Whatever happened to “customer service”?

One of the banes of modern life has been the deterioration in customer service that that has bedevilled the United Kingdom over the last three decades.

I don’t know who or what deserves to field most of the blame for this – sub-contracted call centres situated in all four corners of the Earth, automated phone call systems, the Covid pandemic, WFH [“Working from home”], the pathetic railways and public transport structure and systems, “artificial intelligence” … or just the age-old principle that “businesses always get away with whatever they can get away with”.

Let me give Rusters two examples of that to which I’m referring from recent personal experience.

Never mind the fact that these days utility companies constantly try to nick each other’s business – e.g. electricity supplying companies routinely contacting their customers or sending them offers to supply them in addition with their gas supplies, and vice versa.

I attempt to annoy them by responding every time they do this with “I’m terribly sorry to be so old fashioned, but I like to buy my electricity from an organisation with ‘electricity’ in its title – and my gas from a company with ‘gas’ its title – simply so that I know which organisation to contact if something goes wrong …”

Along with (I’m sure) many other people, I’ve recently been a victim of the widespread phenomenon whereby my electricity supplier has gone bust.

I don’t quite know how it all began, but I think it was via a spate of Government deregulation that there was suddenly massive encouragement for “new” electricity supply companies to enter the market. As a result tens, if not hundreds, of “start up” companies did so – many of them effectively the equivalent of no more than one man (or woman) possessed of a computer operating from their spare bedroom.

One moment some of these were acquiring thousands of new customers every month – and supplying them by buying electricity wholesale on the open global markets – and the next, the world price of electricity had soared … and many of these “two bit” organisations, which had committed to supplying their customers on fixed price deals, couldn’t meet their obligations.

As a result, hundreds of these newbie” electricity suppliers bit the dust – and indeed are continuing to do so as I type.

One such was my not long-acquired electricity supplier (chosen via a price comparison website because their prices were the most competitive) whom – for security and legal reasons – I shall not name here.

But I will now name British Gas, which one day wrote to me out of the blue explaining that they had “acquired” my custom because my erstwhile former supplier of electricity had gone bust.

So far, so (just about) so good.

But here follows the additional problem.

At my property I have what I would describe here as two separate “units” for electricity purposes. One is for the house – and the other, quite separate, relates to a series of agricultural buildings and is designated as a “commercial” unit.

Since British Gas first wrote to me announcing that they had  “taken over” supplying my house unit, I have tried on at least six occasions to ring them to discuss them also taking over either the supplying of my supposed “commercial” unit (even though I have no intention of running a business in the buildings concerned) … and/or  potentially its subsuming into the unit that deals with my house.

During this period I have managed to prove to my own satisfaction that it is completely impossible to speak to – or indeed converse with by email and/or “online chat” – a human being at British Gas.

Whenever you ring British Gas on the number they provide for the purpose, you go into an “automated system” which initially – whichever number you choose to pick from the various ones they offer for different services – rings and rings incessantly for about a minute and then a voice gives a spiel of the effect “Please stay on the line, we value your call – however, we are receiving a great number of calls at the moment; you could try contacting us via our website [address provided] or alternatively, just stay on the line …”

[The above is then followed by a repeat of the above routine … ad infinitum].

Depending upon how bored I am – and/or what else I’m doing at the time – as a result I have then “hung on” on two separate occasions for over an hour and a quarter … before ringing off … and on a third occasion actually being “cut off” (!!).

How can these organisations get away with this standard of service?

If I could just speak to a competent human being, I’m sure that I could discuss my issue with them – if not also go on to resolve it – inside five minutes.

But it just isn’t possible to speak to anyone at British Gas.

Yesterday – in an entirely separate incident – a lady of my acquaintance received news from her son that her home elsewhere on the south coast of England had suffered significant damage to its roof and torrential rain was causing flood damage.

I kind you not – yesterday afternoon she spent no fewer than five and a half hours trying to make contact with her “household property” insurance company in order to register the problem and get them to address it. And failed.

On two occasions she spend over 80 minutes hanging on the (ringing) phone, waiting for a human being to answer it, before it then cut her off.

On another she spent two hours before someone answered – only for them to advise her that she’d been given the wrong number … and one that was for an insurance company which hadn’t insured her!

On the last occasion she attempted to make contact, she waited over an hour before someone answered – listened to her problem – and then told her that they’d pass the information on … and that someone would ring her back tomorrow (Monday).

Based upon the experiences of this weekend, my hunch is that there’s a fat chance of that happening!