BigPond launches customer service center in Second Life
by Tateru Nino 
Sep 1st 2008 at 4:30AM
Filed under: Events, in-game, News items, Second Life, Virtual worlds
Telstra BigPond (a major Australian Internet Service Provider, with an approximate 50% market-share) already has among the most successful corporate presences in the virtual environment of Second Life. Right now, BigPond is in the process of launching a new initiative: A dedicated kiosk where BigPond customers can get support from live staff, both in text and through Second Life's integrated voice system.
The kiosk will be staffed by BigPond customer-service representatives from 11AM to 10PM Monday through Friday, Australian Eastern Standard time.
"Our launch of a dedicated virtual customer service team is an indication of the popularity of Second Life and provides us with another innovative way to continue to give our members award-winning customer service," said BigPond Group Managing Director, Justin Milne -- admittedly that's spinning so fast that a couple magnets and some copper wire would just about allow you to replace the Snowy River Hydro-Electric scheme.
 |
Are you a part of the most widely-known collaborative virtual environment or keeping a close eye on it? Massively's Second Life coverage keeps you in the loop. |
BigPond maintains sixteen simulators in Second Life, forming a subcontinent of slightly over one million square metres of virtual space. Five of these simulators are for residential use, while the remainder present a variety of information, entertainment and activities.
Additionally, while Australia (like much of the rest of the world) is subject to metered bandwidth systems, the BigPond portion of Second Life is largely unmetered bandwidth for most BigPond customers.
In the past there has been some confusion about what portion of Second Life has been unmetered for BigPond customers -- initially just the BigPond islands themselves were unmetered, then later all of Second Life, excluding third-party audio and video streams, however Telstra's Crystal Davidsmeyer has confirmed for us that at present, only the BigPond portion of Second Life enjoys this privileged unmetered status.
The launch party for BigPond's support kiosk is running now, having kicked off at 5PM Australian Eastern Standard time, Monday 1 September. If you're an Australian Second Life user you can hop down there now and partake in the fun. Staff are also giving away L$ prizes and other treats. They're giving away over L$20,000K in prizes and things should take off from about 7PM Australian Eastern Standard time, as Aussies get home from work and get online.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Crap Mariner said on 10:50AM 9-01-2008
Still a bit confused what they're doing in there.
"Hi, how can I help you?"
"I can't connect to the Internet."
"Um... then how can you get into SL?"
(Yeah, I know... they also do hosting/servers.)
Reply
Tateru Nino said on 11:03AM 9-01-2008
Maybe customers could cage reps due to billing failures :)
However, there's a lot of aspects to bigpond services. They've got something like a bajillion and five different products. Different kinds of connections, plans, all sorts of things. Be nice to talk to a person to sort that all out - and not everyone loves doing that over the phone.
recursive said on 1:58PM 9-01-2008
I'm never sure about adding services like this to the current Second Life, it feels like adding an extra layer. When it comes to virtual worlds, content services come to mind more readily.
On the other hand, if you view them as an evolution of the textual web, the interaction aspect is quite a pro I guess, plus it's certainly not bad for the overall SL market place when a company shows this kind of dedication.
Hope it works out well for them and more will follow suit.
Reply