In order for Sony Online Entertainment to provide you with the best possible customer service we will be integrating a new Right Now Technology interface into The Matrix Online.

The integration of Right Now Technology allows us to provide you with a Unified Front of customer support where all forms of service will have the same general look and feel in a centralized location. You'll also be able to view support and service requests in an archived history regardless of how you contacted us or what game you contacted us about!

Contacting us has become easier as well, all customers will be able to login to the support interface with their station name and password - users coming directly from a game client will have their information automatically passed to the system. Also since the interface will be web based this means you'll be able to contact in game support regardless if your server is online or not. While some issues may require the servers to be online in order for us to help, this does give us the chance to help assist and correspond with you with other issues.

An added benefit of the Right Now Technology system is that it allows us the opportunity to provide you with faster response times for your questions. An example would be issues which need quicker response times such as community standards and stuck characters will always be answered quicker due to priority.

We've also had the opportunity to revamp our tiered agent and Game Master Systems to ensure that high profile issues will be handled by the most experienced agents we have. This integration will also help us improve the quality of service which we provide you! All SOE agents and Game Masters will have profiles that allow them to handle tickets and requests that best match their skill-sets.

With the addition of the new system, all SOE support departments gain the flexibility to route customer tickets to the departments in which they need to go in event they weren't correctly submitted. For instance, over the last seven years, if a user needed to contact technical support about a graphic issue they were experiencing in-game but instead contacted a game master through in-game support, they would be instructed to contact support through another channel or interface. Now your ticket can be routed to any department, in any language, to save you that extra step in having to contact us again.

You'll also be able to view your Service History using the Service History tab which appears on the centralized support website. Every ticket you submit to SOE support will be displayed through this interface for future reference - this includes chat, phone, e-mail and in-game ticket responses in one centralized location. From this location you can update your ticket and see direct results on the correspondence being updated - this allows you to track open incidents with enhanced capabilities. Also, the addition of the "overview" section allows customer support to populate these fields based on common issues we're experiencing to give you even more information about what is occurring behind the scenes. Another great feature which will be implemented is the ability to be notified by e-mail if a specific knowledge base article you have subscribed to is updated. The notifications section will allow you to update or change knowledge base subscriptions.

Customer Support will now require that you validate your e-mail address on file every 90 days. We will be contacting you through your registered address to summarize customer support interaction and provide you with transcripts of this conversation. This makes it even more important that the e-mail address on file is up-to-date so you receive this information accurately. Even though you receive e-mail receipts of the transactions, your tickets will always be managed through the service history tab on the website.

With the integration of the Right Now Technology system you may notice that the Knowledge Base is no longer accessible in-game. We've moved this outside of the game interface to promote benefits that were limited by an in game interface. The new knowledge base will provide related articles, commonly viewed articles, and will structure its search response based on who you are. Agents are also able to see which knowledge base articles you previously viewed to ensure that they don't also suggest them in the response. We have also added a feature to provide a reactive knowledge base search after you submit your ticket so you are no longer required to search the knowledge base prior to contacting support. We have built a team of knowledge experts from the ground up with the sole responsibility of maintaining knowledge base content. You will notice that articles such as the "Top Known Issues" and "Scheduled Downtimes" are updated on a daily basis - this is result of the additional staffing we have added to purge the old knowledge content to provide you with the most accurate data possible. The feedback you submit on knowledge base articles goes directly to this team of experts and will contribute to the knowledge base's future development.

Sincerely,

George Scotto

VP of Customer Service and Quality Assurance

Sony Online Entertainment LLC