Linden Labs and the Failure of CRM

A concept that has become increasingly popular in business circles over the past decade is customer relationship management, or CRM. The idea is that it is cheaper to maintain an existing customer than it is to recruit a new one. In order to maintain existing customers you have to understand who your customers are, and how to keep them happy. In an earlier post, I ranted on about how Linden Labs does not seem to know who their customers are. So I won't go into that again. But, clearly, if you don't know who your customers are, it can't possibly know how to keep them happy. And yet, Linden Labs still attempts to do that through two misguided efforts which I will refer to simply as customer service and volunteer management.

Customer service in Second Life is abysmal at best. Polite follow up responses to emails in place of positive actions and good answers do not make good customer service. Solving customers problems does. I, personally, have had several completely frustrating interactions with their customer service. But, my stories pale compared to the one's I've heard from others. I have contacted customer service on some issues that should have been fairly routine. For example, I deleted an account that I wished to recover. The website, at the time, said you can recover deleted accounts for $9.95. I was willing to pay the amount for the specified service so it should have been fairly straightforward. But, after several email exchanges I gave up in frustration. Another time, I was interested in setting up a collection of accounts to use for workshops. Since the policy that was espoused on the website limited the number of accounts, I thought I should contact them and get permission. You would think that it would be in their interests to have people teach workshops in how to use SL. But, I received no response. When I asked in-world mentors (and even an in-world Linden), I was referred back to the website. Eventually, I just gave up. These are relatively minor instances but reflect the inadequacy of customer service. These were opportunities to engage with a customer and develop loyalty. Instead they managed to turn it around and develop alienation. So much for customer relationship management.

Volunteer management is an attempt to engage customers in-world. A team of Linden's called the Vteam manages a group of volunteers called Mentors. The idea is that by engaging volunteers you kill two birds with one stone. The volunteers have something useful to do while in world which increases their enjoyment. And they, in turn, help other, newer, users, which makes it easier for the newer users to become acculturated. In concept this is a great idea. In implementation it is sorely wanting. Over the next couple posts, I will continue ranting about customer service and volunteer management. And, then, I will turn it around and start making some suggestions on how they could do things better.