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Our goal at Kinetic has always been to do what's best for our customers, and right now, we strongly believe that having a human support team is an important part of that. AI has come a long way, but we don't believe it can replace an experienced support agent who understands our systems, infrastructure, and game server hosting.
And over the past few months, we've seen something that's only strengthened that belief: an increasing number of support tickets containing AI-generated responses that are, quite frankly, completely wrong.
Slowing Down Tickets
Over the past few months, we've noticed a huge increase in customers turning to AI before contacting our support team. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that! AI can be a useful troubleshooting tool, and I'm sure plenty of people have managed to solve their problems without ever needing to open a ticket.
The problem starts when people copy and paste entire AI conversations into tickets, or ask AI to write the ticket for them. What should be a simple explanation of a problem can turn into several paragraphs of technical jargon, incorrect assumptions, and troubleshooting steps that have little to do with the actual issue.
Our support team then has to dig through all of that to work out what's actually happening.
That takes time, and ultimately slows down replies for everyone.
You Won't Sound Silly
Something else we've noticed is that some people seem worried about sounding silly when contacting support.
They'll ask AI to make their ticket sound more technical or professional, and suddenly a simple question becomes three paragraphs of technical waffle that doesn't quite describe what they were trying to say in the first place. And trust me, AI-written tickets stand out a mile.
Please don't worry about sounding silly when opening a ticket. You don't need to know the technical terms, understand how our infrastructure works, or even have an idea of what's causing the problem. That's what our support team is here for!
Just explain what's happening in your own words, even if it's something as simple as "my server isn't working, and I don't know why."
And if you're worried your question is silly, trust me, we've seen sillier!
Your Ports Are Open
If there's one thing AI seems particularly obsessed with, it's telling people that their TCP or UDP ports are blocked.
I genuinely cannot count the number of tickets we've received where AI has confidently informed someone that we need to open their ports, change our firewall rules, or fix our DDoS protection. In the overwhelming majority of cases, your ports are already open.
There isn't a firewall blocking your connection, and our DDoS protection isn't secretly stopping everyone from joining your server.
Of course, genuine networking issues do happen, and when they do, our team can investigate them. The problem is that AI often confidently points people towards networking issues without actually knowing how our infrastructure works.
So rather than investigating the real problem, everyone ends up going down a rabbit hole trying to fix something that wasn't broken in the first place.
AI Is a Tool, Not Your Support Agent
I want to make something clear: we're not against AI. I think it's a brilliant tool when used appropriately. It can help people understand errors, troubleshoot problems, and learn how things work.
But it doesn't know everything, and it certainly doesn't know the ins and outs of Kinetic's infrastructure.
Our support team does.
So when you open a ticket, please just tell us what you're experiencing, what you've tried, and what you'd like help with. You don't need to make it sound professional, fill it with technical terminology, or have AI write it for you.
And if our support team tells you something different from what an AI bot has suggested, please trust the people who actually work with these systems every day.
Keeping Support Human
We're going to start displaying messages across our support channels asking customers not to paste AI-generated replies into tickets.
This isn't because we don't want people using AI. It's because we want our support team to spend their time actually helping customers, rather than untangling pages of AI-generated troubleshooting advice.
We've always been proud of having real people answering our tickets, and we want to keep it that way. You don't want every support conversation to be with an AI bot, and neither do we.
So help us keep support human. Tell us what's happening in your own words, leave the technical investigation to us, and we'll have a much better chance of getting your issue sorted quickly.
And please, stop asking us to open your ports. They're probably already open. :D
Chris
CEO @ Kinetic
