Streamate: Impossible!

Streamate offers its performers tools to work with (ie: a veriety of different pricing options from the per/minute rate to the special Gold Show rates), but remains with piss-poor customer retention objectives. The (antiquated) e-mail system currently in place offers us a way to contact members – one at a time, (or up to about 6, if you use the bcc option), entering their handles and numbers, one at a time. In each mailing, however, a few will be returned because their accounts are invalid/closed/changed or whatnot. The entire system is quite confusing, as they allow members to change their ‘display handle’ as often as they want from their account settings page.  To contact a member, however, the member would have had to first send an a-mail to the performer. The performer is then furnished with his special assigned number to go along with his handle and now, we can choose to contact him back. I’m not even really sure if it is their ‘display handle’ (you know .. that name they can change at any time), and if that would affect the validity of his account when trying to send him an e-mail, or if  one number applies to all the names he has under that same account. So, even if he changes his ‘display handle’ a hundred times, would I still be able to e-mail him using the one he gave me 2 days ago? Or … is that now lost? Either way, this is the stupidest and most useless e-mail system I have ever seen in my life!  Very confusing and useless. In the case of a member gone MIA, for whatever reason (it isn’t clear as to why), a returned e-mail stating “user does not exist” or “user no longer exists” will appear and the e-mail will not send to any of them. I will then have to delete that contact from the bcc list and try sending again, to the rest of the group. Add ‘time-consuming’ to that list.

Some other obstacles include, but are not limited to:

According to members, I am either disappearing from their favorites list or have moved to the last page (when I used to be on the 1st).

Members get booted out of private, for no reason. They return to guest chat and no problem whatsoever staying connected in there.

Members give Gold in the room and before I have the chance to perform anything for them, they’re gone!

I often have less than a handful of members in my room at one time (not using the chat or the service, even after several attempts to get them chatting).  Keep in mind that, all the while, the Streamate-owned studios (better known as ‘the first 4 rows’) are consistent with anywhere between 15 and 200 members in their rooms, during the shift that I work. On average, about 40. Independents like me, at 35% commision, are lucky to have a handful at any given time.

Salespeople in the real world maintain a customer base by utiizing the services of social networking platforms (Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, etc.).

They are given tools that are designed to help them, like a functional internal e-mail system that allows you to contact multiple customers at one time.

Not in our world. For some reason, Streamate forbids us to take their customers to these powerful social networking platforms to take advantage of their marketing capabilities. It would be perfectly understandable if Streamate provided a way, through their own site, to retain customers, but they don’t. It’s quite the opposite, in fact. Their efforts to keep us from diverting traffic, in actuality, are keeping us from retaining customers.

Streamate: Impossible. It is completely impossible for an independent model (35%er) to retain customers on this site. While tools exist to adhere to the market as far as price goes, retention is lacking in a big way.

Is this the vision of someone with a degree on the wall but unable to shift the focus of their thinking to the industry and market that they’re in? Degree does not = common sense. If only they handed out degrees to people with common sense.

This entire industry needs to start treating the people who work hard to earn them money a heck of a lot better than this. If you want people to make you money, give them every tool possible to do so. Listen to them (they just might know more than you do about some things, believe it or not) and get your head out of the sand. If your site is so great, then everyone will be on it. You won’t need to be so paranoid about traffic diversion. By not allowing performers to keep in close contact with their members (via Twitter, for example), you’re shooting yourself in the foot.

And I won’t even start on your studios. Run your casino, run your tables, run them all into the ground. As long as it makes you money today, what do you care about tomorrow? It’s that very mindset that creates desperation and struggle for the future, rather than planning for it now. But shit, what do I know?

Streamate needs a real wake-up call!