Portfolio Presentation: Electronic Arts
Introduction
In August 2011, I joined Electronic Arts (EA) as part of their newly launched World Wide Customer Experience (WWCE) organization. This team was established to address EA’s declining reputation with gamers, driven by poor customer support, aggressive studio acquisitions, and inconsistent online service. I was one of the first 45 employees in this rapidly growing organization, contributing to projects across multiple departments as we worked to transform EA's customer experience.
Context
Stock & Reputation: At the time, EA's stock was on the verge of a significant decline, and gamer sentiment was at an all-time low. EA was criticized for its treatment of studios, aggressive business practices, and a heavily outsourced customer support model with a CSAT score at or below 55%.
Customer Support Challenges: Support was fragmented across numerous games, leading to an unmanageable number of touch-points. Online support was largely unstructured and left to individual game teams.
Transformation Efforts: During my tenor, 2011 to 2014, we dismantled EA's outdated support system, established an on-premises call center, IT and Analytics departments, and built a centralized digital experience at help.ea. Rebuilding an infrastructure of this scale required time, commitment, and a focus on long-term goals. The fruits of these efforts were not immediately apparent, as EA won the "Worst Company in America" award from Consumerist in both 2012 and 2013, underscoring the depth of challenges we faced.
However, by 2015, EA had turned its reputation around significantly, a transformation that CNET highlighted in their article "How Electronic Arts Stopped Being the Worst Company in America." This shift was a direct outcome of the strategic initiatives and cross-departmental efforts to improve customer experience, many of which I contributed to during my tenure. I was deeply proud of these efforts, as they brought me joy knowing I was removing friction from people's lives. This passion for improving experiences and making meaningful impacts is why I do this work.
Key Projects and Contributions
Issue Identification
Challenge: EA’s support’s classification of contact reason was inconsistent as the result of a bloated classification taxonomy, leading to misclassifications and slow issue resolution times. For example, the recurring complaint of "missing donuts" (a reference to in-game currency) was inconsistently categorized. Had this issue been detected sooner, we could have alerted the game team, taken measures to update the IVR, knowledgebase content, and deploy other deflection tactics to reduce the number of inbound support requests.
Solution: I designed a comprehensive strategy to address the inefficiencies in the support organization's ticket classification taxonomy. I assembled a cross-functional team to implement this strategy and contributed significantly to the analysis efforts. The project resulted in:
Impact:
Improved classification consistency
Reduced resolution times
Enhanced the ability to identify and respond to emerging issues, and achieved a higher percentage of deflected inbound support requests.
Thematic Velocity
Challenge: From the Issue Identification project, I recognized that the faster we identified emerging issues, the sooner we could deploy deflection efforts and initiate solutions. We needed a system to differentiate between contacts stemming from typical call volumes due to systemic issues and those from new, emerging problems that could overwhelm support teams and increase costs.
Solution: Based on my recommendation, we developed an automated issue classification system which triggered alerts when case volumes for specific topics exceeded normal thresholds by a set number of standard deviations.
Impact:
Reduced the time to identify and escalate critical issues.
Improved cross-departmental communication with real-time alerts.
Enhanced operational efficiency and reduced costs associated with issue identification and escalation.
An additional outcome of this project was a more stable CSAT score, resulting from the deflection of customers who would have otherwise contacted support.
EASI Matrix
Challenge: Like many CX organizations, we understood the cost of customer complaints but lacked a structured way to translate these insights into meaningful business improvements. We needed a framework to evaluate the financial and operational impact of customer issues and a clear execution strategy to drive measurable change.
Solution: I implemented the EASI Matrix, a structured framework designed to quantify the cost, complexity, and business impact of customer support contacts. By categorizing issues into four strategic quadrants—Simplify, Invest, Eliminate, and Automate—we established a clear roadmap for prioritization and ownership. This approach aligned customer support and studio teams, ensuring that every issue was addressed with the right level of urgency and resource allocation.
Data Integration: To enhance decision-making, I integrated key performance data such as resolution time, transfer rates, and cost-per-contact across channels. Agent performance metrics revealed efficiency patterns, helping us identify high-impact training opportunities. Additionally, insights from the matrix guided strategic shifts from contractor-supported interactions to self-service solutions, reducing operational costs while improving resolution speed and accessibility for customers. This holistic approach optimized resource allocation, streamlined issue resolution, and ultimately reduced support costs while enhancing customer satisfaction.
Impact:
Contributed to an overall reduction in OPEX of more than $500 million.
Provided insights that led to a 54.55% increase in customer satisfaction.
Improved digital containment by 25%.
Enhanced agent retention, bringing attrition rates within industry benchmarks for gaming companies.
WWCE Resolution Badge
Challenge: We faced growing advisor dissatisfaction and high attrition rates. Our data scientist identified that CSAT was more heavily influenced by first contact resolution and the effort required to reach support, rather than advisor performance. Since advisor evaluations were based on CSAT, this led to unfair performance assessments, contributing to attrition and an increasing percentage of inexperienced advisors.
Studio teams believed CSAT was primarily driven by the advisor's performance, leading to strained relationships between support and studio teams. We needed a more effective way to determine issue ownership, as existing reporting failed to provide clarity.
Solution: One of my analysts developed the WWCE Resolution Badge, a report card designed to highlight the difference in agent CSAT when the root cause of an issue was a technical bug unresolvable by the agent. This tool provided clear visibility into how unresolved technical issues impacted customer satisfaction and placed accountability on the appropriate teams.
Impact:
Significantly improved turnaround times for issues escalated to game teams.
Strengthened collaboration between support and game studios.
Provided actionable insights that helped shift focus from agent performance to systemic issue resolution.
Conclusion
During my tenure at EA, our collective efforts across multiple verticals led to significant improvements:
Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) increased from 55% to 85%.
We introduced the "Great Game Guarantee" and eliminated the Online Pass process, enhancing our brand reputation among gamers.
EA's stock price rose from a low of approximately $14.65 in August 2011 to a high of around $37.69 in August 2014.
These initiatives not only improved our relationship with the gaming community but also contributed to a substantial increase in shareholder value. The turnaround was widely recognized, culminating in EA shedding its "Worst Company in America" label by 2015, as noted in a CNET article highlighting the company's transformation.