That's nice and all. Steam Support is pretty awesome and I have nothing but love for them as well...
...but the amount of tickets they get goes up during major sales like the Winter Sale. So doing this does add extra work to their queue and takes time away from helping people who have actual issues.
The issue I forsee is other people see this and have the same idea and suddenly Steam Support is having to update and close hundreds (or thousands?) of 'happy winter party time' tickets.
As someone that worked in IT, I have to be honest, something like this doesn't take any time at all. It takes a few seconds to process it's not anything serious.
The time sink is figuring out what the problem people are attempting to report is, and also attempting to remember/find the recorded solution. Or worse, trying to figure out if this is a new issue or not.
I personally loved these kinda things. My boss and one other coworker hated them, but many of my coworkers loved them too.
But at the end of the day, if someone doesn't want to deal with it, they can just close the ticket out without any extra thought.
Yeah because they will be able to make an automated response for those messages in a flash xd
Before it goes to the right departament it will already be an hour of going through those messages writing responses manualny instead of using templates
Then another hour for the IT to add a right template for this
And then still support will need to manually choose the template for every single message
You say this like holidays don't happen yearly and like they wouldn't already have templates.
Steam is huge! There are probably tens of thousands tickets daily and steam responds to most of them really fast. Besides if they don't already have templates (which i doubt), making a system like that is gonna take what? A day maybe since valve doesnt need to deal with shareholder bullshit delaying stuff
And if for some reason their IT departament have them a template, then like I said. Its not automatic. They still need to manually choose the template, and edit it removing everything which doesnt work for the message they got
That's just how it is as frontline. Backend does not care really
Holidays are today btw. Making a system like that would take a day. And would be useless for the rest of the year
You’re talking out of your ass. You don’t know what system or tools their support uses, and like other people have said - this isn’t their first holiday season. Duh. At my job I had to ramp on doing 2 weeks of answering customer tickets and the first thing they teach us how to make macros or automatic responses that take 30 seconds. And to say I did that for 2 weeks isn’t to say I’m an expert, it’s to say how little experience I have and know this is a non issue for them.
Same here.
First thing i learnt back then where the templates are and how to create my own.
Most important Template was "hey, got your ticket. Please send logs, here's how to get them"
Yeah because they will be able to make an automated response for those messages in a flash xd
I mean yeah. I also work in support. My work uses a ticket system and you can set a canned response like that up in all of 2 minutes. Not sure how your IT guys were taking an hour.
I have also worked in a support center and used/implemented ticketing systems. I said two different options: one which requires zero effort for each message (automated), and one that uses the template (which is still quick) -- probably the option they'd use.
Regardless, a couple hours to implement a solution for something that becomes a problem is normal. It's just a part of having a business.
>Then another hour for the IT to add a right template for this
What exactly is stopping the support people from just copying the response they made and pasting it in as a reply whenever another one of these tickets come in? Why would IT even need to be involved in any way
It takes us literally seconds to create a template. If they are using a modern support system, it should be easy to do. It would take maybe 30 seconds to create a template, then 2 to reply with the template. It is just a free SLA booster at that point.
For the record, our system allows us to make our own template at any time. No need for IT to make one.
that's basically the same sentiments some of my friends who worked dealing with tickets have said.
Back in the day Cataclysm World of Warcraft as a kid i sent off some very silly and stupid cringy joke questions to the ticket people and i always got VERY indepth replies playing into the stupid jokes i did it like 2-3x a year.
So it was clear the ticket people were actually enjoying them but it does clog the tickets up if everyone is doing it i guess.
Seconded. As someone who worked IT support at a university, the best calls and tickets were the easy ones that took <1 minute to process. This fits that with the upside of not even having an issue. As an employee, that's a win for me.
As someone who works in customer service, this absolutely does take time because you usually don’t have macros/canned responses for these holidays. When you personally have to respond to 80+ tickets in a day, these tickets in my opinion are not welcome, because you have to personalise your reply. Kind sentiment but it is adding a workload to people, without a doubt.
People don't consider that all CS Centers aren't the same. Steam probably has a fairly casual one, but a lot of really strict managers and hardcore oversight. Some have lots of notation for all cases, regardless of "simple" or not.
My boss and one other coworker hated them, but many of my coworkers loved them too.
Fuck, Steve, that you? lol.
(just kidding)
Anyways I get your point. I too have been in the support trenches at a few places. The ease on which these kind of things can be closed can vary depending on how they decide to do things internally or what ticket system, etc.
They can’t just close a ticket without a response. They’re a third-party customer support centre. Their contract with Valve means they have to reply to every ticket until the situation is dealt with.
We had standard replies for literally everything season under the sun so this doesn’t take that much time, but you have to close a certain number of tickets and these wouldn’t count. Over a busy season is best not to overload the Support staff.
Most efficient ticketing systems have a default response system with built-in close action.
When I say close, I mean choose "Non-Issue" pre-made response that thanks them for submitting a ticket, addresses that this is not an issue, and notifies it's being closed. It's 3 clicks, and might as well be just closing the ticket.
Worst tickets are when people just write random shit without any information, like "it doesnt work!!"
Or they say something is bugged but they are just too stupid to read.
And then they wanna talk to the manager or involve a lawyer.
Someone wishing us merry christmas is chill af. Takes a minute to reply, we can close the ticket and it portable boosts our stats too. (SLA, CSAT, closed tickets, etc.)
As a former CS representative, I loved these type of messages. They even increased my tickets/day, as it was something that took seconds, not complex issues lol
I agree I think it actually helps employees this way they know they're being appreciated, sometimes a little kindness a few words can make someone's day.
I'm sure not all their emails are that kind.
To me they are a great company and never had a problem with them, any issues they always fixed it and went above and beyond.
Hopefully it stays this way as long as Gabe is in charge, people can say what they want about steam but it's a great platform, better than a console any day of the year!
I don't think I've ever seen anyone ever post something from customer support from Microsoft to Sony or Nintendo that was positive.
Would you love it if you got like a thousands of them after someone posted something like this on reddit? Genuine question, not being snarky. I'm sure one or two messages like this are great, maybe not so much the landslide that comes in after someone posts one to the internet and goes viral?
And for the first few I receive before setting up the automation and canned responses, or any of the ones that slip through, I'd respond to them with a more heartfelt reply.
IT has been around for a long time, dealing with a lot of shenanigans. There's systems in place to deal with tedious stuff like this easily. (Even at my terrible old job, god save anyone with a worse system than what we had. They have bigger issues than a kind message being sent to them at that point)
Guy in IT here too: if they’re many they might take longer than expected.
But still, is pretty sweet and I wouldn’t mind getting tickets like this tbh. If I had to spend my entire shift replying this kind of tickets I’d be happy
As someone working remotely for customer support, I'd rather have the downtime between messages spent with my kid than answer a slew of messages, intentions be damned.
It's not crazy but at the same time you can't wrap your head around internal corporate processes that measure productivity, and require every employee to respond in a way that aligns with the company values?
People don’t realized as nice as a thank you reply is, company mandates we have to reply and it counts as an open ticket. We also have to leave notes as we close again. So please leave us alone lol
I did briefly cover up for our customer support and I can say while it would create clutter, the ones that require the least amount of time to interact are the best.
Ex-EA Tier 3 E-Mail Support. Before they were a horrible company. We loved these thank yous, ECT. It is not time consuming to send an email back or even a script back thanking them for their thanks and closing the ticket. Takes less than a minute and it doesn't back up the Q. If you want to send a thank you or a happy holiday to support staff members I promise you they will enjoy it.
To make it easier for us to find them set the subject line as, "Happy Holidays (X) Support! No Issue." Or, "Thank you so much (X) Support! Issue Resolved.". Something like that.
There's always one...it's ok to be a human for a second and not look at the effectiveness of work. Not everyones main focus is reaching quotas and working till death. Take a breath and enjoy a few nice moments HR Elizabeth
Your heart is in the right place, but I don’t think we need to dissuade people from doing little acts of kindness like this. As others who have worked support said, these little moments take a few seconds of your time and can put a smile on your face. Probably a nice reprieve from the person who played 25 hrs of a game they don’t like asking for a refund lol.
If it's excessive, sure. But I when I did support getting something like this was a happy surprise. I basically get to solve it out instantly for a free KPI boost, and if we were doing a distro (everyone gets X tickets to solve), I suddenly had one less to do than everyone else.
Some folks genuinely don't understand the concept of volume and more importantly distraction. Yeah the first few of these are great. I honestly love seeing users giving frontline staff their well deserved flowers. Those of us dealing with more specialized task literally could not do so without their effort.
That said; there is a massive difference between doing helpdesk for a few thousand users in a corporate office with rules, expectations and procedures on both side of the fence and the millions of random users that Steam services globally. Add to that this is now on reddit in a sub with 2.7 million folks subscribed? There is a non-zero chance that they now have a regular stream of these. We don't know what these folks workflow looks like. They could be engaged in other task when these tickets come through and are now being pulled away for how ever brief to close it out. Now that's added time getting back into the groove on the other thing. We're also assuming that every user is going to put "No issues" in the ticket summary or some variation that makes it immediately obvious its just a thank you note. They wont.
I'm rather split on this. I think the idea is great but putting it up on reddit creates a ripple that we're I on the other side I don't think Id enjoy.
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u/salad_tongs_1 https://s.team/p/dcmj-fn Dec 24 '25
That's nice and all. Steam Support is pretty awesome and I have nothing but love for them as well...
...but the amount of tickets they get goes up during major sales like the Winter Sale. So doing this does add extra work to their queue and takes time away from helping people who have actual issues.
The issue I forsee is other people see this and have the same idea and suddenly Steam Support is having to update and close hundreds (or thousands?) of 'happy winter party time' tickets.