Customer service can make or break a company – so why are so many of the UK’s biggest firms not getting it right?

Finding good customer service is not always easy. In March 2022, BusinessFinancing used TrustPilot reviews to work out which UK companies offered outstanding customer service. Only to discover that some of the biggest firms in the UK were consistently failing to solve the problems that buyers had experienced. In some cases, over 90% of the reviewers who had mentioned the quality of customer service in their reviews, said the experience was substandard.

What the latest research says

For the worst offender, 95.64% of the reviews that mentioned customer service were negative. You can read the full report here and click through to TrustPilot to look at the raw data to check the results.

When you do, you will notice that in some cases this lack of care stretches back for nearly a decade. That is long enough for them to realise that they have a problem and address it. Indicating, that these companies have never taken providing a good after sales service seriously and are not bothered by that fact.

Poor customer service leads to buyers not trusting companies

Later in the article, we look at why that is. But first, I want to highlight what happens over the long term to those firms that continue to provide inadequate support to customers with problems.

This is surprising given that when you speak to consumers, trust is one of the main reasons they repeatedly go back to buy from a company. They believe that the products they sell are good quality and that should there be any issues the company will solve the problem. When that does not happen, understandably, they feel let down. Often, they vote with their feet and never buy from that company again. They also talk to others about their bad experiences. Both online and in face-to-face conversations.

Over time, all of this negativity begins to erode the reputation of even the biggest firms. This opens the way for smaller competitors to begin to grab sales that would have otherwise gone to them. Not to mention that firms that do not prioritise customer service start to lose ground on comparison sites. For example, as you can see the most trusted providers in Broadband Genie’s roundup all rank highly when it comes to looking after their customers. Click the link and you will see that the overall winner was also the most trusted and recommended provider. Something that enabled them to beat all of the bigger, more established firms. Many of whom also provided a wider choice of services.

Being good at customer service helps small firms to gain purchase and begin to grab market share. You see this pattern of success repeated across most consumer industries. So, the natural question is if we as consumers can see what is happening, what on earth are these multinationals thinking of when they set their customer service standards and targets so low?

The truth is it is hard to know for sure. Nobody has researched the subject, so there are no hard statistics to quote. But some of the reasons are obvious.

Money

Let’s start with profit. Call centres are expensive to run. Accepting that there is a problem and taking the product back for repair or replacement usually wipes out the profit made on that sale. Sadly, making it so difficult for customers to speak to someone about an issue so that they go away makes business sense. At least in the short term. In the long term, this attitude erodes trust and damages a company´s reputation leading to fewer repeat sales.

Customer service is not seen as being essential

Deciding where money is spent within the business usually involves cost analysis. It is effortless to prove that installing a new style of grabber on an assembly line is going to speed up production by 10%. Decision-makers can instantly see the ROI of that type of investment. Whereas it is not easy to prove that reducing answering times when people call customer services results in more sales. As a result, very few firms invest very much money in upgrading the software or hardware their call centre uses.

Fear of being conned

Sadly, the other issue that puts companies off providing easy redress to customers with problems is the way buyers behave. A significant percentage of consumers abuse the arrangements that are put in place. Take for example the practice of wardrobing – buying something, wearing it, and then returning it despite it not being defective. Virtually every clothing retailer´s bottom line is impacted by this, with a staggering 64% experiencing this issue regularly. Unsurprisingly, they do not want to open the door to abuse any further than they have to. Avoiding speaking to customers with issues is one way to do this. If someone cannot get a returns label without making 4 or 5 calls, they won´t bother to return any items whether they are defective or not.

Please note this is a contributed post. Views and opinions are not necessarily my own.