More than 75% of Britons say they are frustrated with poor service, and chatbot ‘helpers’ aren’t helping. Our consumer champion considers the problem – and how you can complain much more effectively
It is a very modern feeling. That sense of dangling in limbo, enduring a tinny rendition of a Simply Red song down the line, and watching the morning drift away. It was my fourth call to customer services to discover the fate of a valuable delivery that had been attempted without warning three days earlier than agreed, failed to arrive on the first rearranged date, was a no-show on the second, and had subsequently vanished off the courier’s radar. “We don’t do time slots,” said the call centre operative, suggesting I wait in for another 12 hours the following day in case it turned up.
A report by the thinktank New Britain last month found that 78% of people across the country feel frustrated when dealing with customer services – and that on average we spend between 28 and 41 minutes every week dealing with them in lengthy battles. According to the UK Institute for Customer Service (UKICS), satisfaction is at its lowest level in a decade – with 24% of the 15,000 respondents to its annual survey reporting a poor experience in 2024. The consumer group Which? found that energy and broadband customers, in the same year, lost an estimated 27.3m hours to poor customer service, which amounted to £298m in costs as consumers were left out of pocket when issues weren’t resolved.
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