What do cats, KeyForge, and deltas have in common? They’re each trying to better serve their customers. Today I’ll also share a few ways that customers can help publishers serve them better.
3 Ways to Better Serve Customers
- Frank West is currently running a campaign for Race to the Raft, and he wrote a great article about a few ways his campaign puts backers first. Among his techniques are including shipping and taxes during his campaign, increasing the shipping subsidy as the weight of any package increases, and posting risky reviews that “help people with concerns make decisions [which is] more beneficial to the customer and truly tests the boundaries of your game’s audience.”
- There’s a recent article from Ghost Galaxy about KeyForge that delves into concerns about some new tournament formats they’re exploring. I thought it was a great response from a publisher (the Covenant Cast agrees), and it was a good reminder for me to look at each of our products in terms of how appealing and welcoming they can be for new gamers and experienced gamers alike.
- The current Kickstarter for Delta from Game Brewer is doing something with the intention of serving customers, but I think it might be backfiring a bit. From what I can tell, Game Brewer has a membership program (like the Stonemaier Champion program) that gives subscribers a discount (in their case, 25%). Such programs make crowdfunding a bit tricky, because you need a way to offer the discount on the crowdfunding platform. Delta does this by offering a $55 reward level to subscribers only and a $75 pledge level for everyone else. They’re trying to invite their subscribers into the campaign (and potentially invite other backers to become subscriber)s, yet there’s something about it that seems to be less welcoming than they’d hoped, as only 60 backers have pledged at the subscriber level after 1 week.
2 Ways Customers Can Help Publishers Serve Them Better
- If you have a rules question about a specific card, when you post the question in a public forum (BoardGameGeek, website FAQ, Facebook group, Discord, etc), please post the full text of the card as part of the question. This will significantly increase the speed at which people can answer the question–you probably have the card right in front of you while you’re asking the question, while we need to hunt it down (and may not even have immediate access to it). If you’re posting in a place that accepts photos, that’s great too.
- If you want to know about a product’s availability in another language, please contact that language’s publisher. It’s their information to provide as they wish. The same applies if you want, say, an expansion to exist in your preferred language–let that localized publisher know!
Do you have a recent example of a company that served you particularly well?
Also read:
- The 6 Core Philosophies for Great Customer Service
- 4 More Elements of Great Customer Service
- Hip Surgery, Organization, and Customer-Facing Service
- An Open Letter to Gamers from a Growing Publishing Company
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1 Comment on “3 Ways to Better Serve Customers and 2 Ways Customers Can Help Publishers Serve Them”
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If you ask a question about a specific card or ability, please type the exact text in your comment to help facilitate a speedy and precise answer.
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As someone who frequently answers rules questions on boardgamegeek, I want to echo the request to include full (accurate!) text of specific cards or abilities being asked about.
Sometimes I can google for the relevant text; sometimes I grab the game box, open it, dig through for the relevant type of component, then look through for the specific wording; but sometimes I just go off what the question says.
If I take the question’s word for what’s happening, then my answer is only going to be as accurate as the question – if the question gets the wording of the relevant text wrong, then my answer will be what would happen with that wording, not what should happen with the actual cards/rules.
If I look up the correct text, that costs me time and effort, and that makes me less keen to provide the answer.
Copying the text, or providing an image of it, makes answers faster and more accurate.