On Player Support Agent Hiring Profiles
Introduction
Let me begin by saying that what I am about to share isn’t a silver bullet and will require a lot of thoughtful work, observation, and revision to execute properly. There is no ideal Player Support Agent in the way that if we had a factory, we could just stamp them out. At the same time, I’m sympathetic to those whose job it is to attract talent. You want some idea of what a good fit for a particular role would be. Fair enough. Though what I’m going to recommend isn’t a silver bullet, hopefully you’ll find it more useful than a set of slightly modified superficial checkboxes.
It starts with my belief that we’re always looking for talent, even at entry-level roles like the customer service representative. The use of the word “talent” helps prevent the tendency to reduce these people to commodities valued in enterprise metrics. Perhaps most would agree with these sentiments, but verbal agreement is not the same as aligning work processes with beliefs. My hope is that you, dear reader, will be a part of making the magic of these beliefs into reality.
You’ll notice that none of the suggestions are gaming-specific. Despite what some people might tell you, there are instances where those narratives have led to bad hires. Hiring someone who’s a hardcore gamer doesn’t mean they’ll automatically be a great agent. A summary of what I’m about to share is as simple as “hire great people”.
This is also not a comprehensive document for hiring Player Support agents. It merely scratches the surface on a few of the systems and the powerful (but sometimes unfortunate) narratives in our industry.
Assumption - You’ve Covered the Basics
I am going to assume that everyone’s got the basics down. For example, things like typing speed, language fluency levels (though I think CEFR is broken by design), tool familiarity, company/game affinity, in and out of game disruptive behavior history, and background checks. These are things that are easily tested and evaluated or researched - the easy parts.
Categorization: Offensive and Passive Skills
I have chosen to categorize the competencies into “offensive” and “passive” skills primarily because I’ve played a lot of D&D and it just made sense for me to do it this way. Offensive skills are those competencies that can help an agent do well in this job when it comes to problem solving and directly interacting with players. Passive skills are those competencies that can help an agent cope with the rigors of the job over time, things like disposition and maturity.
Offensive Skills
Don’t treat this like a checklist, and certainly don’t look for all of them in one person. Think of it more as a pool of skills you will find in teams. You’re also not necessarily looking for experts in all of these competencies, it’s okay if someone has just taken a class, acquired a certification, or are self-taught. Business leaders, operations managers and recruiters need to stop thinking of their agents as interchangeable commodities. It’s damaging to the people involved and long-term business.
Communication - a strong communicator is helpful no matter what role you have at any company. It is required at all levels of play to be successful.
Critical Thinking and Analysis - something is always wrong. How good are you at finding the problems and thinking of solutions?
Economics - truly solid economics students have a solid grasp of human behavior and interaction with systems, rules, incentives, etc….
UI Design - do you know what good UI looks like? So much of our world is in tools and so much of the player experience involves interaction with your UIs.
UX Design - do you know what good UX looks like? Good UI is a part of good UX, but we need people who can think thoroughly about the holistic player experience.
Basic Statistics - we have so much data, everyone should know how to use it responsibly. Good data doesn’t guarantee good inferences from that data.
Clinical Psychology/Behavioral Economics - I am aware there are more lofty, unevidenced versions of these practices, but there are pockets of practitioners that operate like scientists and are focused on actual results and data. You want the latter.
Training, Teaching, Coaching, Education/Adult Education, Instructional Design - does this person know how to help others learn quickly?
Content Creation (including social media) - there’s a lot of people interested in social care and healthy engagement with support in social spaces. Creative and easier to consume support articles can level up self-help.
Handicrafts - sometimes we might want to make some cool stuff for our players. It’s nice to have people who can make beautiful, emotionally valuable things.
PR/Social Media Savvy - for obvious reasons, we’d prefer not to end up on reddit and if we do, we’d like to know how best to respond publicly. Social Care Agents.
Software Development - we always need customizations, integrations, and tools improvements. All the better if we don’t have to wait on other teams to build something.
People Management - because we always seem to have a shortage of good managers. They might have to wait a while to get promoted, but at least we know who to tap.
Project Management - an experiment or non-ticket work can be enhanced with good project management skills.
Passive Skills
Similar ideas apply here - you’re most likely not going to find these in everyone or in a single person, but having a team that has people who are like this is helpful. This is not to say that things not on this list have no value, but these are the ones that stand out to me.
Honesty
Giant Strength - strong tolerance for repetitious work
Stalwart
Conscientious
Collaboration and Teamwork - does this person play well with others?
Goblin Innovator - strong creative/innovative disposition, doesn’t mind explosions
Gnome Scientist - strong creative/innovative disposition, wary of safety
Stoneskin - can deal well with a daily barrage of negative emotions without taking things personally or taking it into themselves
Shadowform - mature integration of one’s dark side (especially handy if you’re a content moderator due to the psychological burden of handling the nastiest stuff all the time)
Self-awareness - underrated quality that proves someone is thoughtful, especially about how others experience them
Positively persistent - you’re not easily discouraged and when something doesn’t work, you enjoy looking for another angle of pursuit
You enjoy interacting with people (I don’t go with intro/extrovert because there’s muddiness for moderates on both sides)
Innkeeper’s Welcome - warmth of personality (some people say empathy, but I’m not sure how you even properly assess that. Also there’s confusion between empathy and sympathy, etc….) We also know that empathy doesn’t necessarily make a good agent either, but the narrative is so strong around this myth because it feels right.
Think in Terms of Specific Teams and Specific People
As a consequence of taking the view of these people as individual talent and not sacks of potatoes, you’ll notice that we are nudged to consider team compositions. As you hire and think of employee placements, the manager who will actually be supporting the agent should know what kinds of competencies would strengthen their team. In most places the recruiting team just plops a butt into a seat according to a general agent profile template. You can get away with this because it’s an entry-level role, but it’s not optimal for the teams and doesn’t help with the perception that the hiring company genuinely cares for people or has thoughtful hiring practices.
Conclusion: Hire Great People
So, hire great people. I hope at least some of what I wrote helps you. You might have picked up that I think the root of the challenges is really the broken practices of recruiting and HR. My friends know that I have a passion for these opportunity spaces, and part of me really wishes for a chance to start solving them. For me, it’s really about creating more human approaches to very complex work and respecting both the people and the difficulty of building great workplaces.
People are complex and therefore building great teams is complex. It’s hard to do well. So, please don’t take any criticisms I have of today’s trends as casual insults, but rather evidence that I care deeply about people and how they experience work.