor service under the terms of warranties; and disputed warranty coverage and/or terms (Judhudson, 2010). The delivery issues include the non-delivery of services, non-delivery of products, and the late delivery of products (Judhudson, 2010). The customer service issues include inappropriate behavior by customer service personnel, failure to respond to written requests or phone calls for assistance or support; and failure to provide the promised support or assistance for services or products.
The contract issues include invalid or false contracts and a failure to honor an agreement or contract (Judhudson, 2010). On the other hand, the billing or collection issues include unauthorized credit card charges, unauthorized bank debits, improper collection practices, a failure to substantiate charges, and a failure to correct billing errors (Judhudson, 2010). Finally, the advertising issues include false or substantiated claims in advertisement; bait and switch advertisement; service misrepresentation in advertisements; product misrepresentation in advertisements; incomplete disclosure of all the conditions needed for taking advantage of an offer; failure to honor advertised terms; unavailability of advertised service; unavailability of advertised product; and a failure to honor the advertised price.
According to the Customer Service Scoreboard survey, there were 40 service issues; 23 sales practice issues, 9 repair issues, 441 product issues, 23c guarantee or warranty issues, 38 delivery issues, 99 customer service issues, 12 contract issues, 73 billing or collection issues, and77 advertising issues (Judhudson, 2010).
Figure 1 Customer Service Complaints Against Electronic Arts, according to a Customer Service Scoreboard survey
These are reflective of the information from the interviews conducted. In particular, the interviewees cited fraud or the lack of security as their major issues where their credit card and debit card information are being stolen and used on the site. What makes matters worse is the lack of response from EA regarding these issues. In the same regard, the EA customers interviewed cited how their complaints are left unaddressed. Since a customer care number is no longer available for contacting EA support, most of the customers interviewed used email for communicating their concerns. However, most of them never received a response, not even an automated response. As well, they had complaints about their avatars or their accounts being banned for no reason. However, their resolution also takes a long time to complete.
Management
Management issues are usually the concerns of EA employees. An online employer review of Electronic Arts indicates that one of the complaints of EA customer service employees is the lack of career advancement and the lack of a work-life balance (Lincoln, 2011). In particular, employees complain that working hard or providing the company with innovative ideas does not gain them recognition from the company. They also usually work even on holidays, which prevent them from spending time with their families and friends.
They also don’t have a sense of job security since customer care is usually one of the company functions that is outsourced, leaving many customer care employees potentially jobless. They get paid very littlie and are not given incentives to work harder. Their superiors don’t act on any of their feedback (Lincoln, 2011) and the incompetent employees are the ones who get promoted due to a lack of an effective performance appraisal system.
They do not receive training and there is poor coordination between the customer service staff and the developers. For example, customer support staff does not receive information about known issues in the same manner that developers do not receive information about call driver issues. The customer service employees also feel bad about the way the company makes them treat customers.
Analysis
The findings show that there are major issues in the EA customer service. Although there are also problems with the product design and quality, the most serious issues concern their customer service and management.
Although the customer service issues with Electronic Sports can be categorized into service issues; sales practice issues; repair issues; refund or exchange issues; product issues; guarantee or warranty issues; delivery issues; customer service issues; billing or collection issues; and advertising issues, a closer look at these issues show that the main problems lie in Electronic Arts’ lack of concern for the satisfaction of their customers, which is evidenced in their irresponsiveness towards such concerns. Another problem is the company’s failure to deliver on their promises or even distorting the real conditions of an offer or a product or service just to entice the customer. All of these dishonest forms of communication make customers distrust the company. Many customers have also complained about not receiving their orders on time or getting defective products. Moreover, the many billing errors and fraudulent transactions that occur evidence that the company has ineffective policies with regards to their handling of online payments.
The management issues are also serious in that the customer service employees do not receive adequate training for performing their job. This can be one cause behind the poor quality of customer service they provide. In addition, since they receive very little pay, do not get opportunities to advance in their career. and receive no incentive for exceptional job performances, these employees tend to take their job for granted, making them indifferent to the customers’ needs.
Conclusion
This report discussed the customer service problems of Electronic Arts based on information obtained through a primary source, particularly the interviews of ten EA customers, and through secondary sources such as online articles and customer and employee reviews.
The report emphasized the company’s problems with regards to their lack of concern for their customer’s issues, their irresponsiveness to their customers’ concerns, their inability to follow through on their promises, and their poor payment-related policies.
Management issues were also identified where it was found that customer service employees do not receive adequate training. They are also not motivated to do well in their jobs, which can be a reason for the poor quality of customer service that they provide.
In this regard, this report makes the following recommendations:
- Implement an internal policy that requires customer service staff to respond to and address customers’ phone concerns within the first 5 minutes of the call and to respond to all emails within 24 hours of their receipt.
- Strengthen the company’s security infrastructure, especially with regards to its online payment services.
- Provide customer service employees with adequate training.
- Establish a comprehensive and effective performance appraisal system to ensure that employees are duly recognized and compensated for their efforts.
- Have company executives promote a customer-service oriented culture where they will serve as models.
References
BBB. (2013). Electronic Arts, Inc. (Headquarters). Retrieved from http://www.bbb.org/greater-
san-francisco/business-reviews/video-games-wholesale-and-manufacturers/electronic-
arts-in-san-francisco-ca-64196.
Cheng, R. (2012, December 21). How EA plans to make customers happy. Really. Retrieved
happy-really/.
Judhudson. (2010, January 20). Just how bad is EA’s customer service? (E)xtremely (A)wful.
Retrieved from http://www.beyondsims.com/12965/just-how-bad-is-eas-customer-
service-extremely-awful/.
Lincoln, R. (2011, October 26). Former EA customer care rep unleashes hell via Reddit.
Retrieved from http://www.gamefront.com/former-ea-customer-care-rep-unleashes-hell-
on-reddit/.
Tassi, P. (2013, April 9). EA voted worst company in America, again. Retrieved from
http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2013/04/09/ea-voted-worst-company-in-america-
again/.
Thomson Reuters. (n.d.). Profile: Electronic Arts Inc (EA.O). Retrieved from
http://www.reuters.com/finance/stocks/companyProfile?symbol=EA.O
