CEO of UK ISP TalkTalk Reads Customer Complaints, Says They’re “awful”

Dido Harding, the boss of budget broadband and phone provider TalkTalk, has told an event held by The&Partnership that she reads emails from customers every day and admits that “they’re awful … I view them as doing my daily prayers.”

The ISP doesn’t have the best history when it comes to service quality and customer support (partly due to inheriting Tiscali’s mess some years back), although in recent years they have improved quite significantly.

Never the less customer support and service quality are two areas that could still do with some polishing and Harding appears to be refreshingly honest about this, agreeing that the provider isn’t yet “loved” by their customers.

Dido Harding, CEO of TalkTalk, said (Marketing Magazine):

“I read customer emails every day, and a lot of the senior management read them with me, and they’re awful. I view them as doing my daily prayers. I look at them at the end of the day on my way home. … You’ve got to have a set of core values that go beyond making money.

When we gave free TalkTalk broadband to everybody, the next month there was a barrage of complaints that they had to call the call centre. That is the point – to eat our own cooking.”

On the other hand TalkTalk are one of the cheapest broadband providers in the United Kingdom and if you choose to pay less than the quality of service you get back may also suffer. At the same time it’s worth remembering that the majority of TalkTalk’s users do appear to be content with their lot, even though the proportion of unhappy customers may be somewhat higher than others.

At least TalkTalk can take some small comfort from the fact that EE currently appears to receive far more complaints than they do, which probably won’t help BT when they finish gobbling EE up later this year.