The winner of our wooden spoon is . . . BT

You voted the telecom giant as having the worst customer service in Britain

THE result of Money Mail’s 2015 Wooden Spoon Award for rotten customer service is in and today we can reveal that the winner is . . . BT.

We presented the unwanted trophy to a humble and apologetic John Petter, chief executive of BT Consumer, at the firm’s central London offices this week.

BT dominated this year’s Wooden Spoon Awards, grabbing almost one in three of all votes cast.

Rather than a single catastrophic customer service meltdown, the complaint was that call centre staff were consistently unable to answer basic requests or call back when asked.

Customers who suffered simple faults weren’t able to book engineers. Then when they did arrive, they were unable to fix the problem.

It is the second time in three years that BT has scooped Money Mail’s toxic trophy — and the telecoms giant responded by pledging to end the blight of poor customer service.

A contrite Mr Petter said: ‘ I’m very sorry to have let down so many of you and that you’ve felt so strongly about it you’ve had to write to the Mail.

‘ We were making progress after winning this award in 2013, but in the course of the past 12 months it’s been clear to me that we underestimated the scale of change that was needed.

‘But I am absolutely confident that we are going to fix this for our customers and that they will see a real difference this year.’

In response to the award, BT has promised a transformation of its services. It revealed plans to employ an extra 1,000 call centre advisers, give staff an extra 100 hours of training, invest a further £80 million in customer services and hire 1,000 new engineers.

The firm says it will also push on with plans to bring back thousands of jobs to Britain to replace staff in overseas call centres.

And in a bid to end the anger of customers who have to wait at home for hours for engineers, BT said they will soon be able to book two-hour appointment slots for engineer visits instead of just requesting a morning or afternoon booking.

Mr Petter received the Wooden Spoon award at the BT’s modern office in London, located just behind St Paul’s Cathedral.

Hanging above the reception desk is a huge black canvas advertising BT Sport, which reads: ‘You have to see it to believe it.’

That’s rather what many customers feel about BT’s service, blaming the money spent on the company’s sports television channel.

John Petter’s office on the seventh floor is very modest. The only extravagance to be seen is a giant mural on the back wall, which was given to him following the launch of BT Sport.

Mr Petter, dressed in a sharp grey suit, accepts the mortifying tiny wooden spoon award with exceptionally good grace and seems genuinely disappointed.

‘People’s lives and jobs today are dependent on the internet — even just being without internet for a couple of hours makes people anxious,’ he says.

‘ We know that the expected standard is rising. And BT is determined to raise its game and serve our customers better.

‘We understand that people may judge us a little more harshly than our competitors. We are a national brand and lots of people’s pensions are in BT shares.

‘But if we hire the extra engineers, bring our advisers back to the UK and give our advisers better systems, then customers will really see a difference.’

As part of his plan to improve service, Mr Petter says all of BT’s call centre staff are also going to be retrained over the next 12 months, so that when a customer calls up they will be able to speak to someone who will be able to answer their question without having to pass them on to a different department.

According to Mr Petter, 93 pc of customer queries are completed on time — which may come as a surprise to the many Money Mail readers who complain about engineers failing to turn up to appointments.

But he admits this is still unacceptable for the 7 pc who have waited in for nothing.

When BT last won the Wooden Spoon award, its then new BT Sport TV service was largely to blame for soaring complaints.

Staff were so busy with the thousands of customers who were signing up for the new service that routine customer service fell by the wayside.

This year, BT Sport caused a stir again, because customers felt BT has sneakily tried to charge them £5 for a previously free service.

Mr Petter believes it was the right decision to start charging customers £ 5 unless they specifically asked to cancel BT Sport.

But he admits many customers were not happy and promised a no- quibble refund to customers who missed letters and emails informing them of the new £5 charge.

‘I know some people have said to us: rather than focusing on sport, shouldn’t you just get your service right?’ he says.

‘But to do this, we need to grow in order to be able to ask for investment and to bring jobs back to the UK — and that, frankly, wouldn’t be possible without BT Sport succeeding.’

BT wants any reader experiencing difficulties to contact the firm directly on 0800 111 4567 from their landline; 0330 123 4567 from a mobile; or email dailymailcomplaints@bt.com.