Pigs might fly before firm improves
POOR customer service is the Achilles heel of far too many firms in the personal finance world we diligently report on week after week. Often, the bigger the company, the poorer the commitment to customer service. Think ScottishPower, Npower, big banks (take your pick).
It’s so wretched it has spawned one of the country’s few thriving industries – ombudsman offices.
These independent arbiters are popping up everywhere and have never been busier as they deal with a deluge of complaints that should never have arrived at their offices. Disputes that should have been resolved long before they got to an ombudsman but didn’t because of non-existent customer service.
Yet the mantle for worst customer service provider of all (the wicked witch) must surely go to Vodafone. For the past ten months, The Mail on Sunday has winced at the inept way this phone giant deals with problems. All companies – even those renowned for stellar service such as First Direct, Nationwide Building Society and Metro Bank – make mistakes. Most then go out of their way to resolve them, thereby repairing any reputational damage.
But not Vodafone. It makes mistakes and then perpetuates them. Rather than righting a wrong, it digs a hole for itself – and then keeps digging.
Like other companies that have suffered from woeful customer service – Santander in the past, Npower and ScottishPower more recently – a bungled IT upgrade is the root cause of the problems at Vodafone. But it has perpetuated the fallout by failing to put in place
an effective (well trained) customer service support operation to mop up the mess.
As a result, unhappy customers have had to run the gauntlet of an obscure complaints process, deal with staff powerless to help them, while pulling their hair out as their dispute is ping-ponged around Vodafone departments that seem determined not to speak to one another.
It’s not good enough. It’s not fair – and it can only be a matter of time before the company is given a multi-million pound fine by its regulator Ofcom.
Will Vodafone ever get its customer service act together? Maybe in time (maybe pigs will fly as well) although it’s probably too big, too beholden to its shareholders and too short term in its mind-set to ever take customer service as seriously as those providers that have fairness coursing through their veins.
By contrast, Yorkshire Building Society sent out a questionnaire last week inviting respondents to judge it on ‘corporate responsibility’ – how fairly it treats customers, employees and supports communities. It takes these issues incredibly seriously. Vodafone doesn’t even know the meaning of the word fairness.
Finally, since my colleague Laura Shannon has been acting as a proxy complaints handler for frustrated Vodafone customers since June last year, The Mail on Sunday is tempted to send it an invoice for her services.
But then, the bill would probably get lost in the wreckage that is Vodafone’s customer service. AS with the meltdown at Vodafone, The Mail on Sunday has led the way in reporting about the devastating impact of bank branch closures on local communities.
The big banks have not been deterred. They continue unchallenged to remove a vital cog from many of the country’s high streets, even when the doomed branch is the last bank in a seemingly thriving community. No wonder some experts believe that the banks are hurrying along the death of the high street.
In recent days it has been suggested that some 400 bank branches will be axed this year – with HSBC leading the way.
Such a forecast seems about right. In February, we published a list of 80 branches that HSBC had either already shut this calendar year or put on notice of impending closure. On Friday, the bank told us that this list had grown to 110 – 54 already shut, 56 on death row.
In other words, with just over three months gone, HSBC has confirmed more branch closures this year than it carried out in the whole of 2015 when it shut a record 109. Visit thisismoney. co.uk/hsbc-closures to discover if your HSBC branch is doomed. The probability of it being among the condemned 56 is six per cent.
At least there is a sliver of good news for those who like to stroll along King’s Road in Chelsea – or who are fortunate enough to live nearby. Metro Bank is going against the flow by opening a new branch there this Friday.
One small defiant step against an overwhelming tide of closures.