At some point nearly all of us, for good or ill, will need to contact our broadband ISP or phone provider but how hard is it to find the correct details and what sort of support services are on offer? ISPreview.co.uk took a long look at ten of the UK\u2019s best known providers to see how they compared.<\/p>\n
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Sometimes the simplest things can end up being the most frustrating, such as trying to find the right department for your needs. Believe it or not some ISPs turn trying to locate even the most straightforward bits of information, such as a viable phone number or email address for customer support, into an incredibly tedious experience.<\/p>\n
Naturally we wanted to know how widespread this problem was and whether or not some ISPs could improve their access to vital points of contact. In order to do this we took a look at ten of the markets providers, both big and small alike, and gave each a score based on how easy it was to locate their support contacts for email, phone, postal addresses, twitter, facebook, live chat and discussion forums.<\/p>\n
ISPreview.co.uk gave 1 point for any individual support service that we could find and a bonus of 1 point if that service was located quickly (e.g. ideally within\u00a0a click or two\u00a0from the main website page and without excess trial and error during the hunting phase). In an ideal world it should only take a moment to find the right details.<\/p>\n
However any contact service that did exist but which took longer to locate (several minutes), and couldn\u2019t easily be found by following a logical human search (e.g. clicking through from a \u2018Help\u2019 or \u2018Contact\u2019 link), was given a negative mark of -0.5.<\/p>\n
In other words the highest that any of the seven rated support services could score was 2 points each (0 being the lowest) and the highest overall total score per ISP is 14 points (7 x 2). Take note that we were not testing the quality of customer support, only how easy it is to locate the necessary contacts.<\/p>\n
For example, we know that TalkTalk<\/a> has a twitter feed (1 point) but as most of us failed to find where it was listed on their website, and after quite a bit of digging too, then a penalty (-0.5) was awarded. The total score came to 0.5 out of a possible maximum of 2 points for\u00a0the ISPs\u00a0Twitter service.<\/p>\n Ultimately we deemed that if none of our test group (five people including myself) could locate the service then others were likely to face similar difficulties in locating their preferred point of contact. Experiences will vary (subjective test)\u00a0but feel free to try it yourselves.<\/p>\n The results were mixed, although Zen Internet<\/a> topped our table by not only offering all seven of the contact services but also making them both quick and easy to find; often just by clicking through from the \u2018Contact Us<\/em>\u2019 or \u2018Help<\/em>\u2019 link. Both EE<\/a> and TalkTalk<\/a> also did similarly well, which is interesting because both providers have in the recent past been chastised for failings in the quality of their support. This just goes to show that making a contact easy to find is only\u00a0part of\u00a0the battle.<\/p>\n Now you might think that all ISPs would be like this but sadly that\u2019s not the case. In particular we were a little surprised to find that Virgin Media<\/a> came bottom of the table. Nearly all of us struggled to find a viable postal contact for their customer support and found it similarly difficult to locate their Twitter, Facebook and Live Chat services.<\/p>\n Elsewhere the biggest frustration we found was a tendency by some providers to force customers into what can only be described as a vicious cycle of page clicking, where attempts to find a workable contact would often lead you right back to where you started or simply offer nowhere else to go. Perhaps some providers would rather save money on staff by having you give up before getting to the right place.<\/p>\n We\u2019ve summarised the individual results below and ordered them by highest rated first.<\/p>\n Zen Internet<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Keep it simple. This appears to be Zen\u2019s apparently successful approach to making its various support contacts both clear and accessible. Quite simply everything you\u2019re likely to need in order to contact their various customer support services is immediately displayed upon clicking either the \u2018Contact Us\u2019 or \u2018Help & Support\u2019 links. Easy peasy and a benchmark that others should follow.<\/p>\n SCORES<\/strong> TOTAL: 14<\/p>\n EE<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n EE<\/a> also made it incredibly easy to find practically every possible contact method simply by following the main \u201cGet in touch\u201d link on their website. The one feature that took time to locate was their live chat service, which only appears to be available through the operators members-only account pages. Being a mobile operator EE also has hundreds of high street stores around the country and if we were also counting those then they might well have come top.<\/p>\n SCORES<\/strong> TOTAL: 12.5<\/p>\n TalkTalk<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n It might surprise some people, especially given TalkTalk\u2019s shaky history of customer support quality, to learn that they actually turned out to be one of the best ISPs for finding the correct contacts and related services. In fact practically everything you could want was listed clearly and simply under the \u2018Contact Us\u2019 link.<\/p>\n The only service we had trouble finding was Facebook, although TalkTalk do have a presence on the social network.<\/p>\n SCORES<\/strong> TOTAL: 12.5<\/p>\n Eclipse Internet<\/strong><\/p>\n Broadly speaking Eclipse also made all of its support contacts both quick and easy to find. The only negative appeared to be the lack of a customer support forum, which most other providers tend to have. Otherwise Eclipse did a good job.<\/p>\n SCORES<\/strong> TOTAL: 12<\/p>\n <\/p>\n PlusNet<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n PlusNet<\/a> has won a number of awards for customer service and as a result we were keen to see how easy it was to locate their various support contacts. Little wonder that we had no trouble finding their forum and social networking pages. Similarly the ISP has also made phone and postal address contacts easy to find, which is something that other providers still appear keen to hide away in the depths of often overly tedious \u201chelp\u201d sections.<\/p>\n On the flip side the ISP doesn\u2019t appear to have a live chat service, at least not one that we could find. It\u2019s possible that this facility may still exist under the members-only pages but we were unable to access that.<\/p>\n SCORES<\/strong> TOTAL: 12<\/p>\n AAISP<\/strong><\/p>\n Broadly speaking Andrews and Arnold made almost all of its primary support contacts both quick and easy to find, although it took us a little longer to find their Facebook page (noted under their service status section) and we couldn\u2019t locate any sign of a discussion forum (though we know that one did briefly exist a few years ago at http:\/\/forum.aaisp.net.uk<\/a>).<\/p>\n As a side note it should be said that AAISP does offer a few things that other providers do not. For example, they support Facetime video calls from iPhone\/iPad devices, SMS, help via a special Newsgroup and even have a page where customers can submit ideas for new services (http:\/\/ideas.aa.net.uk<\/a>). Had we also marked on some of these then they might well have come top, although such features are not widely supported by other providers.<\/p>\n SCORES<\/strong> TOTAL: 11<\/p>\n BT<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Generally speaking BT<\/a>\u2019s website, while somewhat cluttered and potentially confusing for some, did support all of the major communication services for support. But some, such as their BTCare Twitter feed, which is incidentally very well supported, and their Facebook page were harder to find than we expected (in the end they were uncovered by accident via the operators community forum).<\/p>\n Thankfully the primary email and phone contacts were easy to find, as were the operators live chat and forum services. The only real area where BT<\/a> fell down was with postal contacts, which took an age to find. In the end we found it on their btplc.com pages, which is perhaps not where you\u2019d expect to go for home support.<\/p>\n NOTE: BT will revamp their website in June 2013 and thus these results may lose some relevance.<\/p>\n SCORES<\/strong> TOTAL: 10.5<\/p>\n Sky Broadband<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Locating Sky\u2019s forum, live chat, email contact and phone numbers proved to be fairly quick and easy. On the other hand you had to be logged in to actually access the email form and the live chat system was listed as unavailable almost every time we tried to use it during the day (perhaps we were all just very unlucky).<\/p>\n Elsewhere Sky had hidden their \u2018SkyHelpTeam\u2019 twitter feed someway down their forum page, where it could easily be overlooked, and we had no luck locating their Facebook page without resorting to an external Google search. Likewise it took us a long time to locate their consumer address and when we finally found one it only catered for complaints.<\/p>\n SCORES<\/strong> TOTAL: 9.5<\/p>\n O2<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n O2<\/a> has done an excellent job embracing social networking and we had no trouble finding their Facebook, Twitter, Forum and Live chat pages. Unfortunately the ISP falls down when it comes to more traditional mediums and it took us an age to locate a support number and postal address, the latter of which only appeared to be designed for complaints. Similarly we only found the email contact after following a support forum link to a form on O2<\/a>\u2019s older support pages via Google. Poor.<\/p>\n As a side note O2 customers are about to be moved over to Sky Broadband<\/a> and thus a poor score here will soon become irrelevant.<\/p>\n SCORES<\/strong> TOTAL: 9<\/p>\nGeneral Observations<\/span><\/strong><\/h3>\n
The Results<\/span><\/strong><\/h3>\n
\nForum: 2<\/em>
\n Twitter: 2<\/em>
\n Live Chat: 2<\/em>
\n Facebook: 2<\/em>
\n Phone Number: 2<\/em>
\n Email: 2<\/em>
\n Postal Address: 2<\/em><\/p>\n
\nForum: 2<\/em>
\n Twitter: 2<\/em>
\n Live Chat: 0.5<\/em>
\n Facebook: 2<\/em>
\n Phone Number: 2<\/em>
\n Email: 2<\/em>
\n Postal Address: 2<\/em><\/p>\n
\nForum: 2<\/em>
\n Twitter: 2<\/em>
\n Live Chat: 2<\/em>
\n Facebook: 0.5<\/em>
\n Phone Number: 2<\/em>
\n Email: 2<\/em>
\n Postal Address: 2<\/em><\/p>\n
\nForum: 0<\/em>
\n Twitter: 2<\/em>
\n Live Chat: 2<\/em>
\n Facebook: 2<\/em>
\n Phone Number: 2<\/em>
\n Email: 2<\/em>
\n Postal Address: 2<\/em><\/p>\n
\nForum: 2<\/em> <\/em>
\nTwitter: 2<\/em> <\/em>
\nLive Chat: 0<\/em>
\n Facebook: 2<\/em> <\/em>
\nPhone Number: 2<\/em> <\/em>
\nEmail:\u00a02<\/em>
\nPostal Address: 2<\/em><\/p>\n
\nForum: 0<\/em>
\n Twitter: 2<\/em>
\n Live Chat: 2<\/em>
\n Facebook: 1<\/em>
\n Phone Number: 2<\/em>
\n Email: 2<\/em>
\n Postal Address: 2<\/em><\/p>\n
\nForum: 2<\/em>
\n Twitter: 1<\/em>
\n Live Chat: 2<\/em>
\n Facebook: 1<\/em>
\n Phone Number: 2<\/em>
\n Email: 2<\/em>
\n Postal Address: 0.5<\/em><\/p>\n
\nForum: 2<\/em>
\n Twitter: 0.5<\/em>
\n Live Chat: 2<\/em>
\n Facebook: 0.5<\/em>
\n Phone Number: 2<\/em>
\n Email: 2<\/em>
\n Postal Address: 0.5<\/em><\/p>\n
\nForum: 2<\/em>
\n Twitter: 2<\/em>
\n Live Chat: 2<\/em>
\n Facebook: 2<\/em>
\n Phone Number: 0.5<\/em>
\n Email: 0.5<\/em>
\n Postal Address: 0.5<\/em><\/p>\n