EA Opens New Worldwide Customer Experience Office in AustinElectronic Arts, with top executives on hand, has just opened its brand-new 50,000 square foot Worldwide Customer Experience office in Austin, Texas this week. The move stems from an agreement with Governor Perry that EA would bring an additional 300 jobs to Austin, both full-time and contractors, from software engineers, game designers and artists to Customer Experience and IT. IndustryGamers chatted with EA COO Peter Moore about expanding in Austin.
Between BioWare, EA Sports, and an IT group, EA's already got a foothold in the Austin region, and the region's been so attractive for the publisher that it decided to make Austin the official worldwide headquarters for what is essentially a customer service division.
“It's really about building out our competency in supporting the tens of millions of consumers that interact with us everyday. This is an important part of our strategy as we continue to build out games that are more service oriented now and in the future,” Moore said. “So we're looking to address customer needs, issues they may have with a game, issues they may have in commercially transacting with us, issues they may have in understanding what they need to do to progress in a game (we get a lot of calls asking to be helped through a section of a game) – so all of that is done here via telephone, email and in a lot of instances now through in-game chat. So this is the global headquarters and it's where we manage all of our customer service centers around the world.”
EA loves Austin because it's centrally located in the U.S. and for a major city, the cost of living isn't bad at all for EA's employees. There's also a wealth of talent coming out of local schools, like the graduates at University of Texas. Moore noted that EA's worked with state and local government to bring people to the area and get the right curriculum at universities. “It's similar to what we did in Vancouver,” Moore added. “When we put roots down there, the government of B.C. welcomed us and supported us and we became a tentpole for bringing in digital talent – not only for us but for companies sprouting up alongside us, and I expect to continue to see that here in Austin. I'm very excited about our growth in Austin.”
The new Customer Experience office currently is staffed by 50 employees and EA is on the hunt to bring on more people. If you're looking to apply, Moore said that you need to have good people skills, and “you've got to be a gamer and love this industry.” Of the current staff, Moore noted that many have worked for games companies in the past while others specialized in customer service in a different industry but were drawn in by their love of video games. The Customer Experience Agents are actually segmented, Moore explained, so that each particular EA game gets a crew that's devoted to it and can offer expert help.
Although EA is very fond of Austin, when we asked Moore if the publisher would be building any new development studios in the near future, he said that for now EA's happy with BioWare Austin and will continue to grow that studio. “Star Wars: The Old Republic continues to grow, and this studio will grow accordingly, because the live operations are conducted here; so that part of the group will continue to grow as more subscribers come on board and the depth and breadth of the game grows accordingly."
