People Still Prefer to Contact their UK Broadband ISP via Phone
The latest ISPreview.co.uk reader poll, which was conducted between 23rd Nov 2017 and 18th Jan 2018, has found that the humble telephone remains the most popular way for broadband users to contact their ISP. Meanwhile a third were unhappy with their provider’s customer service.
Overall 49.3% of the 1,116 respondents said they preferred to use the phone (mobile or landline) when contacting their ISP, while online chat was the second most popular solution (33.1%) and this was followed by email (15.2%). Broadly speaking 60.5% of respondents said they were satisfied with the quality of their provider’s customer service and support staff, although there’s still some room for improvement.
In particular, providers would do well to ensure that they have a functional online chat system and they should endeavour to keep call waiting times to a minimum, particularly if the call is charged. The survey found that over a quarter of respondents had needed to contact their ISP four times or more during the past year.
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How do you prefer to contact your broadband ISP?
Phone – 49.3%
Online Chat – 33.1%
Email – 15.2%
Other – 1.8%
SMS – 0.3%How many times have you needed to contact your ISP in the past year?
Zero or Once – 42.2%
Twice – 21.3%
Five times or more – 20.7%
Three times – 9.4%
Four times – 6.1%How happy were you with your ISP’s customer service staff?
Happy – 36.5%
Very Happy – 24%
Not Happy – 16.3%
Very Unhappy – 16.3%
Unsure – 6.6%
Meanwhile this month’s new survey kicks off 2018 by asking what kind of broadband bundle, if any, you would prefer to have? Vote Here.
NOTE: ISPreview.co.uk surveys are likely to receive a higher proportion of tech-savvy respondents than most, although the majority of our visitors are normal consumers (i.e. they come to this site for help and assistance with basic broadband problems / questions or when hunting for a new ISP).
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook and Linkedin.
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I would never contact talk-talk though phone or anyone who uses Indian call centres, They hard to understand and they never know what the problem is and they keep to a script, Then after 2 hours the problem is still not fixed and then they try to sell me something. Online chat is much more easier for me.
Our (www.pulse8broadband.co.uk) customers love the fact that we are UK based and the person answering the phone can actually help. Add to this no-contracts (our support and services keeps people) and we’re doing great 😀
#smallbutmighty
I’m sick to death of emails from no-reply@origin-broadband.co.uk and other similar addresses. Emails are not a broadcast medium, or everyone would welcome their penis extension or PPI claim information emails.
Emails are important to people who are hard of hearing and thus find the telephone difficult and the use of ‘spam only’ email addresses is not helpful when trying to communicate with a vendor.
Surely the people who monitor the company twitter feed and facebook page could also be trained in the use of outlook.
Speaking as somebody who also has some difficulties with hearing, I agree. Quite a lot of ISPs do not provide either an effective online chat system or accessible email contacts. Even some of those that do offer online chat will often tell you to “phone this number…” in order to get an issue resolved, which can make life difficult.
I too have had significant hearing problems, which caused me problems hearing ordinary speech let alone technology; but I found that I could experiment with adapted phones (or even just using a loudness/loudspeaker switch), even at times using the mobile with a headset and microphone; and at little expense. A little bit of self-help can go a long way. I’ve experimented with ways of dealing with spam (oral and written too) with similar success. A little bit of inconvenience on the way but that is no offence! Of course it doesn’t help if we just want something to complain about, but then nothing does!
Not all hearing problems can be solved by volume increase dragoneast, especially not mine.
The phone might be the only option if your broadband isn’t working 🙂
Luckily most, albeit not all, of us have Mobile Broadband on our Smartphones.