Exposed: Britain’s most loved and loathed firms
Which? has revealed this year's best and worst brands for customer service.
Which? has revealed how 100 of Britain’s biggest brands rate for customer service, highlighting which firms we love to deal with and which are a nightmare.
More than 3,000 people were surveyed in the consumer champion’s annual review of customer experiences in the past 12 months.
Ratings were based on how valued people felt as a customer, the knowledge of products and services, helpfulness of staff, how well they resolve problems and access to customer support. Respondents were also asked to give an overall rating for customer service.
Top performers
Lush, the shop you smell before you see, took the top spot with a brilliant score of 89%.
The popular cosmetics company came first in the same survey in 2013 and has moved up three places since last year.
Online bank First Direct nabbed a close second place at 86% while Lakeland came in third with 84%.
Here are the brands that you love the most:
|
Position |
Brand |
Score |
|
1 |
Lush |
89% |
|
2 |
86% |
|
|
3 |
Lakeland |
84% |
|
4= |
Body Shop |
83% |
|
4= |
John Lewis |
83% |
|
4= |
Waitrose |
83% |
|
7= |
Pets at Home |
81% |
|
7= |
Waterstones |
81% |
|
9= |
Marks & Spencer |
80% |
|
9= |
Clarks |
80% |
|
9= |
Amazon |
80% |
|
9= |
Dunelm |
80% |
|
9= |
RAC |
80% |
Lush scored highly because of its happy atmosphere and welcoming staff. One respondent said it was “a great shop in every way”.
Useless and unhelpful
It won’t come as any surprise that energy providers performed worst in the survey. The infamous ScottishPower scored just 59%, followed by npower at 61%.
Customers complained about ScottishPower’s "useless" service and unhelpful standardised replies. One respondent said: “They’ve been incredibly unhelpful, rude and blamed us for a fault they have since admitted is their fault.”
Telecoms firms weren’t much better with BT (63%), TalkTalk (64%) and Vodafone (66%) scoring poorly. Ryanair was lowest among the airlines at 66%.
|
Position |
Brand |
Score |
|
94 |
EE |
68% |
|
95= |
Ryanair |
66% |
|
95= |
Vodafone |
66% |
|
97 |
TalkTalk |
64% |
|
98 |
BT |
63% |
|
99 |
Npower |
61% |
|
100 |
ScottishPower |
59% |
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How did the banks do?
Apart from the stormer that is First Direct, the banks did relatively well this year. TSB, Nationwide and Santander tied in 14th place at 79%, Barclays and Yorkshire Bank came in 19th place with 78% and NatWest, Lloyds, Co-operative Bank and Halifax all scored 77%, putting them in 27th place. HSBC was 35th (76%).
RBS appeared further down the table in 42nd place (75%) while Bank of Scotland scored lowest at 73%, or 61st place.
The importance of customer service
Customer service really does make a difference: nearly nine in 10 people told Which? that poor customer service puts them off using the brand again.
Friendly and helpful staff topped customer service highlights, followed by good product knowledge and speed of service.
‘Offshore’ call centres based outside of the UK annoyed customers the most. We also hate automated telephone systems and being passed around lots of different people.
As for shopping in-store, Which? found that we hate unhelpful staff the most at 41% followed by queuing (39%). Shop crowds, expensive prices and a poor shopping experience all scored highly at 38%.
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Do you agree with these figures? Have you had bad customer service with the top retailers? Let us know in the comments below!
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