The annual customer service survey from Which? is out and the usual suspects feature at both the top and bottom of the list of the 100 big brands rated. You can read the full results here but we’ve summarised the highlights below.
The top rated brands were;
1. Lush – 89%
2. First Direct – 86%
3. Lakeland – 84%
=4. Body Shop – 83%
=4. John Lewis – 83%
=4. Waitrose – 83%
Floundering around at the bottom of the list, providing little in the way of surprises came these brands;
95. Ryanair – 66%
95. Vodafone – 66%
97. Talk Talk – 64%
98. BT – 63%
99. npower – 61%
100. Scottish Power – 59%
Each brand was rated across 5 areas of service with a possible 5 star maximum in each. The areas scored were;
- making their customers feel valued
- knowledge of products and services
- helpfulness of staff
- resolving complaints or problems
- access to customer support.
The 3,501 general public respondents were also asked to give brands an overall rating for customer service, which is where the customer service score comes from. Amazon, M&S, Pets at Home, Waterstones, Dunelm, Clarks and the RAC all made the top 10.
Despite being voted Which? supermarket of the year in 2014, Aldi only managed joint 73rd with 14 other brands including Virgin, British Gas and JD Sports all scoring 71%.
Utilities and telecoms continue to struggle to get to grips with customer service with Scottish Power who were 99th last year swapping places with npower who have been bottom for at least the last two years. Scottish Power, attributed their woes to the often blamed scapegoat of IT. “Last year all our customer accounts were migrated on to a new IT system, which resulted in a very busy period as disappointingly we experienced more problems with the new system than we would have liked.”
IT aside, these two sectors have done little to visibly improve, with big players losing significant ground and customers to the disruptive likes of Ovo Energy and Ecotricity.
If this continues, I wouldn’t be surprised if the respective regulators for these two industries ‘impose’ a change on behalf of customers. Interesting times!
