TalkTalk gets the Wooden Spoon award for worst customer service AGAIN

KevIRL

Couldnt happen to a nicer bunch of cnuts tbh. Hope they continue to get this 'award' for many years to come

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/money/bills/article-2084868/Customer-service-TalkTalk-gets-Wooden-Spoon-award-AGAIN.html

You voted in your thousands for the company with Britain’s shoddiest customer service in 2011 and the winner — for the second year running — is TalkTalk.

More than one in four of all votes cast were for the home phone and internet provider. HM Revenue & Customs was second and Spanish bank Santander was third.

TalkTalk became the first company to win Money Mail’s Wooden Spoon Award in consecutive years. In the past, a winner has taken the wooden spoon as a wake-up call and improved its customer service.



Looking miserable: TalkTalk chief executive Dido Harding

The trophy is one every company or organisation dreads winning. Your votes shine a light on their inept service and the often appalling way in which loyal customers are treated.

Money Mail receives hundreds of letters and emails each week about poor service and in December we gave you a shortlist of the eight organisations whose customers had consistently contacted us to tell of poor service over the previous 12 months.

For a month your votes poured in. Last week, we presented TalkTalk chief executive Dido Harding with the trophy for 2011. The gong for winning the Wooden Spoon Award in 2010 already sits on her desk.

The firm is so embarrassed by its ignominious double that Ms Harding refused to be photographed with both awards. She was visibly unhappy at winning again and acknowledges its customer service is ‘not yet good enough’.

‘I apologise to those we have let down. We are working very hard on improvements for all customers,’ she says. Despite the company’s promises to better the lot of its customers, 2011 was another shocking year.




The problems with TalkTalk

Readers complained of paying a monthly fee, but receiving no connection or service for weeks; promised callbacks that failed to emerge; and anger at repeatedly phoning call centres to register complaints and having to repeat the details every time. There was also frustration at not being able to understand call centre staff and unexpected bills of £120 or more for engineer visits.


We received a deluge of complaints at a botched offer to save £51 off the cost of line rental. What the company failed to tell customers was that they needed to be an online customer to be eligible. Many of those who complained didn’t need or want broadband, and had to waste time calling the company to discover this simple piece of information.

And when Money Mail intervened to highlight the unfairness of this, TalkTalk said it would honour any requests by landline-only customers — but staff still rejected applications.

Ms Harding stresses the company is performing better than last year and making progress. ‘We do see our service improving, but clearly we are not good enough yet — and we’re the first to recognise this. I don’t accept that we haven’t moved on,’ she says. ‘Regulator Ofcom, too, has pointed out that we have improved in the past year.’

To boost its performance, the company says it has begun to roll out a process to make it easier for customers to take TalkTalk’s service between different properties.

‘We are aware our home-moving service isn’t yet good enough. Overall, we are better than we were a year ago, but we want to be better.’

She says the company is focusing on improving customer services for online and phone customers. For those happy to manage their account online, this means greater flexibility, such as being able to set up your own parental controls against unwanted websites. And for those customers who simply have landlines for phone calls, TalkTalk says it is stepping up its efforts to fix faults on the first occasion.

‘A year ago, we were able to fix faults at the first go only 45 per cent of the time; now we’re at 75 per cent and want to get it higher,’ says Ms Harding.

Last August, TalkTalk and its subsidiary Tiscali were fined a record £3million for incorrectly billing 65,000 customers for services they had not received. And it continued to top Ofcom’s tables for most customer complaints during the year.

Sully

Does this not reflect poorly on the ex-Irish staff?

seanybiker

Sully wrote: »

Does this not reflect poorly on the ex-Irish staff?

Exactly yeah. Bit of an Ould fail thread me thinks

KevIRL

Sully wrote: »

Does this not reflect poorly on the ex-Irish staff?

Nope. I worked there up to April 2010 and in my role had access to the customer survey results. The Waterford results were consistently the highest of all the sites.

Customers found Waterford best to deal with it. The company is rotten to the core, tries to do everything on the cheap and is being found out as its cost cutting has lead to this

MitchKoobski

Naw Waterford always came up top in the results. Every call centre has its missing callbacks and billings issue though. TalkTalk's problem is that the management figures it knows best before listening to the actual employees and customers.

I liked this line: "There was also frustration at not being able to understand call centre staff."

al20v

seanybiker wrote: »

Exactly yeah. Bit of an Ould fail thread me thinks

No it is not, the Waterford site was the center of excellence....

MitchKoobski

al20v wrote: »

No it is not, the Waterford site was the center of excellence....

Except on pizza day. God I miss pizza day.

seanybiker

al20v wrote: »

No it is not, the Waterford site was the center of excellence....

So being the best of a shyte bunch makes it excellent?

dark_shadow

I'm surprised to Ryanair at number 5!!! Useless shower of cnuts!!

As in I thought they would be higher up the list!!!

Crusty Blaa

seanybiker wrote: »

So being the best of a shyte bunch makes it excellent?

There was a massive gap between the Waterford centre and the likes of the centres in South Africa, Manilla, Bangalore etc. You have to remember as well that it was once AOL, who were one of the best companies around and the Waterford crew were always the top performers for them and won many awards as a result. TalkTalk inherited one of the best call centres in the world and they abused them.

BlaasForRafa

seanybiker wrote: »

So being the best of a shyte bunch makes it excellent?

The Waterford site won numerous national and international awards in the call centre business.

uknicolas40

this is definitely not a massive fail to Waterford staff for one simple reason,the latter part of 2010 and up to the time Waterford was closed the calls being dealt with were for their billed after cease incident ,as Waterford was top performing and most competent we were the only call centre the company felt were the best to deal with,we were taking thousands of calls every week to rectify the boo boo TALK TALK had made by billing customers who were no longer with them,as a result the company was only fined 3 million as opposed to 30 million and they got to continue selling bb and telephone.
Had this billed after cease issue not of happened,customer service calls would of been dealt with by waterford workers from 2010 -date and they would have probably not got the coveted wooden spoon award.