To think customer service is SHIT in the UK

[PMTsickandtiredofyourshit]

•All phone lines are automated and take up to an hour to get through. They usually have some nonsense excuse answerphone message about Covid 19 causing ‘higher than normal call volumes’ that hasn’t been changed in years.

•restaurants are increasingly taking ages to serve and give the impression you’re on a time limit at your table. Wait staff less charming/ less people skills/ less cherishing of customers.

•Today I went to mountain warehouse to get DD some snow boots. Every question I asked the staff they couldn’t answer. I asked if they’d had shoe fitting training because I couldn’t tell which size DD should have. The staff just shrugged and said they had no training. Finally found a good pair but it had a sharp bit sticking out of the inside. I asked if they had the same pair without the fault and was told no but they’d give me a discount! Obviously I wasn’t going to buy my DD a pair of boots with a metal shard sticking out of the interior!

•Then I went to Aldi where they had loads of new self-checkouts which I was heartily encouraged to use by one of the staff, despite the fact I had a full trolly of food. It was a fucking nightmare and took a good 30 minutes. Every other item didn’t scan, there was no where to fit my DD, my trolly and myself without being in the way of the people trying to get out, there were boxes and crap dumped on the floor in front of the trolly. It was incredibly stressful and made me resolve to stop using ALdi and just bankrupt myself by using a nicer, less stressful supermarket.

•Finally I went to Neros where the queue was its usual mile long glacial paced scenario with three women behind the counter, one who was having a huge scratch of her scalp then serving pastries. She got in a huge muddle when selling me two gift cards and was completely baffled by the fact that the two gift cards were to be given to two separate people so I would need two separate gift receipts. I have no idea if these £30 worth of gift cards have actually been credited.

Even trying to book an appointment with my Dr, I have to be given the Spanish Inquisition by one of the receptionists who seems to be qualified to triage the doctor’s diary in the most brusk, patronising non-compassionate way ever. I’m sorry if I don’t want to tell you the ins and outs of my vaginal thrush problem whilst stood outside my office in earshot of my colleagues having been on hold since I was getting dressed at home Janet! FFS. 🤦‍♀️

I just don’t know what has become of customer service these days. It’s as though people who work with the public actively hate them.

How can this be changed!?

Our phone lines are exceptionally busy right now and will be at whatever time you call back.
We don't really give a shit.
We take all customer concerns very seriously.
We don't really give a shit.
The safety of our customers is our highest prority.
I'm not an AI.
Have you tried looking at our website?
We don't really give a shit.

I have found service in my local shops awful this Christmas. Retail staff seem to have lost the ability to say "please" and "thank you" or to wish people Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. It's quite disheartening. M&S, Waitrose, Boots, being really poor. JD Sports, Jones The Bootmaker, Waterstones and WHS quite the reverse.

A bank got the prize though on NY Eve. I queued to be served by a surly person who couldn't be bothered to look at me. When the transaction was complete, having not said please or thank you, as I was putting my receipt and card away and zipping my bag, they looked up and tersely said "have you finished or do you want something else". I am sorry but my lips moved involuntarily and said "I'm just waiting for you to say thank you". At which point her colleague snorted.

I bank at Metro Bank for the opening hours, it's certainly not for the customer service standards.

Lockdown was the worst thing that happened to this country, it gave businesses carte blanche to take the entire piss. There should have been mass resistance to it, after a couple of months.

Agree. As a teen I worked in Tesco and we had mystery customers to check we said 'hello, do you need help packing your bags and goodbye/have a nice day'.

Now I have to wait for staff to finish glancing at their phones or chatting to colleagues.

Even on the shop floor, it seems shelf stackers have right of way and not even a thank you when you have manoeuvred a trolley with a gammy wheel out of their path.

Not just business. Public services are crap too now because so much was abandoned and staff now believe they’re doing some kind of charity to do what they’re paid to do!

I did mystery shopping 30 years ago, including Tesco, for £10 a visit.

I recently looked into doing it again and guess how much they pay now, 30 years later?

Yep, £10 a visit.

If there were more mystery shoppers I think standards WOULD improve. But first they have to pay the mystery shoppers a decent amount.

@tescocreditcard still £10 a visit! Wow. I thought you would at least get your shop paid for. That's not even worth the petrol money. Agree they need more mystery shoppers.

They also used to have the 'one in front' policy where they would open another til if there was more than one trolley in front of the last person in the queue.

I would suggest that many poor sods working in customer interaction roles deserve a medal; most customers are rude, disrespectful and downright nasty. They think they are entitled to 5 star service yet they act like the basest of yobs
Just an alternate view

I think the problem is that we have done all of our waiting before we speak to you, it’s not unusual to be waiting on phone lines for 30 minutes until you get put through.

Other places you get through in a reasonable length of time but the operator cannot help you, so says they will do something but don’t. This means you end up phoning 34 times about the same problem (yes that’s you OVO)

It is though. I've had great service in both Germany and Spain this year, its noticeably worse in the UK and it shouldn't be. It didn't used to be. Why do we have to beg to se the gp? Why should service in store be non existent?

problem is customer are rude and demanding

Just for the record, a Swedish friend who’d lived in the U.K. for 20 odd years eventually moved back to Stockholm a few years ago, and more than once had a good old moan to me over the phone about how dire Swedish customer service was, compared to the U.K.

Ah, this maybe goes some way to explaining why the Sainsbury's lottery assistant barked angrily at me the other Sunday at 09:50
I didn't catch what she muttered the first time and she was incandescent when required to repeat.🤨
I had no idea about this rule before then

This is a sweeping generalisation, but I think a large part of the problem is it seems like no one can be bothered to do things properly anymore. And this results in people having things to complain about.

If (for example) the person packing the parcel had made sure everything was in it, or that they'd packed it properly to avoid damage, then there would be no need for the customer to call customer services in the first place.

I have had two bad customer service experiences the past month.
First one, ordered Christmas lunch from an independent farm shop. Was being sent by DHL. Arranged to arrive on a specific day. (22nd December). Got email on 21st saying we have it it's coming on 22nd. Lovely. 22nd at 2pm get email to say its been delivered. No it hasn't. Ring customer service and they say they have no idea where it is as the driver hasn't provided any details. It'll probably be delivered either 23rd or 27th. Their advice is ask all the neighbours and if no luck call them back on 28th if we haven't had it. Explaining that it's our Christmas dinner and a food parcel which will have a sticker saying to be delivered on 22nd they say OK they'll look into it and call back. Obviously they never did. We got refund through the farm and went to tesco and bought a turkey crown. DHL did indeed try to deliver the food with lots of bright yellow stickers saying FOOD ITEM MUST BE DELIVERED ON 22ND on 28th. We refused it. Driver took it away. I've never heard from them since. Hopefully the farm will get refund of their delivery fee.

Second incident was I purchased 2 items on a buy 2 get 1 free offer so in total got 3 items for work. After receiving them realised they weren't what I wanted. Following their returns policy I completed the returns form and sent the package off tracked. The app shows delivered on 4th December. On 12th December after hearing nothing I contact them. They confirm they recieved the package on 8th (?? But whatever its irrelevant really) and I'll get my refund in 1-2 working days. On 18th Dec after hearing and recieving nothing I email again. This is the point they say they only recieved 2 of the 3 items so until i send the last one back I won't get a refund. I explain I did send all 3 back. Their reply was to tell me there had been a misunderstanding in the returns process and I need to send the free one back. I explain AGAIN I sent all 3. They say well they'll look into it but unless I send the last one back I will won't get my refund. At this point i query the delivered date on the app and when they say they got it. I also ask for either the weight of the package they sent me or the weight of the individual items (I still have the sent receipt which shows the weight of what I sent back). I also asked why no one was contacting me about the refund either way and why I was having to chase each time. They acknowledge the discrepancy between the delivered/recieved dates and the fact they have not bothered to contact me first at any point. But as of yet have not sent me the weights or the result of their "investigation". I have been asked to be patient. So they have until Friday this week and I will email one last time then take it further.
I have purchased lots of things from them before with no issues. This is the first time I've had to return anything and it's just such a slow process. I'm pretty sure had I not emailed asking where my refund was they'd never have got in touch with me.

3 staff members hanging out at the self serve till.
Another staff member putting someone's shopping through the Scan as you Shop till - the customer hadn't scanned as they shopped 🙄
There was no one at the Customer Service desk to refund me for produce I had bought the previous day and could not be used.

Tesco I am looking at you.

Does the Management know or care about what goes on on the shop floor ?

There is a difference between businesses where you can get good service (but have to pay) such as restaurants and hotels, and those where you dont really have a choice such as doctors, water suppliers and government depts. I get more angry about the latter.

Oh Tesco and click and collect. I had a delivery short of £80 worth of items followed by two deliveries that didn't arrive.

At least 40 minutes hanging on the phone and more than one call on each occasion. Good will vouchers provided for amounts that in no way reflect my wasted time. A tenner on each occasion when I spent 45 minutes waiting for a van, 45 minutes on the phone and an hour doing my shopping.

Worst of all in each case the money was taken from my account on noon of each delivery day and their policy is that a refund may take three working days. Not an issue for me but what about families who li e hand to mouth and don't have the cash/credit available to replace shopping not delivered but paid for.

Sainsbury's and their rottweiler approach to guilty until proved innocent vis a vis spot checks on their self service tills that they encourage people to use.

Our big supermarkets are not valuing their customers. Where else do people spent £10k regularly per annum?

Service has gone to shit but I don't think it's the individuals' fault a lot of the time.

Postal service: chronic underfunding and piss taking managerial decisions

Parcel and food delivery services: absolutely abysmal expectations of rate of deliveries/hour

Customer service phone lines: pandemic used as excuse to underer-recruit operatives so availability is permanently too low

Retail: customers attitudes went badly to shit in the pandemic and staff who worked through were on the receiving end of it with no shits given by anybody who had any power to do anything about customer behaviour. Those customer attitudes have entrenched. Nobody's had a pay rise in line with the cost of living for years while supermarkets in particular have had ever increasing profits. Costs of doing business have rocketed for smaller less essential retail and restaurants etc so management have cut their wage and training overheads right back = less staff, less well trained, more demoralised.

Everybody - customers, management, customer service staff - is badly burnt out and mentally exhausted.

Emma mattress

We bought one-couldnt have been better,showed up on time,delivery men helpful and the best mattress I've ever slept on

3 years in,both sides had started to dip and it was very uncomfortable

A long story short and I ended up in hospital unable to walk due to a bad back

Lost wages at work because I couldn't walk at all

We ended up buying another mattress and not had a problem since

Contacted Emma and they couldn't have been more unhelpful-they just kept demanding our order number but claiming the one we gave was wrong

I gave them the name and address wed used (dps name) but nope,order number or nothing

Finally demanded that I take photos of the mattress and send them to them

Never heard another thing from them even though I tried to contact them endlessly

Utter waste of £600

Nail on the head!

over minimum wage has gone from £7.83 in 2018 to £10.42 by next April, as a comparison over the same time period in 2004-2009 it went up by less than 95p.
Your average call centre worker or retail staff member or barista (if over 23) working 40hrs a week would make £21,673

These are shit shit salaries. I’m 60. At 27 l was earning 18k with a car and petrol. That’s 34 years ago. I was well paid, but not that well paid. Other salaries were comparable.

DS worked in a temp job in a call centre about 5 years ago. He was earning less than l was 34 years ago.

I simply refuse when 'encouraged' to use self-service, unless it is convenient for me. It's fascinating really watching how it's all happened. It used to be an option if you had a few bits, but you could use a cashier if you wanted to. Fast forward to today, when you're expected to scan a full weekly shop yourself for zero discount, the number of cashiers on tills has been whittled down to a couple, who have huge queues, with staff employed to direct customers to self-service.

If it's fine for me I'll use it, but if it isn't I won't, until it's compulsory, and then I'll start shopping elsewhere instead.

£18k 34 years ago was a lot!

I qualified as a chartered accountant 35 years ago and my newly qualified wage after 5 years of training experience was just under £10k!

Covid changed things - service staff had years of dealing with increasingly rude and demanding customers and then covid made it clear that they were in fact providing an essential service. Businesses don't need to spend money on training and staffing etc because customers need their services - yes they might lose some business to competitors but not enough to justify spending morr on training and headcount (particularly given current rates of staff turnover and shortages).
The businesses people have listed as providing good customer services are generally new entrants (ie octopus) who need to differentiate. The rest know that enough people will still buy their products and services, and no point spending money training staff who will leave at the first chance they get.