'We Have To Do Better,' Admits Valve After Receiving An 'F' In Customer Service

Valve Corporation has received an F in customer service and that has made the video game distribution and development company contemplative of the sorry state of affairs. The American company behind the premier digital PC game store scored an F rating from Better Business Bureau, or BBB.

BBB is a non-governmental and non-profit organisation that has been set up ostensibly to hold business accountable. It does so by rating companies according to various metrics, one of which is customer service. Valve's dismal rating was brought upon by 717 complaints against the company's Steam service, according to a PC Gamer report. The unregulated watchdog's complaint resolution system recorded that a majority of those complaints (503 to be precise) went unanswered by Valve.

However, the large number of unresolved cases could also be because the company may have resolved them without arbitration by BBB. This possibility is further bolstered by Valve's dismissal of the non-profit industry watchdog. Kotaku points out that the Steam owner prefers addressing user complaints through Reddit, Twitter, email and other mediums. It considers these forums as a more reliable means to connect with disgruntled customers than BBB. The publication spoke to Valve's Erik Johnson, the person in charge of Business Development, who downplayed the industry ratings organisation.

"The BBB is a far less useful proxy for customer issues than Reddit," Johnson said in a statement to Kotaku. "They don't provide us as useful of data as customers emailing us, posting on Reddit, posting on Twitter and so on.

Valve didn't restrict its response to dismissing BBB. It acknowledged that the presence of complaints indeed indicates that there's a problem with their customer service. Johnson admitted that the company's customer service support isn't "where it needs to be right now." He assured that shoring up the complaint resolution and overall customer support is the main focus for the company this year.

Valve aims to improve upon the faults by integrating customer support within the Steam client itself. Johnson reveals that the Valve is currently undertaking a "bunch of technical work" on the complaint resolution mechanism by going through the finer aspects such as raising support tickets and issue of refunds. These two areas have been a major bugbear for the company, with a large number of customers having issues with refunds.

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How long does it take for steam support to reply (Source: YouTube user MrArauzz)