Let's talk about the "Microsoft laid off Xbox support staff, in favor of volunteers" article

I’m writing this to resolve some of the confusion/controversy caused by a recent post by Polygon regarding Xbox Support Twitter staff being replaced by Xbox Ambassadors.

Microsoft laid off Xbox support staff, in favor of volunteers

As you should know by now, websites such as Polygon spice up stories to drag more attention to the article, as more views they get, the more money they receive. So some of the things you have read at the mentioned article is added drama to make it more controversial.

More drama = more views = more money.

With that said, let me start by saying that the Xbox Ambassadors had no idea nor any intention for something like this to happen, most of us don’t even agree with this decision and have had our voices heard.

Xbox Ambassadors have existed along side the Xbox support for more than 7 years, back then there were no “Prizes” or “Rewards” for participating, we simply joined just to help our fellow gamers based on the passion we have over gaming, many of us are still
here for the same reason, we don’t care about the “Prizes” or the “Rewards” that have been mentioned, the great feeling of satisfaction when a gamer says “Thanks, you made my day!” when we solve a problem is just amazing and thats what we want! Sure there
are rewards added now and we sometimes get some cool stuff, but most of us don’t care about them and have said time and time again that we don’t need more prizes as this program is supposed to be made of passionate gamers looking to help others because its
right, not because we get rewards, for proof you can visit the Xbox Forums to see us saying this.

But why gamer volunteers? Well, Xbox support staff are locked behind certain rules and restrictions which we don’t have, that makes us have a better connection with the said gamer when we are trying to help them, because, we are just like them! We wake up
everyday, turning on our consoles, having the same problems as anybody else, and deal with them. But since we already experience these problems, we can find clever ways and work arounds to fix these that the normal Xbox Support staff cant say or most don’t
know because they are bound by certain protocols written for them and have to follow those. What we don’t have are the resources that Xbox support have, for example like the ability to do refunds, Access to account details, etc… So the experience that we have
+ the resources that Xbox Support have is the perfect match to help out with all kinds of problems that gamers have to deal with in a day to day basis, And thats what makes this program great.

Another thing that has been said in the article is that the support agents “Trained” us to do twitter support, this is one of the added dramas I was talking about, We don’t receive any special “Training” from anyone, the only thing we have to get more knowledge
of how everything in Xbox works is something called the “Academy” which is nothing like what the name suggests. The Academy is just a web page filled with quizzes that have been made by the Ambassador program staff (Not the Xbox support or the Xbox support
twitter staff) and shortcut links to the posts available to EVERYONE on the
support.xbox.com page. Its nothing special related to us! And this has existed since the launch of the program! The Twitter (WatchTower as we call it within the program) has only been launched for less than 2 years, which within these time frame again,
no special training was done for us, its Twitter! What “Training” do we need to use Twitter!? You can see all of the responses we have on twitter by looking up #XboxAmbassador, We type like everyone else!

Only extra thing that we have is an ACE, someone from the Xbox Ambassadors Staff that we can ask questions of that we are unsure of, like when Xbox live is down or something like that.

I hope this clears out most of the confusion made by the said article, and hate towards us.

As I have said, we do not agree with the decision of removing the Xbox Support Twitter members and we are mad and sad about it cause it feels like we have cost them their jobs, and like I said, we + the official support is what makes this program so great,
not alone.

Also, take note that Xbox support at support.xbox.com is still available.

Thank you for reading this.

:)

 

Can't sign in

anybody think this has something to do with Xbox laying off alot of their support staff for "Volunteers?"

 

Game won't keep track of Number of Bingos

you tell the problem maybe Microsoft staff is working on the fix off this problem

We Ambassadors do not have the tools or means to help in this matter as we are just volunteers.

 

After reading the article, I did feel that Polygon either a) didn't do their research about Ambassadors, or b) they just wanted to create drama and make it seem like we're causing people to lose their jobs which we're not trying to do. We're just like an
added bonus to the Support team in helping them with questions or concerns because they do get overwhelmed with people and for the most part, we usually help them by leading people towards the right direction to get their issue straighten out.