Contacting a customer service team should be straightforward, but it can quickly turn into a headache if you're left on hold, are unable to find contact details or are steered towards unhelpful automated replies.
Which? surveyed more than 3,000 members of the public* about their experiences contacting companies in the energy, financial services, retail (in-store and online) and telecoms sectors.
Around one in five people were unhappy with their most recent experience contacting a company, but those who contacted energy firms were more dissatisfied than with any other sector.
Here, we look at the main customer care gripes experienced by energy customers and reveal how the other sectors performed.
Queueing fatigue
Consumers are often frustrated by the time taken to get through to a company.
23% of respondents to our survey were unhappy with how long it took to speak to someone who could help, and 22% were dissatisfied with how long it took to get an answer to their query.
These figures rose to 33% and 31% of people contacting energy companies.
Scottish Power (49%) and Ovo (47%) customers were most commonly dissatisfied with how long it took to get in touch with someone who could help.
One Scottish Power customer told us: ‘It took ages to get hooked up to live chat. The AI chatbot was useless and it took so long to get the answer I needed.’
An Ovo customer recalled: ‘It took 90 minutes for an agent to finally accept a live chat’.
Telecoms customers were also disgruntled with long wait times. ‘It was hard to get through the automated line to actually speak to someone, and once I was speaking to a rep they had no clue how to help’ said one Virgin customer.
Ovo said it has a five-minute service agreement for responding to live chats. It says it consistently answers more than 80% of emails within two working days.
Scottish Power told us it has been working tirelessly to improve its customer service. It claims to have made significant improvements in areas including speed of answering queries and contact channel accessibility.
Hidden contact information
Some customers said it was difficult to find contact information for companies.
17% of respondents were unhappy with how easy it was to find the info, and 18% with the contact methods they were given. For energy companies, these figures rose to 21% and 24%.
Again, some companies stood out. 36% of Scottish Power customers were dissatisfied with the contact options provided, and 29% of Ovo customers found it difficult to find contact information.
British Gas also scored poorly. One customer told us: ‘finding the contact telephone number was difficult, the company tried to get me to use live chat.’
When it came to the telecoms sector, 26% of Sky customers struggled to find contact information.
'It was very difficult to find a number to speak with Sky. This was after trying the chat option on the Sky app which was very poor and didn’t help at all. Even searching online for a contact number was difficult,’ one respondent recalled.
'I wasn't taken seriously'
Unfortunately, some customers continued to experience poor customer service after getting through to a company.
One in four people (21%) who contacted an energy company were dissatisfied with how seriously the company took their issue.
Again, these figures were considerably higher for people contacting Ovo (39%) and Scottish Power (30%). A Scottish Power customer said: '[They] show no empathy. They failed to deal with my query in a helpful manner.’
An Ovo customer said: 'I wasn’t taken seriously and my issue kept being passed to different areas of the company when it became clear they were unable to help.’
Find out more:Examples of better customer service
The financial services sector performed somewhat better across most of our criteria.
79% of respondents were happy with how easy it was to find contact information, 82% with how seriously their issue was taken, and 76% with how well they were kept informed.
91% of Barclays customers who contacted the bank in the past year were satisfied with how seriously the customer service team took their issue, while 88% were happy with the ease of finding contact information.
Retailers also performed well for some aspects of customer service. In-store and online retailers both received above-average scores for how long it took to get an answer to a query and how well the issue was dealt with overall.
Customer service struggles: our top tips
Go to the ombudsman:Use one of our tools or template letters:Join the PRS:*We surveyed 3,372 members of the public who’d contacted a customer service team in the energy, financial services, home improvements, in-store retail, online retail, telecoms and travel sectors in the last year.
source https://www.which.co.uk/news/article/they-show-no-empathy-energy-firms-are-failing-consumers-with-poor-customer-care-aWBlP6Y5uDSn