**Disclaimer! **While the following article is not required to get acknowledged with for any regular community member, it is essential guide for staff. It serves as a display of our customer treatment policies and ultimately declares our customer-centric standpoint.
As any other service, GoElites strongly relies on customer satisfaction. We comprise of two separate teams responsible for two different aspects of our service: software developers and support representatives. While people come for software, they often stay for community even if they stop playing the game we provide our services for, and our main goal is to make their experience as the part of the community as exciting as possible. In order to make our principles on how we communicate with our community clear, we'd like you to get aquainted with the following:
- As a staff of popular service with big and constantly growing community we sometimes may need to communicate with many people daily. Some people will seek help when their application malfunctions while others are just willing to talk or troll. We think everyone deserves some kind of message in return. Everyone here, including me and you, are human beings and we may get angry or giggly sometimes. Be forgiving. Ban is the a weapon of last resort and should only be applied in extreme cases.
- Using templates to answer some technical questions may be really useful sometimes, especially when there is some kind of issue on our end and a lot of people report it simultaneously. But please try to always bring a human touch to your messages in order to make them look as something unique and personal. Be human when answering to humans!
- Never lie or promise something on behalf of the staff (especially administration). If you are not sure about something - there is nothing wrong with it, just message your teammates or administration depending on the matter. Also check everything before you respond. If you are unsure about something yet provide a confident answer and then thing turns out to be whole different - it leaves a very bad mark on whole staff of the project. We by no means can afford to lose the trust of our customers. However, you should also remember to keep people in a good mood when you feel like the reality can make them frustrated or upset. In case our website is down, no clear information is availiable and user asks you about what's happening, "I don't know"-kind of reply is not the best option, you should rather say something like "We experience some issues with our website at the moment. Our administration works to resolve everything as quick as possible. You're still able to use GoElites in game in the meantime though!". Latter is still true and has some relieving effect on top of it, plus it adds a vibe of confidence which is something you expect from staff as a user.
- We're not office workers on GoElites so please don't apply corporate behaviour here. Try to make it fun for both you and people you communicate with and never treat them like they are inferior to you. You're given more permissions than other members not as a display of your superiority but as a display of trust in you as someone who can use this tool to make community involvement exciting for as many people as possible without any discrimination.
- We are here to bring the solution to people. But while you should always try to stay compassionate, please keep in mind that there are situations when you cannot provide the exact solution person asks for. Instead, try to look for other way around since quirky solution is always better than no solution. That, however, doesn't apply to situations when there is something that we cannot do. In this case what would make it less frustrating for me as a user is the feeling that you as a staff representative care about the whole thing. Try to comfort people but don't go too far - when there is something that we cannot do it means that we simply don't.
- If you get insulted - never respond with an insult. In this case the best option is always to try to solve the problem between you and that person. Try to understand their standpoint and determine whether there was something you've done wrong or no. If there was nothing you've done wrong and you cannot reason the person, the best thing you can do is to tell that person to pass their complaint to the community moderator or administration. Don't provoke further conflict to get the person suspended, always leave your personal animosity behind when on your duty as a staff member.
As a conclusion to everything listed above, we as the support team are expected to be motivated (and motivating; to keep it fun for you in first place, for your teammates and for the rest of the community), smart (and informed; to be able to identify and solve the problem), inventive (to be able to think out-of-the-box when there is no direct solution to the problem) and understanding (to be human when people expect you to care).