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How EA stopped being the worst company in America

S

shinobi602

Member
A lot more at the link: http://www.cnet.com/news/how-electronic-arts-stopped-being-the-worst-company-in-america/

Quite a fascinating read.
The day before Consumerist.com announced the worst company in America, Larry Probst was already pissed. That cloudy April day in 2013, Probst, interim CEO of Electronic Arts, called an emergency meeting of his senior leaders at the company's Redwood City, Calif., headquarters.

Probst knew that EA, which had grown into one of the world's largest video gaming companies since it was founded in 1982, was struggling: Its financial performance wasn't meeting expectations, its stock had fallen two-thirds over the last six years and a loud group of critics were probably about to crown the company the worst in America -- for the second year in a row.
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"It was a hideous thing," Probst said of finding the company so hated. In that conference room on that cloudy Monday, with the executive team surrounding him, Probst "hit the roof," as one person described it. "The message I tried to deliver was, 'This will not happen again,'" Probst recalled in an interview a year and a half after the gathering. "'As long as I draw breath, this will not happen again.'"
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Winning the worst company award served as a wake-up call for EA, helping to convince executives they needed to change the way they thought of their customers. That rethinking has paid off: Over the past year, EA's sales, which declined in the year leading up to Probst's April meeting, have swung back to growth. Profit has skyrocketed to $875 million from $8 million in 2014, and the company's stock price has soared.

All with little change in research and development investment and no dramatic layoffs.
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Five months after taking over, on February 12, 2014, Wilson gathered 146 of the company's top leaders at EA's headquarters. Together with Gabrielle Toledano, EA's chief talent officer, Wilson hatched a plan to help them understand why so many customers were unhappy.

The group was led to the basketball court, which had been temporarily remade into a conference space with stations of computers and telephone lines. For hours, executives went through the steps of installing, troubleshooting and playing the company's games. They also listened in on customer service calls so they could hear firsthand players' frustrations.

"We weren't thinking about everything we were doing in the context of the player experience," said Wilson.
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He knew customers were unhappy, but when he sat down and listened to a customer lash out at a service agent, it struck him. Some executives had been dismissive of customer complaints and even looked at the worst company votes as a fluke. They couldn't be any more.
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Söderlund went back to his office in Sweden and faced a new challenge. There was an unexpected hiccup in the development of a highly anticipated new title, a futuristic war game called Titanfall. Söderlund had been trying out the game on the newest Xbox, the Xbox One, released in November 2013, and it was going great. But an engineer whose job was to ensure the game's quality said it wasn't running well on the older Xbox 360, originally released in 2005.

So he tried it and immediately knew it wasn't acceptable. The animations weren't running fast enough, and when he shot a virtual bullet, it didn't seem to hit at the right time. "We couldn't ship this," Söderlund said. So he asked EA's executive team to push back the launch by a few weeks.

Eighteen days might not sound like much, but delaying a big-budget game is no small decision. It isn't just a matter of keeping boxes off store shelves and sending an apology email to eager customers. Companies commit to advertising blitzes on TV, radio and the Internet. Shelf space and shipping partnerships are set months in advance. Changing things last minute can cost millions of dollars.
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C

creatchee

Member
I would say that their vacating the worst company spot was an equal effort of them getting better and other companies getting worse.
 
K

Kriken

Member
People grew up and realized that there are FAR worse companies than EA?

While I hated EA, those awards were childish
 
D

Dr. Feel Good

Banned
A company is bound to lose when it had a rabid fan base with an online voice.

No one in the world can with a straight face tell you EA is a worse company than an oil company. The problem is no one has an emotional connection to an oil company. At least not enough to vote them as the worst company.
 
styl3s

styl3s

Member
Faustek said:
They never were.


Edit fuck, is it were? Or perhaps was?
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Yeah they never were the worst company in America they were just a target of a bunch of angry gamers.

There are far worse vile companies out there that are doing shit that actually effects the world and peoples lives. What's the worst thing EA has done? Laid off people like every business does? Ship some shitty games? I don't know if i would even list them in my top worst video game companies if we are taking into account mobile gaming companies.
 
A

alr1ght

bish gets all the credit :)
They'll always have the crown of worst videogame company in America.

edit: oh this thread is going to turn into one of those, yet again.
 
W

_woLf

Member
They're not even the worst gaming company, let alone the worst overall company.

That "poll" was always terrible.
 
L

Lunar15

Member
I really don't think that EA was the worst company in america considering all the other far more qualified entrants, but if it got them to get better customer serivce, we should all fucking vote for Valve next time.
 
M

Mr. Nice_Guy

Member
Profit has skyrocketed to $875 million from $8 million in 2014
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What? They only made $8 million in 2014? Does anyone have data for this? I'm curious to see what didn't make them money that year.

Also if that bit about them all installing and troubleshooting the games is true, then that's really cool. A good way to put you in your customers shoes.

Still think EA is shit though, will take more than some self realizations and pushing back a game for QA to change my opinion on them. But it's a start.

Edit: I never thought they were the worst, just pretty damn terrible.
 
T

truestatic

Member
Faustek said:
They never were.


Edit fuck, is it were? Or perhaps was?
Click to expand...

Pretty muuuch. They just had the best organized haters. EA getting this award may make EA look bad, after all, they didn't get it without reason. But it made the reward look like a sham, because there were certainly far more deserving candidates.
 
R

Randolph Freelander

Member
How could a gaming company ever be the worst company in America? Was it an internet poll? EA is big by gaming standards -- and maybe terrible -- but they're almost immaterial when compared to the true titans of American industry.
 
G

Ganzlinger

Member
They still need to increase their origin services. I had a lot of bugs with installation and a stupid ban in FIFA 15 without even playing online.
 
D

DoktorEvil

Banned
Randolph Freelander said:
How could a gaming company ever be the worst company in America? Was it an internet poll? EA is big by gaming standards -- and maybe terrible -- but they're almost immaterial when compared to the true titans of American industry.
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They made something I didn't like, therefore worst company ever.

They're monsters compared to the Gilded Age.
 
ElRenoRaven

ElRenoRaven

Member
EA has taken steps to get better but they still have a long long long way to go. They really do. Glad to see though that not everyone at EA was oblivious to why they were getting the hate they did.
 
S

shiftplusone

Member
The group was led to the basketball court, which had been temporarily remade into a conference space with stations of computers and telephone lines. For hours, executives went through the steps of installing, troubleshooting and playing the company's games. They also listened in on customer service calls so they could hear firsthand players' frustrations.
Click to expand...

Executives are 99% of the time kept out of the loop of everything always because its beneath them or they dont give a shit or both


so to make them go through it and understand the complaints is a pretty interesting thing to do
 
T

TheJoRu

Member
I haven't noticed any difference. Not that they ever were the worst company, but in what way have they changed for the better since 2013?
 
S

SykoTech

Member
They announced Mirror's Edge 2, that's how.

They'll go right back to being the worst if they screw it up though.
 
S

SpiceMelange

Member
Origins is a much better platform than most people give it credit; and actually decently pro-consumer. BF4 has been a total fiasco but they stayed true to their word of being committed to fix it and now I'd say it's one of the best PC shooters you could get. Not even mentioning the 120hz servers they are experimenting with, it could end up snappier than CSGO.
 
A

Arrage

Banned
They never were. A bunch of losers voted them down, EA got so much negative publicity, doesn't matter that other companies destroy both people and environment.
 
T

truestatic

Member
Rosur said:
big mass effect 3 spoilers :( but otherwise good article
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I'm sorry that happened. Still worth playing! If someone had spoiled that for me I would've been upset but unsurprised, and the ending still would've been pretty much just as good/bad. And frankly it's not even what I think most people were mad about.

Unit24 said:
When exactly did it pay off? I don't remember them ever improving.
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The pay off is the profit, I assume.
 
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