Tactics to try if customer service isn’t up to scratch
OCTOBER marks National Customer Service Week, though you’d be forgiven for wondering how many businesses are going to be celebrating it.
Over the last six months, it’s been vividly illustrated how important it is to be able to talk to a human being at a business, by phone or email when things go wrong.
Many businesses were overwhelmed during the first few months of lockdown and withdrew or reduced customer service teams while they regrouped. But worryingly, a considerable number are continuing to make it hard to contact them. Others have replaced helplines with chatbots and online forms that shut down complaints and limit your ways of speaking to the business.
So how much of a problem is this?
Resolver has dealt with just under half a million complaints over lockdown.
About a tenth of those are explicitly about customer service – but more than 260,000 of those complaints specifically mention not being able to call, contact or email the business.
In total, two-thirds of the total complaints mention a customer service issue. That’s shocking.
The most common question I get asked now is ‘how do I get a business to listen to me?’.
Sadly, it’s often a challenge – especially in certain sectors, like travel or retail. But there are a few tactics you can try.
Think strategically: If there’s a phone number, then the time you spend on hold is likely to be much longer due to the volume of people trying to get help and the reduced number of staff available.
Go for off-peak hours. Mid-afternoon is one of the better times with standard opening hours and during the evening, prime time TV slots for 24-hour helplines.
■ Confuse a chatbot: I hate chatbots. Doesn’t everybody? Most are programmed to follow certain questions and patterns. Many people give up when faced with this option but keep questioning – some bots default to actual customer service teams if you persist or respond randomly.
Social media: We really shouldn’t be forced to use social media, but it is a good way to get a business to notice you as the teams monitoring the tweets and posts are usually actual people.
If you sign up to Twitter, it’s the most effective way to get attention (but don’t engage with the shouty people).
Find a forum: Remember them? Back in the early days of the internet, forums were the places to be for getting information on businesses that were reluctant to communicate.
There are loads still out there. Type a question into a search drive if you’re struggling to contact a firm and see if any pop up. The Moneysavingexpert forum has hundreds of thousands of users, for one. Resolver: Even if a firm is refusing to provide a contact to you, you can usually complain using Resolver for free. However, where the firm won’t play ball at all, the website will warn you up front.
Make like you’re cancelling: If you have an agreement with a business and they aren’t responding, try to start the process of cancelling it. That often prompts a person from a different team to contact you to talk you out of it.
Plan ahead: Before you buy or sign up to anything, go online and check the ‘contact us’ section of the firm’s website. If you can’t call or email, consider a competitor.
Resolver wants to know about the businesses that are making it hard to complain too. Go to resolver.co.uk