Dear Diary,
It has been a while since I’ve cracked open my diary and unloaded my thoughts about Second Life. Sometimes I’m like… wow SL is still really awesome after all these years and other times I scratch my head at the buffoonery and think WTF….just WTF.
I’m talking about work ethics. Not morale ethics because we all know there are some questionable things going on in Second Life. I’m not a judge and jury but I would say a lot of activities are acceptable by the culture. I’ll leave that up to you to decide what is moral or borderline squint worthy.
One of the most important components needed to support Second Life’s economy is Business. To be successful you must build trust with the community. Have a great business and marketing plan put together and to top it off a disciplined work ethic.
I don’t have to be captain Obvious to tell you that.
Business is business no matter how you look at it. It doesn’t matter if it is in a virtual world manned by pixel CEO and employees. When a product or service is exchanged for currency. A business transaction has occurred. At that point, accountability and professionalism become a thing if you want to keep “earning” business.
Those are not the only things business owners need to succeed. Customer Service is the cherry on top for the best businesses and practices in the virtual world.
I’ve traveled the grid and have met many business owners through the years. The very first creator I encountered was in my noob days. There I was barefoot exploring and minding my own business when I stumbled upon an affordable shoe store. I tried to put on some blocky heels. One ended up strategically placed up my backside. Thank goodness avies don’t feel pain I would have been hurtin!
Anyway, I was all bent out of shape literally and messaged the creator all frantic and accused them of playing a sick joke.
I didn’t know any better and was paranoid of griefers. It turns out the business owner wasn’t a griefer and assisted me in removing the footwear from where it did not belong. I was grateful for the help and it gave me a better understanding and newfound respect for virtual world business and how it is just like real business.
Customer service has been on a downward spiral with the introduction of bots greeters and automatic information givers that have taken the place of an actual Avie at the business location. Many are left standing around with questions or needing support and they are forced to leave an offline message or drop a notecard for help on something that could take 5 minutes but has now extended to 2 days with a follow up pending. It all becomes so frustrating.
Bad Customer Service
Recently I was at a popular skins store helping someone try to figure out how they could get rid of the infamous “Dirt neck” situation that occurs when purchasing a mesh head and body with tones that do not match perfectly. For those who are familiar with mesh, skins help with the problem in some cases.
Upon landing at this packed skin store, there was no customer service to be found. In desperation asking anyone who would offer some help and being led in all kinds of wrong directions. Something as simple as purchasing a skin or blender or whatever it was needed to solve the problem became a week long quest in search of alternative remedies to just fix the problem and still no response from the skin creator or other representative of the brand. That ish gotta stop. At this point just collecting lindens from avies but not really helping them is just not right. Get it together or I’m taking names on brands that have poor customer service.
Friend List Conference- Event Shoutouts.
Ok now this right here has got to be the most annoying feature to have when used as a group notice. So imagine having 1626 friends and about a third of them insist on friend list conferences to spam events or carry on whole conversations. This can really light up your IMs like a christmas tree causing you to nearly have a seizure.
I try my best to just close it out since I don’t really want to unfriend them. At one point I even created a PSA to cut and paste in the conferences to promote SLE. That tactic didn’t work so I tried to make myself invisible. Sighs. I’m lost for ideas on how to go about this in the most professional way I can. If you happen to be a friend , please don’t include me in friend list conference spamming. Thank you.
If you come across this with groups you are in , you can easily solve the problem by opting out of receiving group notices.
Arrogance
In business, it is best to remember where you came from if you have any ounce of humbleness remaining once you hit “the big time”. If there is one thing that gets under my skins it is those SL business owners who act like they don’t sit in the same infamous David statue “The Thinker” position whilst using a bathroom.
A Positive attitude is always a good thing so leave the big head at the door, or you might get stuck in the door frame. Like a well known swinger beach club owner with a sandal wedged up his (BLEEP) sideways…. I won’t go there but he knows who he is. Or that makeover service provided who goes rogue buying the wrong stuff with their client’s lindens and somehow blames the patron for an unsatisfactory job done.
I think I let out what I needed to say on this topic for now. If you have suggestions or comments about business ethics please feel free to comment in the box below and please use your avie name, anonymous seems so stupid when the comment is nasty.
Lanai Jarrico
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