Supporting Your VIP Players: 5 Strategies to Deliver an Exceptional Experience to Your VIP Customers

Imagine a player who’s spent months developing their account suddenly gets locked out. They reach out to your support team in frustration. How quickly and effectively you resolve their issue can influence their entire experience, from future purchases to their long-term loyalty and the number of friends they refer to your platform down the line.

What seemed like a simple login problem now has a much bigger impact on your revenue.

High-value players expect more than just great gameplay. They want personalized attention, lightning-fast support, and exclusive perks that make them feel like the VIPs they are.

In this article, we’ll dive into how gaming platforms can go above and beyond to cater to their most valuable customers, building loyalty, boosting engagement, and driving long-term business growth.

Gaming customer service—why does it matter?

Your customer service can be just as important as the game itself. 

It’s a critical part of your overall player experience, and it’s what makes players feel appreciated. Here are three key reasons why gaming customer service is crucial for sustainable growth:

• Prompt and effective support enhances player satisfaction and builds loyalty. Research shows that 58% of consumers are willing to pay more for a friendly, welcoming customer experience—and players are no different. When you make them feel valued and appreciated, they’re more likely to spend.
• Quickly resolving player issues not only keeps them happy but also helps prevent negative reviews and player churn.
• Positive word of mouth is a powerful tool, especially when there is a lack of trust in traditional marketing. Happy players advocating for your brand can make a huge difference. In fact, word of mouth plays a role in over 30% of all purchasing decisions, and the gaming industry is no exception.

What do gamers expect from your customer service team?

As competition in the gaming industry heats up and new games launch every day, player expectations are soaring. To meet—and exceed—them, especially for your VIP players, you need to understand what gamers expect from exceptional customer service today.

• 24/7 support. Gaming is a global industry spanning multiple time zones and continents. But even within a single time zone, gaming is a 24/7 activity, and gamers want quick responses to keep their gameplay flowing smoothly. This is particularly important for VIP players who expect a higher level of service.
• Fast responses. 80% of US adults say that quick responses are the most important aspect of excellent online service. For gaming platforms, keeping response times low throughout the day ensures an optimal player experience—especially when dealing with VIP players.
• Support in their language. With most of the global gaming revenue spread across ten key markets, it’s crucial to provide help in players’ native languages. Offering localized support enhances the customer experience and makes players feel understood and appreciated.
• Convenient channels. Gamers want help on the platforms they find convenient, whether that’s live chat within the game, email, social media, or even self-service options. Understanding your audience’s preferences is key to ensuring your support channels cater to their needs.
• Personalization and bonuses. Personalizing the customer experience by addressing players by name and offering tailored solutions to their issues can make them feel valued. VIP players, in particular, appreciate exclusive perks and personalized bonuses, especially when they come across a bug or game error.

5 strategies to deliver an exceptional player experience for VIPs

Offering exceptional service to your VIP  customers can keep them loyal, engaged, and enthusiastic about your brand.

But the first step here is defining who your VIP players are. This may seem simple, but it’s crucial to ensure that every department—whether it’s game development, marketing, or customer support—uses the same criteria to identify VIP players. As Tony Won, a seasoned player support leader, puts it:

“You can’t appropriately support VIP players if you’re not using the same ways of identifying them across all of your different systems and data within the company.”

Once you’ve pinpointed your VIP players, here are five strategies to deliver a VIP experience that stands out.

1. Offer 24/7 support exclusively to VIPs

If your support team isn’t yet running 24/7 but the volume of VIP requests allows, you can keep most of your player support agents during regular hours while moving just a few shifts to handle the limited yet crucial inquiries from VIP players around the clock.

This ensures that your VIP players can access help anytime, regardless of their time zone, and makes them feel valued. At the same time, round-the-clock service allows you to unblock users faster—something they’ll truly appreciate, especially when they’re deep into a game.

Such a level of service can significantly enhance both player satisfaction and retention, especially for those who are your highest-value customers, ensuring they remain loyal and continue investing in your platform.

How do you recognize your VIPs when they reach out? Some platforms, like Epic Games, only provide assistance to logged-in users. While this adds a small layer of friction, it also helps you clearly distinguish VIP players from those who haven’t invested as much time or resources into your game.

2. Provide live chat for instant solutions

While many platforms still rely heavily on email support, email can be slow—especially when dealing with complex issues.

Live chat, on the other hand, enables quick back-and-forth exchanges, allowing your team to troubleshoot tricky problems swiftly and provide near-instant resolutions. This helps players get back to their game as soon as possible once the issue is resolved.

When your VIP player can’t access the game, or there’s a problem with payment systems preventing them from spending money, resolving the issue quickly is critical. It can cost you lost revenue. This is especially true in free-to-play games, where engagement directly drives monetization.

If players are stuck trying to get help from the customer service team instead of enjoying the game, they might just move on to another game. That’s where quick issue resolutions via live chat come in handy.

For instance, at Peak Support, for one of our gaming clients, ARB Gaming, we provide email support for most players, reserving live chat for VIPs. This approach offers fast resolution and a better experience, keeping high-value players engaged and satisfied.

3. Assign experienced agents to work with VIPs

Investing in top support talent pays off in the gaming industry. While it might seem tempting to go for the lowest price per agent or ticket when you build a player support team, it can lead to unresolved issues, frustrated players, and churn. Choosing cheaper options can also generate a high volume of repeat contacts, which ends up costing more in the long run.

Instead, focus on quality, especially to support your high-value VIP players. Investing in skilled agents who can efficiently resolve issues and keep VIPs engaged in the game is key. Great player support agents should have strong communication and problem-solving skills, technical proficiency, and understanding of the gaming culture. A smaller competent team can deliver more value than a larger team offering lower-cost but also lower-quality service.

But even for the top talent, it takes time to develop deep expertise. New agents will likely need a couple of months to come across all kinds of support cases, understand common scenarios, and learn how to offer proactive solutions. That’s why it makes sense to assign your most knowledgeable and experienced agents to support the VIP players.

4. Personalize interactions

Personalization is key to making your VIP players feel valued. Simple gestures like addressing them by name or nickname, understanding their gaming habits, and tailoring responses to their specific needs can enhance the overall experience.

Here are a few tips to help you:

• Keep detailed logs with player information or surface these details in the help desk view so agents can access relevant insights when handling VIP requests.
• Encourage agents to avoid overly formal responses. Instead, coach them to align their communication style with the game’s narrative. This helps create a more immersive and engaging experience for players and strengthens rapport.
• When things go wrong, show your VIPs they matter by offering tailored rewards, bonuses, or exclusive perks. This can smooth over frustrations and reinforce their importance to your platform, building long-term loyalty.

You can also consider creating a VIP or loyalty program to highlight the special treatment your top-tier players receive. For example, Zynga Poker’s VIP Club offers access to double experience points, free monthly items, exclusive high-stakes tables, and a VIP badge. By providing these unique benefits, Zynga enhances the player experience and increases the retention of their high-value players.

5. Proactively support VIP players

Instead of waiting for your VIP players to reach out with issues, take a proactive approach.

Use game data to identify common problems and offer solutions before your VIPs even need to contact support. By anticipating issues and reaching out with solutions or workarounds ahead of time, you can improve player satisfaction and show your VIPs that you’re not just reactive but genuinely committed to providing a better gaming experience.

Another effective strategy can be proactively reaching out to surprise VIP players with exclusive offers, rewards, or early access to new features. This can include bonuses like free coins during outages or special promotions designed to keep them engaged. Such proactive gestures go a long way in reinforcing their VIP status in your community.

However, for this approach to work, it’s crucial to design these initiatives early and in close collaboration with your game development teams. If these elements are tacked on later, they can feel disconnected from the core game, making it harder to deliver a smooth, meaningful VIP experience.

Building your high-performing player support team

“Games are pretty idealistic. They want to create a certain experience for people,” says Mike Pappas, CEO of Modulate, a company working with gaming giants like Call of Duty. 

While often overlooked, player support is an essential part of that experience.

In the gaming industry, support is not something you can afford to neglect. Your players, particularly VIPs, will quickly switch to another game if they don’t feel well-treated or if their experience falls short. Once they’ve disengaged, it’s too late. 

To deliver an outstanding player experience, your support services need to be personalized and efficient, but achieving this level of service doesn’t happen overnight.It takes strategic action  to build and maintain a high-performing player support team.

At Peak Support, we understand the complexities of delivering exceptional customer experiences in the gaming industry. Contact us today to learn how we can help you provide exceptional, scalable tech support that keeps your players engaged and satisfied.