Avia Games Customer Service — Expert Operational Guide

Executive summary and service philosophy

Customer service for Avia Games must balance rapid in-game support, transactional issues (purchases/refunds), and community management across social channels. A best-practice target is a mean first-response time (FRT) under 60 minutes for email/ticketing, under 10 minutes for live chat/in-game support, and sub-2-minute averages for voice or phone queues during peak hours. These targets align with top-tier mobile and PC game studios and reflect player expectations for realtime experiences.

Adopt a “player-first, data-driven” philosophy: prioritize friction removal for purchases and access, ensure safety/moderation policies are transparent, and measure impact by retention lift and Net Promoter Score (NPS). Benchmarks to track: NPS (industry midline ~20–40, top performers >50), Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) >85% for resolved tickets, and first-contact resolution (FCR) target ≥70% for non-technical issues.

Support channels and accessibility

Offer a multi-channel stack combining in-game support, email/ticketing, live chat, phone, and public community moderation. Each channel serves distinct use cases: in-game for session-affecting bugs and bans; email for purchase disputes and legal requests; live chat for onboarding/payment troubleshooting; voice for VIP/enterprise partners. Ensure channel availability is explicit: e.g., in-game 24/7 basic triage, phone 09:00–21:00 local time, and email SLA 72 hours for non-critical cases.

• Recommended channel configuration: In-game support SDK + Zendesk/Helpscout ticketing; Intercom/LiveChat for web/live chat; Twilio or VoIP partner for phone; Discord/Reddit + moderation tools for community.
• Accessibility and localization: provide support in at least English, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, and Mandarin for markets with >5% DAU; use professional localization (not machine-only) for legal/policy texts; aim for SLA parity across languages with triage queues.
• Operational hours and handoffs: define regional shifts (UTC offsets), use follow-the-sun model for 24/7 critical triage, and document escalation matrices with RTO (recovery time objective) targets: critical incidents RTO <2 hours, major incidents RTO <8 hours.

Team structure, staffing and costs

Organize support into three tiers: Tier 0 (self-serve + bots), Tier 1 (generalist agents), Tier 2 (technical/game ops specialists). Typical staffing ratios vary: rule of thumb 1 Tier 1 agent per 1,000–5,000 Daily Active Users (DAU) depending on automation and product maturity. For a mid-size title with 100,000 DAU, plan 20–80 Tier 1 agents with 6–12 Tier 2 engineers on-call.

Budgeting: agent fully-burdened cost varies widely by region — estimate $25–$45/hour in North America/Western Europe, $8–$20/hour in Eastern Europe/Latin America/Asia-Pacific outsourced hubs. For a 24/7 operation supporting 100k DAU, annual labor budget ballpark: $600k–$2.5M depending on hiring model (in-house vs nearshore). Include software costs: ticketing platform $5k–$50k/year; in-game support SDK licensing $10k–$80k/year; workforce management tools $3k–$20k/year.

Service level agreements (SLAs) and escalation flow

Define clear SLAs by ticket priority. Example SLA matrix: Critical (game-blocking, security breach) — initial response ≤15 minutes, resolution ≤24 hours; High (payment reversal, account compromise) — initial response ≤1 hour, resolution ≤72 hours; Medium (non-blocking bugs) — initial response ≤24 hours, resolution ≤7 days; Low (feedback) — response ≤72 hours. Publish these SLAs on your support portal to manage expectations and reduce repeat contacts.

Escalation paths must be explicit: agent → team lead (15–60 minutes) → game ops/engineering on-call (1–4 hours) → executive incident comms (4–12 hours). Maintain a documented incident playbook with contact points (names, phone/VoIP numbers, and pager rotations) updated quarterly. Log every escalation step in the ticket to support postmortems and SLA compliance audits.

Technical support, logs and GDPR/consumer compliance

Effective technical troubleshooting relies on standardized logs and reproduction data. Require automated log capture linking player ID, session ID, device info (OS version, GPU model), game version, and network metrics (latency, packet loss). Retain logs for at least 90 days for operational debugging; extend to 12 months for billing disputes. Use hashed personal identifiers where possible to comply with privacy laws.

Consumer compliance: adhere to platform-specific refund rules (Apple App Store and Google Play often mediate purchase disputes; Steam refunds within 14 days and <2 hours of play is typical). For EU/UK customers, comply with consumer protection timelines (14-day cooling-off plus digital content exceptions). Implement a GDPR/CCPA-ready data subject request (DSR) workflow with clear SLA (e.g., acknowledge within 3 days, fulfill within 30 days) and a published privacy contact email on the support site.

Quality assurance, metrics and compensation policies

Measure both quantitative and qualitative KPIs: FRT, FCR, CSAT, NPS, ticket backlog, escalations per 1k DAU, and average handle time (AHT). Aim for CSAT ≥85% and FCR ≥70% for consumer-facing tickets; monitor trends weekly and conduct root-cause analyses monthly. Run voice/chat QA sampling at a 3–5% ticket rate to maintain quality and coach agents based on rubric scores.

Refund and compensation policy should be explicit and tiered: automated micro-refunds for in-game currency issues ($0.99–$9.99) processed within 3–7 business days; manual review for purchases >$50 requiring proof and 7–14 business day resolution. Maintain a ledger for goodwill credits (virtual currency) with monthly reconciliation to financial records to prevent fraud or unbalanced liabilities.

Practical templates and contact structure (examples)

Support portal layout: support.aviagames.example.com (use canonical support domain). Contact templates: standard email subject “Order #[order_id] — Purchase failed on [date]” and include required fields: player ID, device, receipt screenshot, UTC timestamp. Use templated responses for common categories to reduce AHT while personalizing opening and closing lines.

Example contact directory (template values): Support HQ: 1 Support Way, Suite 200, Example City, EX 10001; Phone (US toll-free): +1-800-555-0123; Email: [email protected]; Business: [email protected]. Note these are templates — replace with your corporate/legal address and verified phone numbers before publishing.