To think that there's no such thing as Good Customer Service anymore?

[BeachBlondey]

Constantly frustrated by utterly shit (or non existent) customer service. I swear, that back in the days before mobile phones and the internet, back when you could actually talk to someone, that customer service was so much better.

I am so sick of phoning a help line, only to be told to find my answer at www.company.com, before being cut off. Obviously, I have tried resolving my issue on-line, before resorting to the help line, but now can I please, speak to a human being, instead of being cut adrift with zero resolution?

Just a few examples recently :

A) Was given a WOWCHER for Christmas, for a meal and overnight stay at a hotel, for two people. Go to book it, and the hotel is fully booked until the voucher expiry date. Try to call Wowcher. You can't speak to a human, you get directed to open a Whatsapp chat. So, I go ahead and do that, but you just go round in a loop, with a chat bot, with no resolution. So, I call the hotel, and they can't deal with it - apparently only Wowcher can "help". There is NO help.

B) Want to upgrade my phone with Virgin. Get to the final check out page, and I get an "oops" error message. So, I ring them, only to be told that there is a "note" on my account, preventing the transaction going through. I ask what it is. They say they don't know, and that only the back office can remove it. They promise to ring me in a few days to resolve. They never ring me back. So, 4 days later I call again. Get the same story. Promise to ring me back in a few days. They never ring back. So, I call them back, just for the whole same thing to unfold again. Upshot is, I've gone with someone else, and they've lost my business.

C) Upon checking my elderly Dad's bank account, I see that the RAC are taking £34.50pm. No idea why. I call them, and after being passed around several departments, it turn out that for some reason, they have resurrected an old vehicle recovery plan, and have taken £138 from his account over the past 4 months. I ask for them to cancel it and refund him. Their answer...we can give you £46 back. By cheques only, even though my Dad can't get to a bank to pay it in. What? Why? The answer is "that's just what the computer says, so to get the rest, you'll have to log a complaint". So we do that, and they promise to ring me back. Yep, you've guessed it, no fucker has rung me back.

D) I want to open an ISA with Barclays. You can (supposedly) open this on-line. So, I try to do this. But...they ask me to log on to their App with my Barclays sort code and account number, which obviously I don't have because I am not yet a customer. WTF? Finally got through to a human, who gave me a direct number for my local branch, which is not any such thing, so I end up going off in to a loop of numbers, none of which can actually help me.

I have so many more examples. I feel like Customer Service has royally gone down the pan, and it' SO frustrating! I honestly cannot remember the last time anything worked seamlessly.

Anyone else?

I’ve had a recent problem with my Sky box and needed a replacement, the advisor was very helpful and stated box would be with me the next day, and it was. I was sent links on how to set up the box, plain English, and set up with no issues.
I have been frustrated with customer service at times but we also need to praise when a service works .

Avoid Barclays - the customer service is appalling!

Never had a problem with Virgin and the best service is Miele.

Generally I agree. I used to manage contact centres for a major bank and they really couldn’t give a fuck how long it took to answer calls as long as they didn’t go over budget. That said I had some excellent customer service in some retail stores recently and I’ve always spoke to the manager or similar to call it out as I think it will encourage those doing a good job to keep going.

I would have agreed with you OP but I have to praise Forthglade (pet food supplier), I paid £4.99 for DPD next day delivery, it didnt arrive for 4 days. I emailed a complaint, asking for my £4.99 back and received a refund of £64.00, half of my order, 😁

They seem to have the best ISA rates just now though!

Completely agree. However, if I get bad customer service once I never bother going back. It's mainly large companies that are crap.

From the perspective of a customer 'facing' employee who works behind the scenes in a bank.

The reason we ask for it in writing is that we are not allowed to submit something without proof it was said. E.g if you tell me your full legal name is x when I had y down I require it in an email so that there is proof that I haven't made it up.

It's frustrating for us too but if we ask for an email with confirmations or start a conversation with you specifically over email please just help us by going along with it. We have no control over it!

I hate dealing with big organisations due to their poor customer service. In my business I have really no choice but to deal with HMRC but their "service" is now so bad I'm stopping doing tax work and just transitioning to doing book-keeping and management accounting instead, so not taking on any new tax work. It's not just them not answering the phone and their telephone advisors not having a clue what they're doing. Even correspondence sent to them or online forms are processed incorrectly (or just ignored), so literally everything takes multiple attempts. Life's too short for all that! HMRC has been absolutely woeful ever since the different tax depts were integrated and closing the town centre offices has made it worse as so many experienced staff have been made redundant. Thanks Gordon!

I know people have reason to avoid amazon but their customer service is top notch

Try Vanguard for ISAs. Best financial website I've come across.

I feel your pain. I work quite flexibly and sometime you literally have to take a morning off work to sort the simplest bits of house admin out. I get very frustrated being given option 1, 2, 3 etc on a phonecall when NONE of the options are what I need, to inevitably end up (if asked) screeching 'I want to speak to a HUMAN'. It does work sometimes but the whole Customer Service sector needs a vast overhaul. Saying that, Sage (Accounting/Payroll) are excellent. I'd happily pay a bit more for human contact at times and change providers for this reason.

I agree with you re Banks, Virgin Media etc

However I think Argos has terrific Customer Service. Their whole business model is superb; Click and Collect is brilliant, and home delivery is excellent.

Also HMRC. Tax is always a quagmire for me but they are really helpful and open late hours and weekends now.

I find people are very quick to complain about bad service but never bother to compliment good (above and beyond) service
I've been told so many times how helpful I've been. Total number of actual email/written compliments in 6 years? 2

Well I would praise if I ever got any good service!
Im with you op everything is shit at the moment. It started with the first lockdown in March 2020 when everyone started wfh. Quite understandably things were difficult then as the systems and infrastructure weren’t in place.
However three years later things are no better. As another poster said it takes hours on the phone to get through to people who don’t know what they are doing.
I bank with Nat West who have shut down branches in my village, the next town along and the town where I work. They can’t help me over the phone so I have to go into the nearest city 8.5 miles away where there is no parking and they are only open 9 - 4; impossible for most people.

I do also get "your service is shit" when it's not actually shit
For example - customer wants an appointment today, we are full so I can't fit them in
"Your customer service is shocking"
Well, no, we are full! That's not shit service, it's just a fact

On an average day I would say 10% of customers are unhappy, 10% are really complimentary, and the other 80% are "I got what I needed"

Our systems haven't changed, our availability hasn't changed but since covid, customers have become increasingly demanding and more aggressive

Agree about Barclays and gave up with that online ID thing which didn't work and was a hassle and then the vague promise that you may get some help in branch

I got slightly less in another BS for cash ISA in end

M&S helpline on chat was so rude and I am always polite

I do! Only this week I emailed McDonald's about a lovely young man who served me. So pleasant and cheerful, I just wanted them to know what a credit he is to the company.
Lakeland customer service is excellent.

I think it's not being able to speak to anyone easily and the stupid chat bots and options when you call.

People are usually nice and helpful when you actually get to speak to them itms

And the stupid "have you looked online" meme

Sounds to me like big companies could do with less stonewalled 'inclusion and diversity' training for staff and a bit more of the old fashioned 'customer is king/effective complaint handling' courses.
Opening new products with banks etc is always painful because of the money laundering regulations but once you are a customer it is usually easier.
I really like online banking and do it solely on my desktop at home, however whenever I log on my main bank is constantly pushing their phone app which I just do not want. No doubt one day soon using the app will be compulsory.
My DH recently had a to waste time phoning an internet company 3 times just to get them to email a return label. At the last attempt they said they had an issue and would send a box out for the router's return. Why do we care? Because they charge you if you do not return the router even though the internet never actually worked. It was our back-up only and so is now cancelled. We have been paying for nothing for months.

There are many more recent examples...

I've had some excellent recent experiences with John Lewis, Amazon and M&S but in general, I agree, customer service is poor for the most part.

Not exactly what you asked but I work on the phones for an insurance company and always hear ‘I can never speak to an actual person!’, when they are in fact speaking to a very real person (me) who is desperately trying to help them resolve whatever issue they’ve called about. It used to bother me but now I just laugh when the call is ended.

I agree. Some months back I applied online to renew my daughter's child passport. She was 15. It's taken months and she has since turned 16. I received a letter from the passport office saying she must now have an adult passport and we had to pay more money. Fine. There was a number to call to make the payment by card. The first person I got through to said she'd put me on hold, but cut me off. The second person told me I couldn't make the payment over the phone. I told him I was holding their letter which said I could. He said he was working from home, so couldn't take the payment. Not good enough.

Now I’m thinking about it, I have to say l’ve experienced excellent customer service over the last few weeks, on three occasions from small/medium sized companies but additionally from Tesco online and BT. Yes BT.

Oh I agree. I had a nightmare with Scottish power. I was in a short term rental with a prepayment meter. I rang up and put enough money on to last approx six weeks. A few days later my power goes off. It took them 8 hours to come and alert it (apparently there was a issue between the meter and the account so it looked like I ran out of money). When the engineer came he said the same was going ti happen with the gas meter, he xouod do the same fix as for the electric but needed Scottish power to raise the the job

They said no, even though the engineer was there we had to wait tor the gas to go off then raise a call and wait until an engineer was free to come fix it.

Just ridiculous. He was there and ready and we had done nothing wrong at all.