Steam might be one of the big name in PC digital distribution, but as many have found out their customer service has found to be at times... lacking. Most recently there has even been a post on the /r/steam Reddit about someone willing to seek legal action for the lack of response to their support ticket about a compromised account that had been left untouched for half a YEAR. Ouch.
Fortunately, it seems that Valve have recognised that work needs to be done.
"We started by realising we had a lot of software to write to build a new support system," says Valve's Erik Johnson in an interview. "The first feature that came of that was the ability to get refunds of purchases made on Steam. If a customer buys something they don’t like, they can get their money back in a pretty transparent way. We think that’s a good feature, but we don’t think it was the fix for support. It had a lot more work behind it that was long-term thinking than just refunds."
Next step has been working on account security and theft, with updates coming to the mobile app and two-step authentication being put in place to try and help. They've also tried bringing in third-party companies to help, but found that because they were more focused on their numbers Valve have opted to instead provide better in-house training and solutions.
"It’s a function of training up more and more people answer customer issues," explains Johnson. "We’re not there yet. It’s getting better internally; it’s just that it hasn’t yet translated to great support for users. We’re gonna get there, though.”