in this issue
The Power of Technology to Sustain Growth
By: Execs In The Know
KIA Online Community Member Spotlight: Jean-Marc Codsi, Wargaming.net
When COVID-19 hit, President and General Manager for Wargaming.net Jean-Marc Codsi and his team sprang into action to continue to support their highly engaged player community and the growth they’ve experienced due to individuals mandated to stay at home.
Codsi makes sure all his teams are working in harmony, ensuring their games are in line with the market expectations and the growth of the business.
He joined Wargaming.net in 2016 to help transform the customer experience (CX). Codsi’s initial focus was to support the business by developing a stronger CX strategy, implementing state-of-the-art technology to fuel the strategy, and put the teams together to support the player experience. If you ask him, he will say, “It’s been a great ride!”
When you build a solid customer experience (CX) foundation, it puts you in a strong position to respond and adapt to changing times. Here is how Wargaming.net evolved in response to COVID-19.
Execs In The Know (EITK): I understand Wargaming.net is a leader in the free-to-play gaming market and has been in existence for 20 years. Tell me more about Wargaming.net and your philosophy for leading customer experience.
Jean-Marc Codsi: Yes, Wargaming.net is leading the online strategic massive multiplayer online (MMO) gaming segment. I’ve discovered it to be the most engaged customer base I have ever seen. Considering that people can play for free, you would expect a short tenure and fast churn, however, that is not the case with our players. The game is hard to master, and it takes a considerable investment of time to get good at it, but once you get there, you feel like you are part of a special club.
With this deep-seated loyalty, the approach to customer experience is very different. When you leverage this fantastic energy, it’s full of opportunities. But, like everything, there are also pitfalls if you deliver a vanilla customer care solution.
EITK: In recent months, despite COVID-19, I understand Wargaming.net grew. How did Wargaming.net support the growth of the business?
Jean-Marc: Yes, the gaming industry actually grew as a result of people staying home. We saw a significant increase in playing time, number of battles, and number of lapsed players that came back to the game.
Generally, March and April are slower months for us, but not this year! To support this growth, our customer care teams had to quickly re-invent themselves, work close with our outsourced partners, and leverage technology everywhere possible.
We saw an increase in certain contact types which include resetting passwords for people coming back to the game and addressing players’ technology issues due to new features or bugs in new releases – all which were quickly resolved and replied to in mass. The teams did very well under the circumstances.
EITK: What new and/or existing customer support strategies helped you respond to the demand from the business growth?
Jean-Marc: We took advantage of our global footprint to the full extent. Wargaming.net has approximately 4,500 employees in 18 different locations across the globe and we were already well on our way having all our state-of-the-art technologies in place when COVID-19 hit. In addition to our foundational technology stack, we had played with some bots and had a some very basic artificial intelligence (AI) in place, but they were very anecdotal or in very early stages of implementation. So, when COVID-19 changed the world, we benefited from our current technology position and we moved quickly to get the current and new technologies vastly adopted across our global footprint.
We have now globalized our technology, our outsourced partners, and most of our processes. Our global footprint enabled us to move quickly and leverage our people resources wherever they were in the world. When I look at what is being automated now and the speed at which things are being automated, including the AI on the website and what we are doing in the contact centers – AI and bots are being used at scale.
As a result of COVID-19, we’ve discovered the power of technology and we didn’t have to compromise the customer experience. Now, and into the foreseeable future, AI is a key part of our suite of solutions, not just a crisis management tool.
EITK: How did you keep a pulse on the voice of the customer (VoC) during these rapidly changing times?
Jean-Marc: Our customers are very vocal and we hear their voices in the forums, social media, etc. A few years ago, we implemented VoC tools such as Clarabridge and Brandwatch, but then realized that our community and development teams were really in tune with the player community and picked up these signals through the forums.
This highly engaged player community knows the game more than anyone. Some of these players who play the game for several hours a day and several days a week will sometimes know the game more than most of the internal folks. So, the customer care organization is dependent on the technology for answers. AI is now pushing that information as opposed to someone trying to manufacture the information.
EITK: Did anything have to change in the way you manage and lead your customer service and support teams?
Jean-Marc: Change is constant. COVID-19 sent everyone home, including our agents. We made some changes to our current underlying technology such as AI, looked to our crowd sourcing/servicing model to utilize the extremely knowledgeable player-base as a flexible yet key part of customer care organization, and we implemented work-from-home for everybody. These are tectonic changes which we also must consider as we move forward.
We also identified some emerging geographies in the East which were not previously on our customer care radar. Now, we are considering these geographies as our possible next frontier in the European Union.
EITK: What are some of your biggest initiatives for the remainder of 2020?
Jean-Marc: We will be focused on capitalizing on the growth of our player base and give them enough content to continue enjoy the game post COVID-19.
We also need to face the reality of the current economic crisis and the consequences. We have some signs that online video games might not be the first expenses people will sacrifice but we are cautiously optimistic.
We also need to consider how we, as a company, will respond to our employees wishes to continue working from home, however, we care a lot about the social aspect of our business and want to maintain this social link to the workplace.
EITK: Are these the same initiatives you started with in 2020? Tell me how COVID-19 changed/did not change your initiatives for 2020?
Jean-Marc: The priorities have changed. We have adapted to the new reality, we’ve built some scenarios, and we will carefully follow the evolution of this pandemic. One thing is certain, we must build more agility in the way we work, as flexibility and adaptability is what is currently driving us.
Thank you to Jean-Marc for providing leadership insights into effective strategies, the gaming industry, and Wargaming.net.
To meet Jean-Marc or for more Q&A interviews like this, join the Execs In The Know Online Community – “KIA” to access public and member only Q&A interviews and more. EITK’s Online Community – “KIA” is an exclusive online community for CX Leaders to collaborate and innovate. LEARN MORE
