Phone Companies Top The Chart For Bad Customer Service


We’ve all experienced bad service, but which industries are more likely to spring to mind when it comes to not delivering? New data suggests that phone companies and ISPs remain the worst offenders.

Picture by MC Morgan

For the 2011 RightNow Australia Customer Experience Report, 700 Australians were surveyed about their experiences of customer service. The percentage of customers who had experienced bad service was much higher for telecommunications companies than any other sector, with 67% saying they’d had a bad experience. Here’s the full breakdown:

  • Telecommunications: 67%
  • ISPs: 47%
  • Utilities: 40%
  • Financial services: 36%
  • Insurance: 29%
  • Travel and hospitality: 27%
  • Online retailers: 29%

It’s not surprising that phone, Internet, power and water top the list. Those are all products we use every day, so the chances of our needing customers service are much higher than with a once-a-year service like insurance. With that said, there’s still no reason why phone companies should be doing such a bad job.

What would you like to see phone companies do to improve their service? Top of my list would be dumping voice recognition systems (the options are universally rubbish in Australia) and actually living up to the often-made but barely-ever-realised promise of having the first person who answers your call deal with the problem.


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