In thinking poor customer service is killing British businesses?

[reasonableme]

I called Barclays bank the other day about a suspicious transaction in my account involving a huge sum. The lady in the fraud team didn't have a clue and wanted me to do the research instead. I kept saying I really don't know who the payee was and that's what I would expect my bank to know. She got rude with me quickly and said she is not going to repeat the information for me. I asked her why she was getting mad at me when I was asking genuine questions? She snapped at me and said she is not going to engage in a conversation with someone like me and disconnected the call right on my face! Didn't have the patience to listen to anything I said after I asked her why she was upset with me. All I was trying to do was to understand a suspicious transaction. I complained but Barclays closed the case saying ok, we heard you.

The other day, I was emailing Nuffield Health gym for some personal classes and they said I need to be a member to get 1-1 lessons. Fair enough. I shared my number and asked the lady to give me a ring so we can discuss options to get a membership. She has not emailed or called me until now. It's almost like they don't want any new customers!

I called 2 companies to get a softener at home. They were nice enough to send their sales people to my house. They emailed me their quotes and after that they went cold. Didn't even follow up to see if I was interested. No calls after that.

This is the pattern I have been noticing in various (unrelated) industries. An utter disregard for the existing customers and zero/ low interest in getting new customers and I think this is partly why businesses fail. What do you think? Am I expecting too much?

@Roundeartheratchriatmas

I agree.

I recently tried to return an item I bought that was faulty and wanted it replacing. Except there was no option for that.

I emailed customer service and they said they would refund me but I would have to buy another myself. And pay a second lot of postage for the privilege

I pointed out this was hardly fair and I got a stick response that didn’t answer my question.

Won’t be using them again.

Never mind hardly fair. It's possibly against the consumer act and trading standards.

It was a well moan high street brand spring

They were happy to refund the item but not the postage for a replacement.

Or even well known …

They are chancers then. But I am SO not surprised. We (recently as in last week) had an argument with an alarm company along very similar lines. They operate in the hope that the customer service person is poorly trained and does not what they are doing and nor does the customer. makes me cross.

Agreed.

JL of all people were awful last month. I bought an expensive bit of kitchen equipment from them at Christmas - it lasted less than 3 months the product had a ‘lifetime’ guarantee, I tried to return it.

What followed was the most baffling chain of emails which resulted in no refund. It was my fault apparently, for a) using the item b) having the audacity to have a gas hob.

Won’t be buying from JL again that’s for sure- back to cheap and cheerful here.

What I have found time and time again is that if something is remotely complicated people won't deal with it

I had a problem with Scottish power. My meter stopped working so they sent someone out to replace it, all good and fine for six months.

Then I need to move, I ring with the meter reading and the engineer hasn't registered the new meter properly. Omg I think it took me a month of several phones calls and week and hundreds of emails. No one would sort it out for me. They all promised faithfully but I never heard from them again.

Just truly terrible service

I actually think it's because customer service has not been viewed as a worthwhile skill for a really long time. Good customer service is actually quite difficult and not just anyone can do it. But companies usually pay the people fronting their business the least amount of money. Anyone who is any good quickly gets promoted out of the the customer facing roles to roles that are paid more. It's short sighted thinking imo.

Many companies also want heir staff to be more sales people than customer service people and ime people who can do sales are often not the same people who deliver good customer service. Personally I hate being sold to but love good customer service and it's the latter that makes me loyal to a brand so again very short sighted thinking imo.

Having said that there are some companies that are still doing pretty well. First Direct is one example. Their service (bar one interaction which was just ok) is usually very good. I've also had one excellent interaction with Trespass (although their administration is appalling!). I also had a really good experience after having to complain about a mistake Halifax made. The woman from the complaints team had a lovely manner, they resolved the error, gave me compensation and sent me a lovely orchid with an apology card. Having been quite cross and frustrated that really won me over! What a lovely touch! That was a few years ago mind you.

I have been caught out twice with small UK sellers on Amazon. Charging for items they never intended to send, being dismissive and trying to fob me off - one of them clearly operating a borderline scam operation. Both times Amazon were excellent, quick and polite dealing with them and resolving my queries.

I had to phone 119 today about a problem I was having with my covid pass. The person I spoke to was lovely. He told me how I could fix my problem and suggested a paper "work round" just in case I didn't have time to do as he had suggested.

Despite the fact I had to ask him, several times, to repeat what he was saying, he was very helful.

First Direct are also very good. Despite being primarily an online bank, they are quite happy for me to conduct any business I have by phone, after I explained the problems I was having (basically old age and losing whatever IT confidence I once had).I

So, yes, some retail staff can be short, but some are very good. The good ones get my custom, the others? Not so much

I’m finding the same. Had an expensive floor fitted by an amtico dealer paid the deposit which was 4/5 of the total price. Last 1/5 still outstanding. I complained one plank wasn’t right and they hadn’t brought the strips that go between the rooms. Kept ringing saying they would come with a selection for us to choose and never turned up. Floor still not completely finished and it’s almost 6 months now! Still not demanded the last 1/5 either!

Wanted some specific expensive blinds. Went to a shop near us that said they supplied the blinds we wanted. When we got there they didn’t have them on display. Then they quoted us for the wrong blinds and didn’t know you couldn’t get the ones we wanted in the width they quoted. They sent someone out to measure and didn’t tell him we wanted these specific blinds so he didn’t have the right pattern book with him for us to choose a fabric. In the end I got them from an internet shop who were really knowledgeable, sent us free samples of the fabric and much cheaper. The first company also haven’t rung us back after sending us the quote.

Imo from the other side of the fence, companies’ ethos has changed and they are no longer interested in customer service. When I first started work 20-odd years ago, I was in customer service, and we were trained and managed from the perspective that retaining existing customers by providing good service is the best, and most cost-effective, way to succeed. I haven’t heard anyone say that in years, and all the companies I’ve worked for are household names. I don’t work directly in customer service any more, but closely enough to know what their priorities are, and it’s all about volume and efficiency- discouraging customers from making contact at all if possible, and getting rid of them as quickly as possible if not. I suspect a large part of the reason for this, although I haven’t heard it articulated, is that the companies who’ve been really successful in the last few years have done so in spite of having a terrible reputation for poor service. I think that has helped businesses decide that it’s not worth the investment.

Virgin Media are awful, just awful. Never again

One of the big retail websites told me NOT to use my vpn to make the site function more efficiently

discouraging customers from making contact at all if possible, and getting rid of them as quickly as possible if not.

Yes I’ve noticed this - people either clearly don’t want to deal with you so direct you to someone else who can’t help rather than resolve the issue or the company makes it very difficult to actually directly speak to a person.

Exception to this - Loccitane - have always been very very good. Expensive but a brand worth paying for.

It's a vicious cycle. We have been horrendously short staffed due to covid. The pressures were immense and a lot of well trained staff gave up and moved on. Those that stayed are having to deal with the brunt of extended waiting times due to a lack of staff and customers responses. There's only so many times you can get sworn at before your morale reaches an all time low and you get disinterested in the job and feel like you are only just treading water. In the case that I've seen it's a 100% the company's fault for not reinvesting in staff once others left and giving them the full, necessary training rather than shoving them in the deep end and letting them sink.

When your employer treats you as a resource to be exploited for the benefit of their shareholders and execs why would you bother going the extra yard, let alone mile? They try and pay you the minimum they can get way with, so it’s not surprising if they get the minimum effort back.

Hard work is not rewarded - most employees are wise to that old lie these days.

I think it's been like this for a while but definitely become worse with covid which gives companies a ready made excuse. For this reason tend to stay local as much as I can and use the same shops where I know the staff are good.

I do think part of the problem is this, people want stuff for the absolute minimum cost. Over the years the quality of goods and customer service have dropped significantly. John Lewis are struggling because their model doesn't suit pile it high sell it cheap and whilst people do like a nice wander around a lovely department store they don't want to pay extra for it.

Echo that I imagine it’s burnout in many cases. And a defence mechanism against customers who have been vile.

I had a stroppy checkout staff member in a supermarket last week, she looked like she was having a crap day, she may have been on the verge of tears. I couldn’t have known whether it was something in her personal life, or a previous customer being a dick, or whether she wasn’t a very nice person, but I treated her with kindness and respect, it cost me nothing.

I think that meeting what seems like less than ideal service with kindness is far more better for both sides. For someone in a customer facing role having a bad day, it can make a world of difference

@RunningAlong

I think there are a number of reasons for this but really its all comes down to the same thing, companies treat staff as a commodity. There is a lack of support and training, chronic understaffing and the pay is poor and the hours often long and anti-social. Also as the previous poster the customer that shouts the most rules and this is now the norm.

Yes, I tend to agree with this. I went to the cinema last weekend and the staff behind the food bit were hopeless - slow, blatantly not giving a shit, getting stuff wrong.

I was annoyed to begin with but then I thought about it a bit and realised that these are all teenagers on minimum wage, working at a weekend. Not once did I see a manager interact with them, they were left on their own to handle an increasingly growing queue of customers getting cross and impatient.

Yes, their attitude could have been better, but it didn’t strike me that they’d been given much training and they were clearly understaffed.

Generally I’ve had great customer service in independent shops which I’ve been trying to support by using them over big businesses. I had a rubbish experience in a sports shop today trying to buy new running trainers. The shop assistant who apparently had worked there for years had absolutely no expertise at all. That’s their only USP over sports direct. She got stroppy with me when I kept asking “are these neutral or stability trainers?” which she didn’t know or know how to find out. She just kept saying how nice they looked and that they were all “good running trainers”. It was incredibly frustrating. I went in saying “I want stability trainers-what do you have”. It’s a basic question. If you work in a shop like that you’ve got to know the products. She was visibly annoyed that I didn’t buy anything even though everything she suggested was unsuitable.

When your employer treats you as a resource to be exploited for the benefit of their shareholders and execs why would you bother going the extra yard, let alone mile?

It’s not quite as clear-cut as staff can’t be bothered because they’re not invested in the business they work for because they’re treated badly.
It’s more that business rules and processes these days don’t give them any flexibility to help. They can’t do anything, and so customers get pissed off and take it out on them, so they get defensive. Customers were often rude and nasty in the old days, but you could take the wind out of their sails by giving them a credit, or bending the rules for them. Now they can’t, and apologies don’t work when someone has waited half an hour to be told no.

@AppleKatie I have been waiting over a month for an apology gift voucher from Waitrose, for the value of a recently bought & little worn (gift from me) wool sweater of DPs ruined by improperly sealed bleach on a home delivery supermarket shop. I had an apology & solution within 5 days but I've been waiting weeks for them to email me the actual voucher. First of all they extended how long they thought it would take to arrive and now someone has been "looking in to it" for over a week- incommunicado. I'm getting very fed up of being patronisingly told to just check my junk mail in response to any email enquiries I make. It's not like I haven't checked before I email them.

I don't expect them to grovel, their
apology email was nice but they are responsible for ruined our property and I really did expect better from Waitrose/JL. The next email I send will be more of a rocket up their arse, I'm afraid. Might not be the biggest deal but they ruined a nice, still new gift and the voucher would really help with replacing it.

I'm not sure it's got any worse. I left the UK a couple of decades ago but I still occasionally have to use customer service in the UK. There's always and is still) a problem with UK staff not knowing enough to help you but because they don't want to lose face, they end up bullshitting you instead.

On the other hand if you have a problem that the system anticipates they seem far more efficient now.

But customers ARE entitled - in the true sense of the word - to decent service. Being a customer is not a privilege and staff are not doing them a favour.

Yep, and the reason staff have a job is because of customers. No customers, no money to pay wages.

I have worked in customer service for several decades. Of course there are arrogant/unpleasant customers - but you still deal with them in a pleasant manner, and it's certainly not a reason to provide bad service to anyone.

@MrsToothyBitch I’m impressed you got them to admit liability! They wouldn’t even go that far for me. The patronising tone of their emails are extraordinary aren’t they? They endlessly repeat infuriating stock phrases and you go on mad loops getting nowhere. JL customer service used to be the best, now… not so much.