October 6th, 2010 by 
Woo-hoo – October 4 – 10 is National Customer Service Week, the aim of which, say the organisers is to ‘draw attention to the importance of providing great service.’
About time too I say, because if my experiences are anything to go by customer service in this country pretty much stinks.
No wonder Mary Portas – saviour of the UK high street – is turning her attention to this subject, with her new Channel 4 show looking at all those things that give me (and you I am sure), utter and complete phone and shop rage.
That’s automated phone systems, apathetic floor staff, and idiots at call centres.
Just this week I heard a great story on Radio 4 about this very theme .
A pregnant woman, who lives in the back of beyond, had her much-needed phone cut off.
Not for non-payment or being late with a payment but said the company in question, for using her phone too much!
Did the phone company apologise, try to make amends or run to her aid. Er… no they told her if she wanted her phone reconnected she’d have to pay for it!
Hardly surprising then that results from the UK Customer Satisfaction Index has telecoms companies performing really badly when it comes to customer service.
Mind you, I recently had an equally bad customer service encounter on the retail front. Taking back a new pair of shoes where one heel had broken off the following conversation occurred:
Me: I would like my money back please.
Shop assistant: Well, we’ll have to send the shoes back to head office first to see what’s wrong with them.
Me: Well, clearly the heel has come off (I demonstrate the heel moving away from the shoe).
Shop assistant: (staring intently at the heel) Mmm… yes, it looks like you’ve walked in the shoes and that’s why the heel has broken off.
Me: Yes (slowly imploding)
Shop assistant: Which means we can’t give you your money back as you’ve used them.
I have to add that in the end I did get my money back and an apology but the whole process took nearly the whole of my lunch hour and a good three hours afterwards to calm down.
So, someone please tell me – why oh why is customer service so bad?
Have we turned into a nation of whingers who can’t be appeased, or does no-one care any more whether or not we’re being served? Your thoughts please…
Click here if you’d like a chance to fill in a survey on customer service and get a chance of appearing on Mary Portas’s new series.
Anita Naik for Mindbubble
A lot of shop service does stink and I think most of us don’t complain about it enough. A few times recently I’ve asked an assistant if they stock such and such an item and they’ve looked at me blankly and said “I don’t think so.” And you know they actually don’t know but they don’t offer to go and find out either. Then I tend to think if they have such lame staff I don’t want to buy anything from them anyway and walk out. However two places I go to near me whose staff deserve a mention for good service are Waterstones and HMV. But the best service I’ve had has been on-line-Office Shoes, Top Shop, Amazon to name a few. Any services via the telephone are pretty appalling and as for call centres-aghhhhh!!! I heard that story on Radio 4 too and thought it was just soooo stupid it couldn’t be for real. Which reminds me of something that happened via the telephone, again, with a company deciding to take over my gas and electricity accounts without my permission just because rather than listen to them rabbit on about figures when I didn’t have the relevent paperwork in front of me to make a comparison I said can you send them to me to look at in my own time!! At no point did I say I wanted to switch and I didn’t realise until I had a letter from the company I thought I was with to say ’sorry you have left us’ When I spoke to them they said this had been happening a lot-how bad is that! Oops apologies for blathering on and using so many exclamation marks!!!!!
Arghhh call centres for utility companies are the worst – whenever I talk to someone I get a real ‘computer says no’ mentality. I don’t blame the person but the appalling training that the companies give them.
I was shocked today. I had to call T-mobile customer services and ended up speaking to a chap who was both courteous and went out of his way to sort out my (minor) problem.
Of course I shouldn’t have been shocked as this really should be the norm.
Call centres put me on another planet. And a teller at my bank yesterday asked me if I’d like to apply for a loan because I was paying such a high interest rate on my Visa. And it was their Visa! I borrow money from them to pay off …. them! My main pain is the council services, i.e. the dustmen. They make a POINT out of being as noisy as possible with their chatter to each other, scatter garbage all over between picking it up and throwing it in the truck, and are aggressive about wanting a ‘bonus’ at Christmas. In America, they are afraid of losing your business if they aren’t helpful. Here they think we should be lucky to have a place to spend our money. Aaaarrggg.
Having experienced fantastic service all over the USA I would have to agree with Judy. Bring on some American style service I say.
Interesting article!
Good customer service can make or break a place. Sometimes people just seem to not want to help. We had one experience over the summer where our waitress was really surly. I decided to find out why by talking to her, turned out she was a singer, recording an album in her off hours, and the waitressing job just sort of bored her and got in her way – hence her attitude!
Maybe the problem is that few of the people who work as waitresses and shop assistants benefit financially from the shop or restaurnt doing well and are probably just doing the job to pay the bills with no thoughts of career advancement; so they don’t have much motivation to be brilliant at it, beyond personal pride and satisfaction…??
Maybe if tips were better in the UK, as they are in the US, service would improve?
We have recently had to deal with the Next Directory as had a problem with a tv we had purchased – after numerous visits from independent engineers it had been agreed that they would replace the tv. The best part in all of this is that I have not had to chase them at all regarding this – I was phoned at all stages and the service received has been excellent – Next have won hands down with the best customer service around.
Sarah-Jane – that’s brilliant to hear a good story and I am sure there are plenty about, it’s just that it’s so rare it gets you down. Yazzle, I agree better tips and better pay would equal better service. Though if you’re doing a job like that waitress, you shouldn’t be punishing the customers for not being in the profession you want to be in (and I speak having been a waitress).
The thing that drives me crazy is that whenever you need to contact customer services – for pretty much anything – you almost always end up having to call expensive 0844 or 0870 numbers. So if you get stuck on hold or have to go through endless automated menus it’s possible to end up being charged £5 for one call. Both my landline and mobile give me free calls for national numbers, but charge more to call these lines – often there’s no alternative but to give in and make the call. Surely calls to customer service departments should always be free?
I never thought of that. Customerservice calls should be free. Best one is when airlines lose your luggage and then you have to pay a premium rate number to call them to see if they’ve found it. David I feel ashamed slating telecom companies O2 just refunded me a large lump of cash for forgetting to give me free minutes I’d been paying for and I hadn’t even realized! Why do I feel ridiculously grateful for O2 being so honest? It’s because it’s so rare isn’t it?
Aha – the customer is sometimes wrong [VIDEO] http://bit.ly/bwdKRS