[Case Study] How Smilegate Megaport achieved 88% automation rate in their customer support

• After introducing Alli as a customer support tool for their online games, Smilegate achieved an 88% AI response rate which resulted in a 30% reduction of simple (easily answered) questions from customers.
• They also achieved a 15% reduction in total number of customer support tickets, due to a big decrease in follow-up questions.
• Customer satisfaction skyrocketed after they launched a series of mini-games within the Alli answer bot.

Interview

For which games are you using Alli for customer support?

Currently Smilegate Megaport is using Alli for three online game titles: Tales Runner, SoulWorker and Epic Seven

The first, Tales Runner, is an online PC racing game where players race in various fairy tale themed courses with cute avatars. The game was launched in 2005 and even after 15 years it remains one of the most popular PC game titles we offer. SoulWorker is an action RPG game for PC with 3D cartoon graphics, featuring great visual effects and a dynamic screenplay. Last but not least is Epic Seven, which is a turn-based mobile RPG game with high-quality animation cutscenes. Epic Seven is using Alli for customer support in Korean, English, and Traditional Chinese.

What is the role of you and your team?

We design new customer support campaigns using Alli, add more Q&A using the “Candidates” tab, and continuously improve the answer bot chatflow inspired by analytics data such as overall usage and customer satisfaction rate. We manage and run all Alli campaigns with the ongoing support of Allganize. Designing and launching mini games using the Alli chatflow builder was also our work!

Why did you deploy a customer support answer bot?

To provide prompt answers to customer questions 24/7. We wanted to minimize the risk of customers dropping out due to lack of customer support when our customer support center is not operating.

At the same time, we wanted our customer representatives to focus more on complex issues while the bot takes care of simple, repetitive support questions - that way we can achieve a greater customer satisfaction rate.

Why did you choose Allganize and Alli?

The first demo convinced us that anyone can design answer bot campaigns using Alli - not just engineers. Alli's chatflow builder has an intuitive and easy-to-learn UI that its other competitors don't. Cost effectiveness was also important and Alli provides great features at a reasonable price, compared with other competitors.

We were also very satisfied with Allganize's prompt feedback and technical support when we were setting up Alli, and it assured us that Allganize was the right choice from the beginning.

Was there any difficulty while you were launching and operating Alli?

It was our first time designing chatbot campaigns, so we had to go through some learning to create a seamless chat flow. Sometimes when we thought that the flow was smooth, customers felt like the chat was ending at an unexpected moment. So we put in extra work to make sure that the conversation ended naturally - either by providing a solution or by transferring them to a human agent. Fortunately we had various types of analytics data from the Alli dashboard, which helped a lot.

When we first launched Alli, it was not easy to decide between multiple choice answers and text answers as a customer’s first input. We asked ourselves which would provide for a better customer experience. Now we don't need to worry about it anymore since Allganize has developed a feature which supports both at the same time. Having both of those options along with an autocomplete feature suggesting questions to customers as they type we arrived at an incredible 88% AI automation rate!

Are there any particular use cases for Alli that you’d like to talk about?

I guess the typical use case of an answer bot for customer support is answering questions to resolve customers' issues. We decided to play around with the dashboard and ended up creating some mini-games using only the Alli chatflow builder. It includes rock-paper-scissors, bulls and cows, a gacha simulator and a text-only RPG. We also utilized the Integrate node in the chatflow builder to support operations that cannot be done in Alli, and the games ran perfectly as expected.

The mini-games we introduced to our player communities scored an average of 1,400 active users a day and we received a lot of positive feedback.

Do you have any plans to extend the use of Alli even further?

For now we are planning a customized chatbot for specific cohorts of players. We would like to go beyond customer support and provide fully customized, case-specific chatflows for new customers, returning customers, etc.

Why do you think Alli is a great customer supporting bot for the gaming industry in particular?

As I mentioned before, the best part is that it works 24/7 and provides prompt resolution to customer issues. Also it is very easy to create new campaigns, and the dashboard offers various types of analytics. The combination of these factors allowed us to build a rich FAQ database in a very short period of time.

Sometimes, for example, we need to ask customers to fill out a form or request some files to resolve their issues. If we were to do this via email, there would usually be a number of back-and-forths before we got the right document. Alli prevents this by announcing necessary steps before a support ticket needs to be issued,  which makes for a much better user experience.

Do you feel a big difference since you’ve deployed Alli? What metrics are you tracking?

Before Alli, 70% of all support tickets we had to handle manually were something we could resolve by providing a simple piece of information. After we deployed Alli, the number of those simple questions decreased by over 30%.

Also, we used to ask our customers for more information or agreements to proceed and resolve their issues, which often meant that customers had to resubmit another ticket with the new info. But after Alli was deployed, the chatflow provided any necessary announcements and forms to fill before customers actually had to submit tickets, which led to a 15% decrease of the total number of tickets from customers.

How has your work changed since you’ve implemented Alli?

Since Alli started working 24/7 and reduced the number of simple questions from customers, we have been using our time to deal with more complex issues to improve support quality.

Also, we now understand our customers’ needs much better thanks to the analytics provided by Alli. We distribute this new information internally in the form of monthly reports specifically designed for the different departments we work with. It significantly impacts our priorities and strategy on a group level.

How have your customers reacted to Alli?

When we first made the announcement, we received some negative feedback because of the low public opinion of chat bots in general. But Alli has convinced customers ever since - providing quality FAQ suggestions and deploying new features fast based on their feedback.

Like I mentioned before, we designed a few mini-games (such as bulls and cows and a gacha simulator) on Alli and used them for community events, which has earned us a lot of good feedback. The participation rate is high and the players are enjoying themselves, judging from their social media posts. Originally brought on for customer support, Alli has proven to be a great tool for us to engage with our players and build brand loyalty.

How do you like working with Allganize as you operate and scale Alli?

We are very satisfied with Allganize's responsiveness to our questions, and how they consider our feedback when they come up with new features. We hope to continue this partnership to keep serving our players well using Alli. Thank you again for your help and support!

Who is Smilegate Megaport?

Smilegate is the game company behind CROSSFIRE, the most played FPS with over eight million concurrent players across the globe. CROSSFIRE is currently serviced in 80 countries throughout Asia, Europe, South and North American regions. Through CROSSFIRE, Smilegate have gained vast amount of industry insight. They continue to build on our success by developing new and exciting titles in a wide variety of genres such as FPS, MMORPG, and action fighter. With experience in operating and managing game services around the world, Smilegate is steadily laying the path to become a global company. Smilegate Megaport manages global game distribution and services for worldwide audience.

Learn More About Allganize's Technology

• Alli AnswerBot
• Cognitive Search
• NER API
• Review Analysis
• API Sentiment API
• Text Classification API