TalkTalk’s poor customer service takes further blow
Internet Giant TalkTalk’s attempts to repair its poor reputation for customer service have suffered a blow after it topped the telecoms watchdog’s table of broadband complaints between July and September last year.
Complaints about the company’s broadband service reached the highest level in 18 months as it shut down a call centre after it discovered employees were scamming customers. TalkTalk grew suspicious in 2014 that workers were stealing customer details to convince them to hand over personal banking information. After concluding an investigation, TalkTalk said it withdrew all customer service operations in August. On Friday it claimed that this had caused “temporary disruption” to its customer care process, and was responsible for the rise in complaints to Ofcom. “That move, and a radical shift to self serve is already delivering a material improvement in customer satisfaction and we expect complaint data for 2018 to reduce significantly,” a spokesman said.
TalkTalk has been haunted by a reputation for poor customer service since buying Tiscali UK in 2009. Until the latest set of data, customer satisfaction had appeared to be improving, dropping to second place for broadband complaints between April and June last year. Ofcom’s latest data takes into account the number of customer complaints it has received and found that TalkTalk generated the highest volume per 100,000 customers.