ModSquad

Last updated
ModSquad
Company type Private
Industry Business Process Outsourcing
Founded2007 [1]
Headquarters
Sacramento, California [2]
,
United States
Area served
Global
Key people
Amy Pritchard (CEO)
Mike Pinkerton (COO) [1]
ProductsDigital engagement strategy
Customer support
Content moderation
Social media
Community management
Crisis management
Number of employees
c. 10,000
Website modsquad.com

ModSquad is a global digital company providing engagement services based in the United States. [3] [4] The company currently has over 10,000 moderators in its network. [3] [4] ModSquad provides managed, on-demand customer service, content moderation, social media, and community management services and teams across online, e-commerce, in-game, in-app, and social media channels. [1]

Contents

History

The company was founded by attorney Amy Pritchard in 2007, [1] to provide brands with a way to give the members of their online communities a more relevant, personalized experience. Looking at the step change that today's brands could make in managing their online communities as akin to the London Mods youth culture, [2] Pritchard – along with COO Mike Pinkerton – created a services based company around remote community managers and moderators (Mods), to staff virtual sites. [3] [5] The firm originally specialized in providing avatar staffing, [5] but soon expanded to supplying forum moderation and customer service across a wide range of brands. [3] [4] By 2010, the company had 500 experienced Mods working on more than 100 clients' sites. [3] In 2015, ModSquad was awarded a Silver Stevie Award in the Company of the Year (Internet/New Media) category of the 13th Annual American Business Awards. [6] Also that year, the company was recognized as Customer Service Team of the Year in the Golden Bridge Awards. [7]

Present

Presently the company has over 10,000 "Mods," or moderators, in its network, a 24/7 operations center in Sacramento, California established in 2010, [2] 24/7 operations centers in Austin, Texas, [8] and Derry, Northern Ireland, [9] and offices in Brooklyn, New York[7] and London. In November 2015, the company, formerly known as Metaverse Mod Squad, changed its name to ModSquad. Clients include Warner Bros. (including Gossip Girl and Harry Potter), [5] HarperCollins, Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon, the National Football League, Reel FX (parent firm of Webosaurs), Electronic Arts, enVie Interactive, Kimpton Hotels, Vimeo, and the United States Department of State. [2] [4] [10] [11]

Operations

The company operates by providing services via 10,000+ multilingual Mods from 70 countries in its network via a series of outsource-provision contracts. Operating under a predefined customer service brief, vetted and oriented Mods augment or replace in-house teams by managing a variety of online community activities and specializing in digital engagement from customer service [2] and maintenance tickets to social and forum moderation and quality assurance. [12] Mods help to maintain and shape clients’ unique online communities by assisting with community events, aiding users with technical and social issues, orienting new arrivals, and channeling community concerns and feedback to corporate clients. [13]

Mods take both an active position in forums by acting as the corporate client to provide services, as well as passively looking through the end user experience to monitor social media and quality assurance testing. In active mode, Mods [5] moderate content, chat with customers, manage communities, protect child safety (approved by Safe Kids USA), [14] [15] monitor game experience, provide customer support, check for bugs, and manage social media accounts. Using a variety of Customer Relations Management systems, [16] Mods work from anywhere in the world with secure internet access, enabling native-language services to be provided in 50+ languages and dialects during peak traffic and activity hours. [13]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Content moderation</span> System to sort undesirable contributions

On Internet websites that invite users to post comments, content moderation is the process of detecting contributions that are irrelevant, obscene, illegal, harmful, or insulting, in contrast to useful or informative contributions, frequently for censorship or suppression of opposing viewpoints. The purpose of content moderation is to remove or apply a warning label to problematic content or allow users to block and filter content themselves.

Video game modding is the process of alteration by players or fans of one or more aspects of a video game, such as how it looks or behaves, and is a sub-discipline of general modding. Mods may range from small changes and tweaks to complete overhauls, and can extend the replay value and interest of the game.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Web 2.0</span> World Wide Web sites that use technology beyond the static pages of earlier Web sites

Web 2.0 refers to websites that emphasize user-generated content, ease of use, participatory culture and interoperability for end users.

The Local is a multi-regional, European, English-language digital news publisher with local editions in Austria, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Norway, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland. Each site, while alike in appearance, has separate editorial teams, each focused on its respective market.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mod DB</span> Video game modding website

Mod DB is a website that focuses on general video game modding. It was founded in 2002 by Scott "INtense!" Reismanis. As of September 2015, the Mod DB site has received over 604 million views, has more than 12,500 modifications registered, and has hosted more than 108 million downloads. A spin-off website, Indie DB, was launched in 2010 and focuses on indie games and news.

Customer engagement is an interaction between an external consumer/customer and an organization through various online or offline channels. According to Hollebeek, Srivastava and Chen S-D logic-Definition of customer engagement is "a customer’s motivationally driven, volitional investment of operant resources, and operand resources into brand interactions," which applies to online and offline engagement.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Content marketing</span> Form of marketing focused on creating content for a targeted audience online

Content marketing is a form of marketing focused on creating, publishing, and distributing content for a targeted audience online. It is often used by businesses in order to achieve the following goals: attract attention and generate leads, expand their customer base, generate or increase online sales, increase brand awareness or credibility, and engage an online community of users. Content marketing attracts new customers by creating and sharing valuable free content as well as by helping companies create sustainable brand loyalty, providing valuable information to consumers, and creating a willingness to purchase products from the company in the future.


Customer experience is the totality of cognitive, affective, sensory, and behavioral customer responses during all stages of the consumption process including pre-purchase, consumption, and post-purchase stages.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Social media marketing</span> Promotion of products or services on social media

Social media marketing is the use of social media platforms and websites to promote a product or service. Although the terms e-marketing and digital marketing are still dominant in academia, social media marketing is becoming more popular for both practitioners and researchers.

Omnichannel is a neologism describing a business strategy. According to Frost & Sullivan, omnichannel is defined as "seamless and effortless, high-quality customer experiences that occur within and between contact channels".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Desura</span> Digital distribution platform

Desura was a digital distribution platform for the Microsoft Windows, Linux and OS X platforms. The service distributed games and related media online, with a primary focus on small independent game developers rather than larger companies. Desura contained automated game updates, community features, and developer resources. The client allowed users to create and distribute game mods as well.

Everloop was an online social media site specifically made for children ages 8–13.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">DigitalOcean</span> American cloud infrastructure provider

DigitalOcean Holdings, Inc. is an American multinational technology company and cloud service provider. The company is headquartered in New York City, New York, US, with 15 globally distributed data centers. DigitalOcean provides developers, startups, and SMBs with cloud infrastructure-as-a-service platforms.

Sprinklr is an American software company based in New York City that develops a SaaS customer experience management (CXM) platform. The company's software, also called Sprinklr, combines different applications for social media marketing, social advertising, content management, collaboration, employee advocacy, customer care, social media research, and social media monitoring.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Foiwe</span> Indian IT company

Foiwe Info Global Solutions Pvt Ltd is an Indian multinational information technology company that provides business consulting, information technology and outsourcing services. The company is founded in Bangalore and also headquartered in Bangalore, India with operations in two countries. The company began in 2010 as a Limited Liability Partnership company and was converted to a Private Limited company in 2019. The company is registered with Ministry of Corporate Affairs, India.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Curse LLC</span> Network of gaming websites

Curse was a gaming company that managed the video game mod host CurseForge, wiki host Gamepedia, and the Curse Network of gaming community websites.

<i>Tabletop Simulator</i> 2015 video game

Tabletop Simulator is an independent video game that allows players to play and create tabletop games in a multiplayer physics sandbox. Developed by Berserk Games as their first title after a successful crowdfunding campaign in February 2014, the game was released in June of the following year.

A Minecraft mod is a mod that changes aspects of the sandbox game Minecraft. Minecraft mods can add additional content to the game, make tweaks to specific features, and optimize performance. Thousands of mods for the game have been created, with some mods even generating an income for their authors. While Mojang Studios does not provide an API for modding, community tools exist to help developers create and distribute mods. The popularity of Minecraft mods has been credited for helping Minecraft become one of the best-selling video games of all time.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Khoros, LLC</span> American software company founded in 2019

Khoros, formerly Spredfast + Lithium, is a global customer engagement software company that provides online community management, social media marketing, social media analytics, digital care, and content management software and services to enterprise brands and agencies. Khoros owns over a dozen patents for social media marketing, online community, and care technologies.

<i>VRChat</i> Virtual reality social platform

VRChat is an online virtual world platform created by Graham Gaylor and Jesse Joudrey and operated by VRChat, Inc. The platform allows users to interact with others with user-created 3D avatars and worlds. VRChat is designed primarily for use with virtual reality headsets, being available for Microsoft Windows PCs and as a native app for Android-based headsets such as Meta Quest, Pico 4, and HTC Vive XR Elite. It is also usable without VR in a "desktop" mode designed for either a mouse and keyboard or gamepad, and in an Android app for touchscreen devices.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 "Who We Are". ModSquad. Retrieved 2016-02-12.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 Anderson, Mark (2012-09-21). "Web moderation firm expands into customer support: Metaverse Mod Squad's clients include NFL, U.S. State Department". Sacramento Business Journal. Retrieved 2014-01-15.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 Larson, Christine (2011-02-26). "A Patrol for the Web's Playgrounds". The New York Times. Retrieved 2011-02-27.
  4. 1 2 3 4 "Metaverse Mod Squad". Bloomberg. Retrieved 2014-01-15.
  5. 1 2 3 4 Bracken, Janey (2008-12-12). "Metaverse Mod Squad in Big Demand". CNN. Retrieved 2014-01-15.
  6. ↑ "Welcome Home, Silver Stevie Award!". ModSquad. 2015-09-16. Retrieved 2017-04-24.
  7. ↑ "ModSquad Customer Support Takes Home the Gold". ModSquad. 2015-12-15. Retrieved 2017-04-24.
  8. ↑ "ModSquad Selects Austin, Texas for New Operations Center: Company Expansion is the Result of Increasing Demand for Its Digital Customer Service and Moderation Expertise". MarketWired. 2017-03-02. Retrieved 2017-04-24.
  9. ↑ "Londonderry gets 100 new jobs in Metaverse Mod Squad expansion". BBC. 2015-06-24. Retrieved 2016-02-12.
  10. ↑ "Angel Selected by Metaverse Mod Squad to Enhance Customer Call Center Experience". MarketWire via Yahoo News. 2011-02-23. Retrieved 2011-02-27.
  11. ↑ "FunGoPlay partners with online kids safety experts Metaverse Mod Squad for launch of online sports theme park". Develop. Retrieved 2014-01-15.
  12. ↑ Onistsuk, Dimitri. "Meet the partner: Metaverse Mod Squad". Shipwire. Retrieved 2014-01-15.
  13. 1 2 Scheetz, Starratt (2013-09-09). "Metaverse: Mod Squad". The Work From Home Reporter. Archived from the original on 2014-03-31.
  14. ↑ "Safety Vendors and Tools: Metaverse Mod Squad". KidSafe. Retrieved 2014-01-15.
  15. ↑ "Izzy Neis, Director of Digital Engagement Strategy, Metaverse Mod Squad". Engage Digital. 2013-09-18. Archived from the original on 2014-03-27. Retrieved 2014-01-15.
  16. ↑ Janakiraman, Shamila (2008-09-19). "Parature and Metaverse Mod Squad Enter Integration Partnership". Contact Center Solutions. Archived from the original on 2014-01-16. Retrieved 2014-01-15.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.