Brits’ patience is running out over poor customer service
THE number of things that have affected our lives enough during lockdown to make us complain aren’t a huge surprise. Nor are the things we all complained about. But there are a few areas to focus on – and a warning for businesses that don’t play ball.
WHAT WE COMPLAIN ABOUT HAS CHANGED
PRE-LOCKDOWN, complaints about shops tended to focus on quality of goods, mis-selling and delivery issues.
Delivery is still a big deal but, during lockdown, issues with availability of goods and the difficulty in contacting businesses or returning items dominated.
Complaints about airlines switched from cancellation/ delay to problems with refunds, re-booking and vouchers.
What’s notable are the common themes. Businesses ignoring existing regulations and laws, problems with statutory refunds and consumer rights, and simply not being able to contact companies.
WHAT WE AREN’T COMPLAINING ABOUT IS ALSO INTERESTING
AS a nation, we’ve been really reasonable with businesses over lockdown, but patience is wearing thin. Of the 80,000 holiday-related complaints Resolver received, the biggest source of frustration was being misadvised or given conflicting or incorrect advice.
The data shows people have mainly complained about the things that were urgent or unavoidable, like trying to buy food online or get refunds before businesses went bust and they lost their money.
Looking at Resolver’s complaint data as a whole, one word springs to mind: necessity. People sought help for things that they felt were essential or unavoidable.
CUSTOMER SERVICE IS A SERIOUS PROBLEM
FOR years I’ve been warning about the steady erosion of customer service across all sectors, and a worrying trend is the acceleration of this over lockdown and the deliberate removal of telephone numbers and emails, to be replaced by chatbots and online forms.
These methods of dealing with customers have been shown to be woefully inadequate and the source of extraordinary frustration. Well over half of our lockdown complaints – 260,000 cases – explicitly mention not being able to contact a business.
The vast majority of complaints mention customer service in some form.
■ WHAT THE FUTURE HOLDS RESOLVER’S complaint data represents the UK’S largest overview of how businesses and organisations are performing across over 100 products and sectors. Yet changes in society are coming so fast that the next few months are shaping up to be just as volatile and challenging as before. Early indications suggest the huge amount of leeway extended to businesses by the public is at an end.
People are telling me that after seven months, they expect customer service staff to be in place, delays in resolving problems to be over, and solutions found to challenges like re-booking holidays, getting financial support and helping us through new waves of lockdown.
It’s clear we’re all going to have to continue to adapt – but we expect businesses and the organisations we rely on to adapt even more quickly.
There are no easy answers, but businesses and the Government can find solutions to even the most pressing problems by learning from the last few months and listening to people when they seek help.
What do you think about how businesses are behaving? Let me know, see the full data and make a complaint at resolver.co.uk