{"id":32718,"date":"2022-10-27T11:39:53","date_gmt":"2022-10-27T10:39:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ispreview.co.uk\/?p=32718"},"modified":"2023-02-22T10:35:12","modified_gmt":"2023-02-22T10:35:12","slug":"bill-proposed-to-improve-uk-consumer-telephone-service-standards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ispreview.co.uk\/index.php\/2022\/10\/bill-proposed-to-improve-uk-consumer-telephone-service-standards.html","title":{"rendered":"Bill Proposed to Improve UK Consumer Telephone Service Standards"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Conservative MP, Robert Halfon, has proposed a new Private Members Bill that seeks to clampdown on utility providers (broadband ISPs, energy etc.) and “certain other services<\/em>” that run telephone support lines, specifically those that make it difficult or force you to wait for ages before being able to speak with a human.<\/p>\n

The bill, which was proposed in parliament<\/a> yesterday (using the Ten Minute Rule) under the title – ‘Consumer Telephone Service Standards<\/strong><\/a>‘, appears to suggest the imposition of “maximum waiting times<\/em>” (i.e. before you can speak with a human) for customers who are contacting such providers.<\/p>\n

On top of that, it will also propose to “restrict the use of automated menus<\/em>” on telephone services offered by such companies and enforce “financial penalties<\/em>” for companies that fail to meet its standards (e.g. if operators make you wait longer than 10 minutes on the phone). We suspect Ofcom<\/a> would need to be drawn in to assess all this.<\/p>\n

Robert Halfon MP said:<\/strong><\/p>\n

“How often do we hear the dreaded phrase, \u201cSorry, we\u2019re rather busy right now, but your call is important to us. Please hold the line\u201d? How often do we have to wait 15, 20, 30 or 40-plus minutes on the phone to get through, after spending the first five minutes being asked to press 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6? How often do we wait all that time to get through and then get cut off, so that we have to start the whole horrific process all over again?<\/p>\n

Utility companies, big multinationals with chief executives earning huge salaries, have created a Kafkaesque torture chamber of customer service. That is now happening every day across the United Kingdom, and has been for some time now, as families all over Britain try to contact their utility and service providers. Customer service standards plummeted during the pandemic, as companies grappled with the new work guidelines, but they still have not recovered and, worse still, some companies use that as an excuse, despite most workplaces having returned to normal.<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

Often, once we have surpassed such messages and clicked all the right buttons, we are then told by an automated voice that in fact the best route is via an online portal or text chat, despite having already been on hold for 20 minutes\u2014and that is if we are even lucky enough to find the necessary contact details.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The MP goes on to highlight the example of how his office colleague tried to purchase a NOW Broadband (NOW TV<\/a>) package, but still hadn’t got it connected after 2 months of waiting. “They were told, incredibly, that their complaint about the delay had in fact caused a further delay to their service. Yet there are no consequences for increasingly anxious and frustrated consumers across Britain<\/em>,” said Robert Halfon. But this seems like a different issue from the one the proposed bill is intended to tackle, and we don’t have the ISPs perspective (such delays are usually due to problems on Openreach<\/a>\u2019s network – possibly related to a lack of port capacity).<\/p>\n

The subject of NOW TV<\/a> also came up again, this time by highlighting a more related point, with the MP noting that “consumer-facing service providers seem to be finding any way to avoid blame or accountability, to the point that NOW TV<\/a>, talking to a member of my office, claimed that the death of Her late Majesty the Queen was the reason for any potential waiting times<\/em>“. In fairness, this might be true if the call occurred around the recent bank holiday (funeral), but the MP didn’t elaborate.<\/p>\n

Robert Halfon appears to be advocating for a system similar to the one that Spain<\/strong> recently introduced, which forced big companies and utility firms to answer calls within 3 minutes or face fines of up to \u00a385,000. Under that law, consumers also gained the right to be put through to a human on the phone, rather than having to deal with an automated system. We’re sure many people would support this idea.<\/p>\n

At this point it’s worth highlighting Ofcom<\/a>’s annual study of service quality (here<\/a>), which reported on the average call waiting time (minutes:seconds) for broadband ISPs including BT<\/a>, EE<\/a>, KCOM<\/a>, NOW TV, Plusnet<\/a>, Sky Broadband<\/a>, TalkTalk<\/a>, Virgin Media<\/a> and Vodafone<\/a>. The overall average wait came out as 2:16 (two minutes, sixteen seconds), although Virgin Media<\/a> took 3:45 mins and KCOM<\/a> 8:53 mins!<\/p>\n

Robert Halfon MP added:<\/strong><\/p>\n

“We need a similar law in the UK to ensure, first, that no one would have to wait longer than 10 minutes on the phone\u2014even that is pretty generous\u2014secondly, that every customer would get through to a real human being, as opposed to an automated machine or robot, and thirdly, that companies would remove the \u201c1, 2, 3\u201d options, which are all about trying to get customers off the phone instead of talking to them. Should businesses fail to meet those standards, they will be fined heavily and the money paid back to the customer through rebates.<\/p>\n

We are in a cost of living crisis. Consumers need easy and accessible customer service from their energy and utility providers. Companies such as SSE, which supplies energy, phone and broadband to UK homes, should not be allowed to leave people waiting for up to 50 minutes. Utility and service providers have a duty to their consumers, and currently, practices are not good enough with telephone services aiming to get people off the phone, rather than on it. That needs to change, which is why this Consumer Telephone Service Standards Bill is so vital to making large providers accountable. As the Daily Mail says, \u201cPick Up or Pay Up.\u201d “<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Naturally, there are some potential risks with this approach, since no company could accurately predict or economically hire enough staff to cope with every major peak in support demand. Instead, businesses usually provision enough staff to cover typical demand (although some clearly aren’t even doing that), thus there would need to be some allowance for unexpected events.<\/p>\n

Another risk is that such a policy might result in more UK job losses, such as if some companies decide the only way to meet the stricter standard is by outsourcing more of their support centres abroad to benefit from cheaper labour (some already do this, but others like BT<\/a> have moved back to the UK and seen an improvement), or perhaps by scrapping phone support lines completely.<\/p>\n

One way or another, the extra costs of meeting such a standard would need to be met somewhere, which usually ends up in customers paying higher bills. But many people may tolerate a small increase in return for a more dependable and responsive level of customer support, provided the operator clearly communicates that to them.<\/p>\n

The catch here is that only a minority of Private Members Bills ever become law (they can be tabled by any MP, not only those from the Government), but they do often serve a purpose by creating publicity around an issue and encouraging wider debate.<\/p>\n

At the time of writing, we haven’t yet seen any text from the bill itself, but it already has the support of several other MPs – Margaret Ferrier, Dame Caroline Dinenage, Sir Roger Gale, Peter Aldous, Daisy Cooper, Kevin Hollinrake, Mr Louie French, Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck, Lucy Allan, Stephen Metcalfe and Jim Shannon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Conservative MP, Robert Halfon, has proposed a new Private Members Bill that seeks to clampdown on utility providers (broadband ISPs, energy etc.) and “certain other services” that run telephone support lines, specifically those that make it difficult or force you to wait for ages before being able to speak with a human.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30233,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,1645],"tags":[36,38],"class_list":["post-32718","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uk_isp_news","category-key_uk_isp_industry_developments","tag-ofcom-regulation","tag-politics"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"yoast_head":"\nBill Proposed to Improve UK Consumer Telephone Service Standards - ISPreview UK<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The Conservative MP, Robert Halfon, has proposed a new Private Members Bill that seeks to clampdown on utility providers (broadband ISPs, energy etc.) and\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ispreview.co.uk\/index.php\/2022\/10\/bill-proposed-to-improve-uk-consumer-telephone-service-standards.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Bill Proposed to Improve UK Consumer Telephone Service Standards - 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