The Player Support Manager Role

Sitting at the End of All Worlds

Player Support Manager roles emerged from necessity, but are usually so broadly defined that it causes confusion to everyone involved. Often they pick up whatever needs doing, and tend to get themselves on a hamster wheel that never stops. This is bad for people because it often leads to increasing responsibilities without investment into their continued learning, and professional growth. 

Their managers can’t help them much either because they usually lack the knowledge of the discipline. It isn’t for a lack of desire, most CEOs and VPs really want to lend a hand, but they are not quite sure how to. In the worst cases, our teams are viewed as a necessary evil to be kept at arms length. Some common results of this unintentionally difficult situation are:

• Insufficient pay for increasing responsibilities

• Lack of discipline mentorship 

• Little to no career development

• Burnout from always being “on”

Let me just start by saying that it is much more than a customer service manager. 

Player Support Managers and PS Vendor Managers can be one in the same person, and due to budget constraints, they often are when a company starts the department. The following job description is in the context of a fairly early-stage company with an immature team, possibly of only one full-time employee. Limited resources dictate that most people begin their adventures in some version of what I am about to share.

PS Manager/Vendor Manager [Job Description]

Mission: to lead frontline operations (at the vendor, if you’re outsourcing) providing the best player experiences aligned to company strategy.

Core Responsibilities: 

• Provide clear direction to the team. Everyone should know what their responsibilities are in making that vision come to life in the next few months. Take your direction from your leadership at the appropriate level of resolution (Paint very broad strokes if they don’t really understand the discipline, help keep them out of the weeds).

  • Detailed planning beyond six months will be almost impossible with such a small team and large workload. Set stakeholder expectations appropriately.

  • Clear and reasonable expectations should be set for your team’s performance management, and helping people make commitments they can mostly keep.

• Documentation of core processes, including how this knowledge will be constantly updated or archived if obsolete. A mature team will have dedicated knowledge managers or something similar, but in our typical context, this role will have to bear most of that load at the start.

  • Figuring out how to involve others in the meta process of the knowledge cycle.

• Training others, as well as creating the training materials. Similar to the general documentation needs, you will have to figure out how to train with very limited resources. Videos and short knowledge articles are your friends.

  • Involving others in training creation, updates, and on the job training must be one of the first key processes you design. It is, however, a team effort to maintain, and constantly improve - our games are always changing.

• Creating a simple, actionable feedback system for your development team, and other key stakeholders at your company.

• Driving your data requirements so that you get the information you need to understand what is happening, and to support your decision making. 

  • Gain executive and stakeholder support. Don’t wait for it - go get it. 

• Understand what things influence your team’s behavior as it relates to work, whether they are inhouse or at a vendor. Shift and change systems, rituals, practices, and language accordingly to cultivate a healthy work environment. 

• Thoroughly understand your cost structure. Behave like a business owner, and help others understand this part of the business with simple language, and numbers. 

Core Competencies: 

• Communication (written and verbal) 

• Critical thinking

• Performance management

• Project management

• Reverse relationship management - relationship managers on the vendor side is about keeping you (the client) happy, understanding your needs, and meeting them. What is not often discussed is the critical requirement to have what I call ‘reverse relationship managmeent’, which is the art of molding your vendor into what you need them to be despite their completely different context. Many of us are tempted to give up on outsourcing because this is so difficult to do.