Why have companies seemingly got so much contempt for their paying customers these days?
Dealing with energy suppliers,financial services firms,sports betting firms etc is like pulling teeth. The customer services staff often give incorrect information,take ages to respond to queries and greet mistakes with vacuous apologies and on occasion blind indifference.
I am tempted to name and shame but for the time being I will focus on purely ranting without specifics to serve as a brainstorming session before undertaking further in depth analysis in further blog posts. Actually forget that,let us name and shame,that's exactly what ranting is about.
What I do not understand about poor customer service is that we pay our money to these firms and they often behave as if they are doing us a favour,in return for our pound notes and loyalty we often get treated like mugs or worse still an afterthought for some firms.
The obvious response to this incompetence is to vote with your feet and take your business elsewhere but after a while you run out of options or find that all these firms are under the same umbrella like the awful Betfred/Totesport organisation or Paddy Power and Betfair. Sports betting is a great example of this where all the big firms are roughly just as bad as each other. Betfair have a very good exchange but the customer service on its Sportsbook is useless,slow bet settling,long response times to emails and a cold corporate attitude to accountability and dispute resolution.
British Gas are an absolute disgrace.They spend millions on advertising to succour in new custom and then bombard you day and night with junkmail ,phone calls and emails selling you various forms of household 'cover' that you do not need in the hope of draining your bank balance and giving you sweet FA in return.
Edf Energy are a joke with their foreign based callcentre and clueless staff who leave you wishing you lived off grid with no need for electricity such is the level of hassle you have to go through to get a correctly itemised bill or have a query answered coherently.
Tesco Bank are the worst financial firm in business,no email address contact and a policy of dealing with finance related queries over Twitter and Facebook,are they completely stupid? Then they wonder why they get hacked exposing customers to fraud which happened to them just months ago. The answer given for no email contact was that they do not have a secure messaging centre.If they cared so much about secure messaging would they be asking customers to DM and tweet problems with their chip and pin issues? Unbelievable.
Having said all this the one firm that seems to be rated highly by all is Amazon who seem to have the customer service side of things fully covered,why more companies do not bother to match such high levels of service is beyond me.
The answer as usual probably leads to money.Big firms do the bare minimum that they have to,if the money is rolling in why should they care? Foxtons Estate Agents is a great example of this,despite a reputation for sharp practice and contempt for buyers and tenants they continue to prosper. Perhaps bad customer service is a feature of a sociopathic society devoid of compassion and consumed by the profit principle.
Dealing with energy suppliers,financial services firms,sports betting firms etc is like pulling teeth. The customer services staff often give incorrect information,take ages to respond to queries and greet mistakes with vacuous apologies and on occasion blind indifference.
I am tempted to name and shame but for the time being I will focus on purely ranting without specifics to serve as a brainstorming session before undertaking further in depth analysis in further blog posts. Actually forget that,let us name and shame,that's exactly what ranting is about.
What I do not understand about poor customer service is that we pay our money to these firms and they often behave as if they are doing us a favour,in return for our pound notes and loyalty we often get treated like mugs or worse still an afterthought for some firms.
The obvious response to this incompetence is to vote with your feet and take your business elsewhere but after a while you run out of options or find that all these firms are under the same umbrella like the awful Betfred/Totesport organisation or Paddy Power and Betfair. Sports betting is a great example of this where all the big firms are roughly just as bad as each other. Betfair have a very good exchange but the customer service on its Sportsbook is useless,slow bet settling,long response times to emails and a cold corporate attitude to accountability and dispute resolution.
British Gas are an absolute disgrace.They spend millions on advertising to succour in new custom and then bombard you day and night with junkmail ,phone calls and emails selling you various forms of household 'cover' that you do not need in the hope of draining your bank balance and giving you sweet FA in return.
Edf Energy are a joke with their foreign based callcentre and clueless staff who leave you wishing you lived off grid with no need for electricity such is the level of hassle you have to go through to get a correctly itemised bill or have a query answered coherently.
Tesco Bank are the worst financial firm in business,no email address contact and a policy of dealing with finance related queries over Twitter and Facebook,are they completely stupid? Then they wonder why they get hacked exposing customers to fraud which happened to them just months ago. The answer given for no email contact was that they do not have a secure messaging centre.If they cared so much about secure messaging would they be asking customers to DM and tweet problems with their chip and pin issues? Unbelievable.
Having said all this the one firm that seems to be rated highly by all is Amazon who seem to have the customer service side of things fully covered,why more companies do not bother to match such high levels of service is beyond me.
The answer as usual probably leads to money.Big firms do the bare minimum that they have to,if the money is rolling in why should they care? Foxtons Estate Agents is a great example of this,despite a reputation for sharp practice and contempt for buyers and tenants they continue to prosper. Perhaps bad customer service is a feature of a sociopathic society devoid of compassion and consumed by the profit principle.
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