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?

Well, Barclays. A few years ago I was conned by a furniture removal company. I went to my local Barclays and they were brilliant, so kind although I had admittedly been rather stupid, and they refunded the whole payment. When I went to another branch after I had moved I was treated like a complete idiot, and told that my new address didn't exist and I must live next door!

Have had amazing customer service recently from 3 local companies.

A furniture company who I emailed to say I wasnt happy with something (I was after some advice to correct the issue myself) and they've arranged to come and pick it up and repaint it and redeliver it within a couple of weeks.

I bought a bag for my daughter and it broke within a few weeks. I emailed and I got an apology and refund within 24 hours

I ordered online delivery of something and realised it was for the wrong day and they spoke to their delivery partners and arranged a special one off delivery on a day they dont normally deliver.

I find large companies are generally terrible as they have 'systems' in place and if your query doesnt fall neatly into one of the designated buckets, nobody has the autonomy to resolve it

I've had great customer service from Octopus Energy and Amazon.

It's a mix of the good, the bad and the surprising. I had terrible customer service from John Lewis when ordering a new cooker. Excellent service from Argos when returning a faulty phone. Swings and roundabouts.

Having recently had terrible customer service from :

DPD
Vodafone
Boots

I'm inclined to agree it seems so hard to get basic service these days

Cancelling my mum's water account with United Utilities.
Her house was sold last week.
Phoned up and it was dealt within 5 minutes.
In fact when I mentioned she was in a nursing home they
will refund all charges since she went.
Perfect service.
But can't say the same about British Gas.
After 45 minutes on the phone mum now has to wait up
to a month for her refund.

Both places have a copy of the Power of attorney.
Which I thought would make it easier.

Well done UU.
Boo to British Gas.

Random but Blinds2go's customer service is so over and above. They should hold training sessions for other businesses.

There are lots of examples of bad customer service. 45 minutes on hold to 24 hour home emergency line, pretty shit. Cost nearly 10 quid as number is 0345 from landline. Halifax home insurance Home emergency cover to name and shame. The advisor was really rude too.

Bt who I’ve thought have shit customer service for years were brilliant over the weekend. Tree blew over and snapped the phone wire. A text and they tested the line and confirmed a fault. Engineer would be in touch within 48 hours. The next morning bt engineer came and fixed the fault it took her two hours. Perhaps bypassing call centre is the answer.

Our economy is shuffling along in the last moments before all jobs with real people in them are gone.
There's no government pressure to protect jobs.
But there is great customer service - very often provided by the least well paid people.
I think Apple, Direct Line, Waitrose and John Lewis have given me great customer service. I had great service in Boots last week on the No 7 counter, the retail colleague had very good product knowledge.
The problem is most organizations seem to be run by people working from home or at a desk, looking at spreadsheets, only seeing figures and not listening to the people who actually do the work. It's the same in medicine, education.
I blame whenever the management consultants took over and cut all heart out of everything to pay their huge prices. Harvard Business school. Get rid of all these people and pay me their salaries! 🥳
(I'm going to hide under the table now)

Shit from PHS Compliance. Threats of eviction for a check thats not even mandatory in social housing.

oh and this from them as well.

"it is advisable to wear a face covering. Where residents are not willing to do this we reserve the right not to enter the property and this will be treated as failure to provide access"
Letter is dated February 2023

And the fuckers were stupid enough to put it in writing.

Agree. Also Ocado are very good. They arrive on time, there are very few substitutions and drivers are friendly and helpful.

I used to work for Wowcher, I might be able to help you there.m, is your code showing as redeemed or not as yet? So did you give the code to the hotel

Another good one, requested a refund from Bulb this morning, just received an email to say it's been done! On a Sunday too!

It’s the difficulty in getting to speak to someone that frustrates me. Our landline hasn’t been working for months. We have sketchy mobile reception at home. I keep trying to contact them by email explaining that the landline doesn’t work so there’s no point ringing it to speak to me but they keep ringing me on it. Then they close the case because they’ve tried to contact me and failed.

on the other hand Nike has a really helpful chat contact which was fantastic

I agree. I have had four experiences of awful customer service in the past two weeks - big, well known companies. They really do not seem to care about providing the goods or services paid for, or want to find a solution when problems occur. Is it because they are short staffed, battling their own issues (supply chain etc), staff that are sick of rude customers so treat us all with contempt now, what has changed I wonder.

In the customer service side, we are all saying how much more demanding customers are!

I will do my absolute best but it's hard
If you come on the phone when I'm trying to help and say "your service is shit" when it's not me that's been shit before
If I apologise I get "well you don't really care"
If I try to explain I get "you're so defensive"

My job is to offer an appointment and people want one today. We can't do it because we are full so they say how shocking our service is and start kicking off.
Sometimes I offer every available option and none are right, I physically can't offer anything else so people go off in a huff and then post on FB/google how awful we are

I mean I'm sorry that you can't do any day I've offered with any form of appointment but that isn't us being shit
For example if you say ring up for a scratch repair on your car. You can't do weekdays or Saturdays, you don't want a loan car because you don't want to pay, you don't want a slot where you can wait, you don't want someone else driving your car so we can't pick it up, and you don't want to leave it with us all day. I'm out of options

I'm not actually customer service/complaints but we take the brunt of complaints about everything just because of the nature of the job

I've had great service from eon next this week.

My mum lives on her own and can't have smart meters.

She reads the meter monthly and gives them to me to enter into the app.

She's given me the total reading instead of the night meter reading and I've put this in erroneously. Hence she now owes them £2.5k for elec she hasn't used.

Company have been fab. Expected to have to fight / stand my ground about thr issue. Simply had to send in new readings with a photo and the account was corrected within 24 hours of the submission.

Friendly and helpful staff. Can't fault them.

In general yes it's pretty awful, especially the big utilities etc. Amazon are always good, John Lewis used to be good but are not anymore. I would say the good CS is a small minority.Got even worse in the last couple of years, wonder if because of 'working' from home where people are taking the piss. Would be much better if this kind of job was to go back to the office with some supervision/accountability.

Whereas I agree there are plenty of examples of poor customer service - yes, Virgin, I am looking at you - I think YABU to say there is "no such thing as good customer service".
I come across lots of lovely helpful people when talking to companies (F2F or on the phone).
I do feel sorry for them when their employers are forcing them to do really annoying stuff though (like sell you stuff you don't want / get your e-mail so they can spam you / etc).

Wowcher are shit. I bought a bed through their website then saw terrible reviews for it so asked for a refund. As you can only buy something with them by buying Wowcher 'credits' that's how you're refunded. Very crafty. So I was stuck with £200 in Wowcher credits that were of no use to me so I had no choice but to buy stuff off their website which was mostly tat or wrong size or was late arriving which meant I had to find a person at Wowcher to complain to (not an easy task). Never again

We live in a very immediate society. People expect speed.
Staff may not be trained really; bum on a seat, get to work. They might work in call centres where there is little accountability. You don't get to speak to the same person or escalating is really difficult.
Some smaller companies can still give the customer service but it doesn't always follow that this is so. Some are just not very good at it. They don't have competent managers who can lead a team.
Some staff don't have anything invested in the job to be all that bothered. Little pride in doing a good job. Whatever it is.
And turnover of staff is high.
When it is good you get staff who stay, a happy team and repeat custom.

Fewer call centres would help. Make managers accountable. Train staff. Share good practice in businesses. Have high standards. And customers should be more choosy. Easier said than done sometimes, but go elsewhere if you can.

I’m utterly sick of ringing a helpline and hearing ‘due to exceptionally high call volumes, we are experiencing lengthy wait times’ blah blah blah. These companies are STILL blaming Covid, whilst trying to say they’re operating as business as usual. No, they’re using Covid as a cover for the fact that they were always crap.

I’m currently having a tough time trying to renew my blue light card. I’ve got a query and no-one is getting back to me. It’s one tiny thing that could be resolved with the click of a button at their end but no, I can’t get hold of them. So annoying.

Yes always high call volumes and some stupid automated answering machine

I end up shouting at it sometimes

Why ask for your DOB etc then you have to repeat it again to the person eventually, is it a cross check?

Auto Aid annoying me at the moment. The breakdown cover has auto renewed, which wasn't an issue except for the fact they've now decided to change the contract, without actually telling me, to preclude 'vehicles over 15 years old'. One of the cars we used the cover for is a classic, so it renders the policy useless.
Spent most of Friday trying to call them but they were apparently having issues with the phone lines. They are also closed all weekend.

I predict a fight for the refund, but as they have changed the terms they can't really argue.

I agree with Guis.

Some customer service people are stuck between very rude/entitled/impatient customers and inadequate management ( very often management who have not/could not do the job they're managing )

Morale can be very very low. I almost always ask staff how they are. It makes a huge difference to be treated as a person with feelings.

But also we need to complain appropriately. If I get a bad meal but the service I was good I will praise where deserved but also feedback if the food was bad. Businesses need to listen if they are going to get better.

But the decision makers are so far from the customers it's hard to see how the majority of them can improve.

We have to vote with our feet.