mark’s blog

In the next week or so Second Life support will leave its current transitional phase and we will implement a significant step in the ongoing changes to support services in Second Life. As we have grown we have struggled to support our Residents in the best way possible. After many months of feedback and input from the Residents, and software implementation and design work on our side, we are finally ready to launch the first part of these changes.

What’s different?
Initially you will access the support portal through the website. As we get further down the road you will access this through the F1 help key in the viewer.

Basic Accounts: Basic accounts that were free or paid a flat, non-recurring fee of US$.9.95 will have access to the revamped Knowledge Base and solution finder. Public Help Island is also available inworld.

In addition, you will be able to submit a support ticket if:
- You get stuck while creating a Second Life account
- You are getting an error message that states you cannot log-in from your location
- Your account has been disabled and you need it reactivated
- You need to report a region being offline
- You are an estate manager and need to request a rollback

You can access all of these resources through the Support Portal. You will also have full access to billing support when needed through the billing phone line.

Premium Accounts: Premium accounts that pay a membership fee monthly, quarterly or annually get further access. They can:
-Access the Knowledge Base and solution finder
-Submit a support ticket
-Have a live chat session with a support team member
-Have access to their own personalized support history page which tracks all ticket and correspondence, as well as live text chat session for later reference and to monitor progress
These services will initially be available through the Support Portal on the website.

Concierge Accounts: Concierge clients (US$125 per month or greater in Land fees, mainland or private estate) have access to the above services plus:
-Dedicated phone line currently with 17/5 coverage and moving to 24/7 shortly
-Live text chat and ticketing coverage with extended hours
-Monitoring of rollback requests17/7 with grid back up the hours we aren’t yet covering
You can access those services through the Support Portal on the website.

What prompted this change?
About 9 months ago we started looking at what would happen to support when we had a community 2, 3, 10 or even 100 times bigger than we had then. As part of that work Robin and I held a series of gatherings with Residents to gather feedback from anyone who was interested in discussing the future of support in Second Life.

During these meetings we also introduced the idea of tiered support levels, to great response. The general consensus at both the Lab and inworld was that this model makes good sense. Because Linden Lab is a both a community and a business, we must consider both what makes sense for us financially and what makes sense for the community in terms of available support.

Through those meetings, office hours and other Resident interactions, you have made it clear to us that you expect excellent support, particularly for those who have invested in Second Life through their subscriptions and their land purchases. We of course want to provide that to you, and we believe that tiered support will allow us to be more responsive, more focused and more attentive. As we solve problems for one Resident, many of those solutions will benefit the entire community through inclusion in the Knowledge Base and Solution Finder.

To further that aim, we have invested in both a Knowledge Base Editor and a Technical Writer to clean up the current Knowledge Base for transition, and to allow us to speedily add pertinent knowledge when you need to find answers quickly.

What we are implementing now is only the beginning, I will provide further detail of each support option in further posts. As we progress and identify needs we will enable other support options and tiers as it makes sense based on the growth of the Second Life population. We’ll open up avenues for the community to contribute through submissions to the Knowledge Base, and by holding regular meetings inworld in small groups to solicit feedback. We believe this approach will help us continue to develop support services in a way that benefits the community as a whole.

Thank you for your continued patience as we grow. We are excited to be able to offer you this greatly improved service, and are looking forward to continued positive changes in the future.

Courtesy of blog.secondlife.com