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February 13, 2012
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The Help Desk: a year in review

Mon Feb 13, 2012, 12:44 PM


DeviantART's Community Operations department aims to foster an environment where deviants can come together and be empowered within, and by, the community.  By providing an organized, motivated, accountable, and effective department, we are leading the way for deviants to participate in a manner where they feel listened to, valued, and inspired.  2011 was an amazing year for Community Operations and we wanted to share a few of the highlights!

:star: Introductions


The Community Operations department is comprised of both the Copyright & Etiquette Administration and Help Desk teams.

Fiona ($fourteenthstar): Director of Community Operations

Copyright & Etiquette Administration

Daniel ($realitysquared): Project Manager
Aun-Juli ($aunjuli): Team Leader
Kay ($damphyr)
Jenn ($y2jenn)
Bryan ($godofodd)
Dom ($dxd)
Kassandra ($kozispoon)

Help Desk

Evanita ($ewm): Team Leader
Chris ($Ikue)

dAmn & Forums

Pete (`Tachy-on)


:star: Quick Stats Overview


Over the course of 2011 Community Operations solved:

34,249 General Help Inquiries,
17,981 Bug Reports,
2,931 Chat/Forum Inquires, and
46,399 CEA tickets. That's 101,560 tickets over the whole year.

For comparison, in 2010 we solved:

33,787 General Help Inquiries,
19,083 Bug Reports,
1,730 Chat/Forum Inquiries and
40,281 CEA tickets for a grand total of only 94,881.


:star: The Help Desk


The deviantART Help Desk is home to three teams:
  1. The main Help Desk team, in charge of answering tickets related to General Help, Bug Reports, and Chat/Forum Inquiries;
  2. The Copyright and Etiquette Administration, responsible for Abuse Reports, Account Ban Appeals, Policy Inquiries, COPPA Reports, DMCA Reports, and Spammer Reports;
  3. The Retail Customer Care department, which handles all retail-oriented inquiries.
The Help Desk is open Monday through Friday. Most issues, aside from CEA matters, are able to be resolved within four days -- and often, much quicker.  Due to their nature, CEA-related tickets require more time for investigation, and as such, the response time is greater.  

:star: Recent Improvements


We've been using Zendesk to run the Help Desk since September 2009, and it's greatly improved our ability to provide the best assistance possible.  Over the course of 2011, we were able to add several new features to the Help Desk, including:
  1. Two CEA ticket sections -- COPPA Reports and Spammer Reports -- that allow us to better monitor these types of situations.
  2. Additional requirements for filing Abuse Reports: name of offender and direct links to the abuse. These requirements have greatly reduced the amount of time it takes to make sure these situations are handled as diligently as possible.
  3. Ban Appeals are now exclusive to only deviants who are banned and need to appeal their ban. An amazing 49% of all tickets submitted to this category prior to the change had nothing to do with appealing a ban. The change allowed us to make sure that all Ban Appeals are truly banned deviants seeking to appeal their ban.
  4. "Satisfaction," a tool to help gain feedback on the satisfaction of the tickets we handle. When tickets are solved, deviants are able to vote either "Good Satisfaction" or "Bad Satisfaction" and can optionally leave a response stating why the satisfaction rating was given.
* Please note that the Help Desk only includes tickets submitted via the Help Desk Contact Form. This does not include all reports made by using the report violation button on deviations which are submitted to the Moderation Desk.


:star: Ticket Satisfaction Ratings


We began using the Satisfaction feature in April, and have maintained a positive rating of 83% across the entire Help Desk. This includes all departments within Community Operations, as well as our Retail department (which handles all tickets relating to deviantWEAR, Prints, Points, AdCast, and payment support for Premium Memberships).  Each department also has its own rating over the past 60 days.

General Help/Help: 83%
Bug Reports: 86%
Chat/Forum: 83%
CEA: 82%

:star: For 2012 and Beyond


As 2012 marches on, it's the aim of all Community Operations to:
  1. Respond to deviants as soon as possible, given the current volume of deviants in need of assistance.
  2. Respond with a positive friendly attitude.
  3. Respect and treat you as we would want to be treated.
  4. Guide you in the right direction.

:star: Thank You


It was a pleasure to help everyone last year! We look forward to serving you this coming year and hope to provide all deviants with the best Help Desk experience possible.


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:iconfarewell-spring:
=Farewell-Spring Feb 17, 2012  Hobbyist Traditional Artist
Yeah, it seems like it's their automatic response to blame firefox, safari, IE, etc. They just want to say the problem is not theirs because it's your browser. :shrug:
Reply
:iconewm:
$ewm Feb 17, 2012  Hobbyist Photographer
I'm sorry that you feel that way but more often than not when asked about extensions it's because we haven't been able to reproduce the issue and we haven't had any other reports when if it was a site wide issue we should have received 100s of other tickets on the same situation. Unfortunately extensions can and do cause a lot of interference and if you check out the following Status post this is just the tip of the iceberg as to what sort of issues can and are caused by extensions. :)

[link]
Reply
:iconfarewell-spring:
=Farewell-Spring Feb 17, 2012  Hobbyist Traditional Artist
I didn't say extensions don't cause any issues. What I'm trying to say here is that that shouldn't be the automatic response because then you're just acting like a machine instead of a human being, if I wanted an automatic answer I wouldn't be contacting a human, when someone asks something you need to read, analize and comprehend what they say, and answer accordingly, not with a complete copy/paste response that's unrelated to their issue(copy/paste responses are not bad, but they need to be adjusted to the situation).

The topic here is not extensions or whatever else, the topic here is Customer Service and unfortunately, in my opinion, you aren't doing a very good job at it, the responses are not accurate and they're too canned. It seems like you just want to get tickets out of the queue, not actually resolve people's issues.
Reply
:iconfourteenthstar:
Hi,
I'm looking at your ticket right now and I see completely different communication taking place. You were advised that the version of Safari which you were using was not one which we supported, and then we never heard from you for a while, so you were asked to provide additional information or the ticket would be closed. You never replied until the ticket was marked as resolved after the standard 14 days no reply period. You then replied and thanked us.

If you log into the support page, you can review your ticket again and view this yourself :)

I trust you have updated your outdated OS X and Safari meantime, as this will have resolved any issues which you were having previously.

Hope this helps and clarifies any confusion,
Fiona
Reply
:iconpootwo:
"I'll see what I can do on my end and let you know. Odd though that this was only a recent issue and I'm having the same issue on my iPad. Thanks anyway!"

After explaining that the issue was happening on my latest version of safari on iPad, when both had been working and it was "only a recent issue," I received no response for 10 days and then it was closed. Then I received a message asking me to check "resolved."

Even after updating my iOS on my iPad, the issue remains. I felt that my issue had been tossed aside, so I gave up and simply checked the box when asked to do so. I'll be getting a new Mac soon, and hopefully it won't be an issue then, but I still feel it was handled poorly.
Reply
:iconlore-of-destiny:
~Lore-Of-Destiny Feb 14, 2012  Professional Digital Artist
Somewhere in the middle of 2011 I sent a report and I didn't even get a reply.
Reply
:iconfarewell-spring:
=Farewell-Spring Feb 17, 2012  Hobbyist Traditional Artist
:lol: I have always received response from the help desk, usually the response is really bad but at least they respond... but the "report deviation" link is a different story, I sent some reports there and didn't receive response...
Reply
:iconewm:
$ewm Feb 14, 2012  Hobbyist Photographer
Hi there, I checked our records in the Help Desk to see where your ticket went to and I don't see any results for tickets sent in by you. Are you sure you didn't use the report violation button on a deviation as that would go to the Moderation Desk which is entirely different. :)
Reply
:iconlore-of-destiny:
~Lore-Of-Destiny Feb 14, 2012  Professional Digital Artist
Wherever it went, it doesn't justify the fact that I didn't get a reply, that's all I'm saying.
Reply
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