In Better Business Bureau Grades of Virtual Worlds/MMOs, No Clear Relation Between Grade and Company Success

In a fairly heated post last week, metaverse developer and analyst Gwyneth Llewelyn took issue over Second Life developer Linden Lab's "F" rating with the Better Business Bureau -- a topic that was actually noted by Virtual World News last year, when the Lindens claimed the rating was outdated, based on service shortfalls from the company's early years. In any case, Gwyn's post inspired me to check the Better Business Bureau rating of several other virtual world/MMO-based companies. Interestingly, there's no discernible connection between a company's rating and the popularity/profitability of its world. Some popular virtual worlds have great BBB grades, and are successful; others get poor grades, and still do well.

For example:

Habbo Hotel, the web-based virtual world with about 16.5 million monthly unique users, developed by the Finnish company Sulake, has an A grade. Makena Technologies, developers of the 3D virtual world There, has an BBB grade of A-. Or rather "had", for notwithstanding this stellar grade, There was shut down last month. Zynga, the publishers of YoVille, the large social network-based virtual world (20 million monthly uniques on Facebook alone), has a pretty good B+ rating from the BBB. (This despite being at the center of a recent Silicon Valley controversy over offer-based revenue.)

How about companies with poor grades? Along with Linden Lab, Vivendi Games, publishers of the epically successful World of Warcraft, has an F grade from the BBB, based on "6 complaints filed against business" and "Failure to respond to 3 complaints filed against business". CCP, publishers of the successful niche MMO Eve Online, also has a BBB rating of F, based on "7 complaints filed against business" and "Failure to respond to 2 complaints filed against business." All three companies are profitable and have stable/growing user numbers, so it's difficult to know how indicative the BBB grade is to general customer satisfaction. (Obviously, that's no comfort to their aggrieved customers.) And in the case of World of Warcraft, it's quite possible customer complaints went unreturned because the company phone is buried under bags and bags of money.

Hat tip: Doreen Garrigus

Update, 9:30am: Galatea Gynoid points out an LA Times article suggesting controversy over the way BBB rates companies: "Better Business Bureau grades companies on a peculiar curve".

Comments

[Adric Antfarm]

Correct Hamlet, the system is not based on popularity, but on complaints and responding to the complaints.

[Mycroft]

Linden Lab should promote the customer service awards it receives. This is the quintessentially perfect way for LL to continually improve by showcasing customer service ratings provided by reputable independent organizations. The customer service awards given by each department will make excellent advertising campaigns. Each Second Life department can display their awards on their portal pages. For example:

Welcome to jira.secondlife.com -Top rated in Customer Satisfaction 2010 by J.D. Power and Associates.

[Adric Antfarm]

And hide the truth like locking premium accounts with a single billing issue while letting free ones exist from 1708 that have not been used since one inflates their the numbers, the other makes M angry.

I've heard some serious customer service nightmares and I've had to endure a call myself once to an overseas call center.

This is hardly an area they want Hamlet to press for them.

[Galatea Gynoid]

This is news?

http://articles.latimes.com/2009/jan/21/business/fi-lazarus21

The Better Business Bureau is a wonderful idea, poorly executed, incapable of scaling to larger businesses, and largely irrelevant in the Internet age, where it's simple to make a better ratings/review site that scales to size (six complaints out of ten customers means more than six complaints out of ten million) and is truly independent of the companies reviewed (unlike the BBB). If one could rate rating firms, the BBB would get a D at best. It only continues to operate because no one in it dares quit, because some people still pay attention to it, and not being a member of the BBB will earn you a lower rating with the BBB. You have to pay to be rated well. Hopefully increasing Internet use will eventually kill it off...

[Hamlet Au]

Very interesting article, Galatea, thanks! Of those I list above, only Habbo seems to be accredited with the BBB.

[Toxic Menges]

Habbo probably gets a good grade because most kids don't complain to the BBB, and if a parent complains about something their customer service is pretty good (I trained the head of their customer service LOL).

Also take into account the vociferousness of the SL community, if you have a beef about the lab and you are angry you are going to complain to whoever will listen. I would imagine (and hope) that due to privacy issues within their customer service department LL would be unable to discuss with a third party any details of resident to resident complaints.

I'm not saying LL is perfect, just saying that to an extent their customer service may not be able to fix *some* things that would be the cause of a complaint that can't be rectified. Imagine trying to explain an inventory loss or a rollback of a sim that went awry - not necessarily things the BBB can quantify.

[Hamlet Au]

Speaking of Habbo, I originally wrote that it had 15 million uniques, which is what it had last year, but the company's PR rep just contacted me to say it's now 16.5 million, so I've corrected accordingly. Yes, it gained 1.5 million more users in under a year.

[Ann Otoole]

Is LL a member of that BBB? If so then why? Membership is optional.

[Ciaran Laval]

This is old news, the BBB rating was brought up around the time of the homestead fiasco in Novemeber 2008, I'm sure the lab said then that it was due to older issues.

The overall number of issues isn't vast, so I've always taken this rating with a pinch of salt.

In terms of Linden Lab, whenever I've used concierge support I've nearly always found the support to be absolutely top notch, the ticket system is a bit more hit and miss but it's not awful.

[Doreen Garrigus]

Thanks for the Hat Tip, Hamlet. =D

[Hamlet Au]

Thanks for noting that WoW's BBB score wasn't that hot, Doreen. That made me wonder what other MMO scores on BBB were...

[Arcadian Vanalten]

I always find it fascinating how strongly residents demonize SL and LL (check out the wailing and gnashing of teeth over the new ToS re: TPV's elsewhere on this blog), but the INSTANT someone from the "outside" criticizes it, the troops rally with breathtaking speed.

People are so darned entertaining :D

[Trinity Dechou]

The BBB have updated their rating for Linden Lab it now achieves an A rating.

http://www.bbb.org/greater-san-francisco/business-reviews/video-games-wholesale-and-manufacturers/linden-lab-in-san-francisco-ca-57373