BT, British Gas, Sky, Virginmedia & Vodafone were named and shamed this week in the findings of a survey of 5000 people across the UK into their views about 30 companies with call centres. Other major corporates featuring in the survey report include HSBC, AOL, Barclays, O2 and HMRC.
There are no real surprises when it comes to what people complained about - "the language barrier" and "call centres based abroad" were identified as one of the most infuriating aspects of call centres. And consumers said they hated the use of automated systems and having to answer numerous security questions as well as being passed from pillar to post and needing to repeat themselves.
There were no good guys coming out of the survey, either – banks and retailers seemed to come out just as bad as the communications and utility companies! But BT really took the top prize – the survey found that BT was almost twice as bad as second place British Gas when dealing with issues and complaints, even being accused of leaving callers on hold or struggling to get through its automated system to make complaints. And BT came top for longest holding times, with 18% of people complaining about the company!!.
The managing director of BT's consumer division was quick to dismiss the findings of the survey as “twaddle”, explaining that BT’s own “extensive surveys” demonstrated customers were far more satisfied! He even went on to brag that "the time it takes BT customers to get through to an adviser has dropped by 65 per cent over the last year and is now 32 seconds on average.” And that "customer complaints have reduced by over 40 per cent in the last year.”
Blimey – if they think that’s good, how bad was their service last year!
Unfortunately, however, as we can see from this survey, BT is not in isolation in the customer service hall of shame…
Maybe it’s time the senior people in responsible for the dire state of service offered by call centres became aware of what really matters to their customers’ and encouraged their call centre managers to focus on serving the customers they exist to look after instead of managing staff targets, using fantastic new technology to deflect their calls or sending calls to offshore call centres just to save a few quid.
But such a fundamental mindshift would take a strong, confident and magnanimous leader – after all, they’d have to admit they got it wrong, before they could improve things.
So, this blogger wonders if the repeated denial of any problem is a sign of corporate arrogance or corporate ignorance… or even worse, a bit of both?
