Which Name BT, TalkTalk and Vodafone Worst for Customer Service

A new Which? survey of the United Kingdom’s 100 biggest brands, which focused on customer service quality, has revealed that energy and telecoms firms dominate the bottom of the table where BT, TalkTalk and Vodafone were all also singled out for criticism.

The survey, which was based on a May 2015 poll of 3,501 customers (not much when you divide that between 100 brands), found that the highest rated brand / company for customer service was handmade cosmetics firm Lush (scoring a high 89%) and in second place was the online bank First Direct (86%), while Lakeland came third with 84%.

Meanwhile those at the bottom were Scottish Power (59%), NPower (61%), BT (63%), TalkTalk (64%), Vodafone (66%) and Ryanair (66%). The survey also reveals some of the top customer gripes, with non-UK call centres (46%), automated telephone systems (36%) and being passed around lots of different people or departments (32%) coming top among the frustrations.

Richard Lloyd, Which? Executive Director, said:

“Call centres and telephone systems are the biggest customer service gripes by far. Firms need to up their game, those that don’t give customers the care and attention they deserve risk losing out to their competitors.”

By comparison friendly and helpful staff (53%) came out top of shoppers’ customer service likes, followed by good knowledge of the product / service (29%) and speed of service (29%). Sadly you have to buy the magazine to get the full results.