Our Intrepid Reporter: So, talk to me about a typical day for you at clueQuest.
Ophelie: There’s a lot of emails to go through throughout the day! I come in at ten, and see if any emails haven’t been answered the day before. If there haven’t, I’ll scroll through new emails and see which ones need answering urgently. Then at eleven, the phone calls start coming in. If it’s a busy day, I’ll take down notes on what is said over the phone. Then I’m back to emails, emails, emails. At twelve, one o’clock, I start thinking about getting some food!
Jonnie: Yep, emails, especially when there’s a recent marketing development. If we’ve made an announcement about a new Print+Cut+Escape, we get lots of replies. I’ll have left the inbox the day before with five emails, and come in the next day to two hundred and seventy four.
OIR: What’s the most unusual question you’ve responded to?
Ophelie: I have one! An email was sent with the title ‘fraud’, so obviously I was curious. It went, ‘hi, someone has used my card to book this game at this time’. I was like, how do you know the date and time if it was fraud? You card doesn’t tell you if you’re playing OBS! But I then got another email about an hour later saying ‘please ignore my last email. It was my girlfriend who booked a game as a surprise for me.’ At least it wasn’t fraud!
OIR: You were both originally Gamesmakers before becoming the customer service team. How did you find the change in role?
Ophelie: Actually, it’s kind of similar. With Gamesmaking, you have a set of clues and timings that you stick to. With customer service, there are questions that come up regularly - although sometimes there are things that are new! And gamesmaking is face to face with the customers, but customer service is through a screen, so still a personal relationship.
OIR: What do you enjoy about being customer service?
Jonnie: I always like helping people, making sure that they are happy and have a great experience. Making them go, ‘wow, that was really helpful!’. We get people trying to organise birthday parties where the child has gone ‘I want to do an escape room!’ and the parents go ‘I haven’t got a clue what that is’. So they email us saying, ‘is clueQuest suitable, is it the right age limit, what else can you do?’ And then I’m able to write straight back to them saying ‘absolutely, we can do this, and this, and this. We can recommend these things. We can do this for you. We can make this personal’. And to see them go, oh, thank you so much for making this easy, that’s something that I particularly enjoy.
Ophelie: I agree with Jonnie! Customer service is the beginning of the customer’s experience with clueQuest. Before booking, if they feel like they’re in good hands, they then know that when they come here they’re going to have a good time. An experience with clueQuest starts when they give us a call, not when they walk through the door.
OIR: If you could change the customer service ringtone to anything, what would it be?
Jonnie: I changed the ringtone during lockdown! I spent time going through sounds, trying to find one that I liked, and I found one of a woman going ‘rrrring, rrrring’. So I had to have that!
Ophelie: I’d have one of the sounds from cQ:Origenes!
OIR: Do you have any escape room tips for prospective agents?
Jonnie: Think out loud. It helps your teammates and your gamesmaker know what you’ve found. My second piece of advice, if you find something that you think is useless, show it to a teammate. I’ve been in a room before where I found something that turned out to be exactly what we needed, and we only realised it because I found it and gave it to someone else!
Ophelie: Don’t overthink things. Sometimes the hardest puzzle is actually really simple. And try codes and keys everywhere! Just because it doesn’t unlock one thing, doesn’t mean it doesn’t make the drawer next to it spring open.
To hear from Jonnie and Ophelie yourself, why not pick up the phone and book your experience here? You can find out more about our four escape room missions here!