Wed 31 Dec 1969
Each day starts approximately the same: stretch, shower, show up for work. But when you’re a member of Second Life’s Resident Experience Support Inworld (RESI) team, where it goes from there is anyone’s guess.
As the first point of contact for Residents with premium accounts or with basic accounts (with problems that have special circumstances), the RESI team helps with it all. From assisting new Residents to reprimanding the naughty, this team handles a wide variety of issues each and every day.
The most common requests aren’t unique to the enhanced needs of landowners and business owners, but are instead almost universally experienced by all SL Residents, such as: “I bought a hat in SL and now I just have a cube on my head with a picture of the hat on it! Please help!”
“Unpacking boxes, outfitting avatars, and generally becoming acquainted with Second Life can be really confusing for new Residents, so we first point them to the comprehensive resources available through the Knowledge Base and the Support Portal,” says Harmony Linden, RESI team manager.
Throughout the day, a portion of the RESI team deals with abuse reports and others handle Residents’ support needs via tickets and live chats while simultaneously updating the status blog as needed. If there is a current problem in SL, they’re the first to know and first to get the word out to Residents.
Many of the RESI team members have been involved with Linden Lab and Second Life for a long time and serve as SL historians–remembering SL’s weirdest bugs, how they were fixed, and their own coolest experiences as well.
“There are few products or services out there that inspire as much passion among their customers as Second Life,” Harmony adds. “Because we are all Residents too, we understand how important it is that everything works as it should. We too have lost our hair during a teleport! We truly have empathy for our Residents when they’re in need of some help. I’m very lucky that I have this fantastic, responsive team and we’re also very lucky to have such passionate customers.”
The members of the RESI team see themselves as Resident advocates within Linden Lab, sharing their experiences to help in the ongoing development of SL. To ensure that the team is up to date on any bug fixes or changes on SL, they regularly invite internal guest speakers to join them for team meetings. While they get the latest information to pass along to Residents, they also pass along Residents’ stories.
“By participating in these meetings, the RESI team is able to accomplish a great deal for our Residents,” says Teeple Linden, RESI team supervisor. “We get the training we need to answer our Residents’ questions and we’re able to contribute a strong dose of anecdotal feedback to help make changes within the Lab.”
The whole RESI team–along with everyone else within Customer Relations–is working to make Second Life Support more visible among Residents and fellow employees at Linden Lab. Increased communication (like this blog, for example) is the key to making sure that we’re supporting the needs of our Residents every day in the life at the Lab.
10 Things you probably didn’t know about the RESI team
1. They love our Residents.
2. They are our Residents. Every member of the RESI team was a SL Resident before joining Linden Lab.
3. They love exploring SL. (In a recent team outing, they all went fishing and one team member with exceptional fishing skillz was even able to catch an ultra-rare LOLcat fish.)
4. In the month of April alone, they handled 5,736 chats, 3,200 tickets, and 15,079 abuse reports.
5. Team members are distributed across five countries and six time zones for 24/7 support and can instantly convert time from their time zone into Pacific time (or SLT) in their heads.
6. They came from a variety of backgrounds, such as law enforcement, graphic design, support, bartending, animal rescue, managing restaurants, and RL building construction.
7. They have some awesome avatars, including: a parakeet, space hog, Siamese cat, tiny butterfly, giant crane (not the bird–the other kind of crane), big fluffy bunny, and a puppet.
8. 90% of them work from home (PJs optional) and keep in touch constantly through a diverse assortment of methods, including SL and IRC.
9. Because the same people handle chats and tickets, submitting a ticket and then coming into chat to inquire about its status actually slows down the process.
10. They like LOLcats and unicorns.
Original post by courtney@lindenlab.com
