customer service in the UK

I am a complainer!
Everyone say's so... BUT I only ever complain when I receive bad service...

I think overall people just aren't used to complaints and feel threatned by them and feel that they are being attacked in some way.

I recently stayed in a budget hotel, and the mould around the bath was awful... the receptionist couldn't believe I had complained and told me that I had been the first to complain... They obviously attract some odd customers IMO.

If my food is cold I send it back - money is hard to come back and there is absolutely no need to be served cold food.

If I am standing waiting to be served in a shop and the assistant is chatting ignoring me, i have no qualms about asking them if they are actually serving or do I need to use another checkout.

For me the best one was only yesterday when I had my windows and doors changed. The workmen had a cig break every 15 minutes then seemed surprised that they didn't get the job done in a day, they told me they would be back at 10am the next day with a new toilet seat (as they had put their foot through mine!) At 8am the phone rang and the receptionist from the company told me that the boys had another job to go to and they would be back, but probably after 4pm. I said, no the lads will be here at 10am as we had an arrangement, they will also be bring a toilet seat and be fitting it as they broke mine yesterday.
The lads turned up at 10am on the dot and finished my job... surprisingly enough because they had another job to go to, their breaks were less frequent too..

I will pay anything for a good product or a good service, but I will not be ripped off either by shoddy goods or bad service....

I think we should all complain more!

I've been on both sides of this, having had a career in retail management. I have absolutely no issue with people complaining and I often complain myself. However the method of complaining needs to be in proportion to the complaint and just because you have had to complain to get what you think is right that doesn't exclude you from saying 'thank you' when you get it. Manners seem to have been forgotten on both sides.
I have some examples of complaints I received:
Regularly being threatened with being 'sorted out' over the non functioning of small kitchen appliances.
Regularly having the doors of the store blockaded by people 'demanding what they want' despite the issue being that they couldn't read an instruction book. ( Once with a Tractor ).
Being accused of 'ruining Christmas' on pretty much every Boxing day I worked.
Being threatened with being punched over a faulty Hifi and later accused, in a letter to head office, of 'puffing myself up' because I stepped up into the cashdesk to push the alarm.
I think that a large minority of the general public have lost all respect for people in the service sector and have some strange idea that money means you have the right to talk to people like ****. I also think that a majority of people don't understand that assertive and aggressive are not the same thing.
As with your examples Tillyfloss, I have stayed in a budget hotel and was less than pleased with the condition of the room. It was less than I have experienced before in that chain but alas the same as I always experience in that particular Hotel. There's no point complaining to the Hotel, I complained to the chain they will ensure that something is done about it.
I'll send cold food back with a 'Please' and 'Thank you', you can still be polite and complain.
I won't complain to checkout staff about their attitude, I'll complain to the supervisor or manager because they will do what it takes to ensure it doesn't happen again.
As for the toilet seat I'd have done the same thing or failing them doing it I'd have fitted a new one myself and sent them the bill.

the provider of the 'service' has to have a stake in satisfying the customer or it's never going to work. The clueless provider of the cold pub meal had almost certainly been told that all they need to do is turn up clean and on time to earn their minimum wage. Having a pride in and stake in the quality and timeliness of the product would require training, an investment the employer might see themselves too 'busy' to provide.
I rarely think we have much to learn from the American model but service, particularly restaurant service where waiting jobs are sold on rather than salaried, is an area we could usefully study. Contrast the service in a good American place where customer is king, with the grunting absence of eye contact at the Wendy's burger counter down the road. It makes the 15 - 20% tip seem like good value.

the over-weening word filter has removed a word spelled s-t-a-k-e from the text. I'm struggling to think of a profanity that rhymes with or looks like stake.

I've had a look at a 'how to swear in a foreign language' website, and done a google search, and couldn't find any reason for stake being omitted

@wrighty @mwebster   The word filter is a tad on the sensitive side and we're tidying it up as we go, so I've now removed the word "stake". I agree, some of the words it filters out are a bit daft, including the word "shopper" which I discovered today. How odd. Anyway, the word filter is pre-installed on Platform so it's not us choosing what should be blanked out. Hope that helps.

Robyn (member of the Platform team)

On coming back from the Far East, or indeed the Middle East, there's one thing that really make me laugh: in Europe they make you queue up to pay for things! It's as if they don't want your money! You go to Cairo or Hong Kong and they have your money off you before you're halfway through the door!

You can't beat good customer service, but only because it seems so rare these days. I hate it when you've queued at a  till for ages only for the checkout person to keep you waiting even longer while he/she chats to a colleague. Rude. It's easy to see why customers get abusive.

The worst culprit for poor customer service, in my experience, is BT. I once waited 90 minutes to get through to an operator, only to be told they couldn't help me and would have to put me on hold for another 30 minutes. No apology. That's not the half of it but I won't bore you with the rest.

Needless to say, good customer service is important and would certainly make me go back to a company/restaurant/shop again.

What about hairdressers? I'm too scared to say I hate what they've done to my hair and then refuse to pay, but why should you cough up a small fortune for a disasterous do?

robyn, why *should* you pay for a haircut that makes you look like a yeti? I don't have any qualms there at all. I once had to complain that the hairdo was an overall disaster and there was no way I was paying for it. The owner of the salon took over, re-did the do (IYSWIM) and asked me if I was happy with the result. I was more than happy to pay as it was fabulous. The hairdresser won't learn anything if you don't mention they have done a bad job and the owner of the salon would be unhappy to lose your business when they could have done something to remedy it.

As for service, I work in a service industry (have done for many, many years) and it is a matter of professional pride to me to offer the best service I can. I detest people making promises they have absolutely no intention of keeping. I would never promise something I can't deliver. I have come to the conclusion that bad service is purely and simply down to people in the service industry being given a very poor standard of training.

I would be particularly polite to restaurant staff when sending cold food back or complaining: who knows what sorts of "extras" might end up in your new portion of food...

Given that most customer service isn't in the UK anymore, absolutely "£$^%. I have had difficulties understanding a Geordie or Scottish AA person when renewing my car insurance, but enjoyed listening to the lilt of the accent and accepted it as part of our culture.

I have had 2 serious problems with 'outbased' customer service where enough english is spoken for a holiday but nowhere near enough for business. One problem resulted in my struggling for 8 months to get internet access to work before being told by the third person on the 0870 number that it just wouldn't work in my flat. It then took a further 6 months to get a refund of the direct debit that had kept being taken even though a problem was admitted and that office was in England. If the team had been based in England, even with an accent, they would have known what I was talking about by living the same way and the access would have been cancelled within the cooling off period.

I agree with all the other comments but in response to Binocular_View you may have been a good manager but I see so many standing and talking with the staff they should be supervising that I'm afraid customer service is a laughable concept now. No-one wants to accept responsibility or accountability for doing a job nowadays. I was brought up to say please and thank you and I expect that from the store assistant. There are so many shops now where you can go through a complete transaction where no words are uttered. Despite there being nothing overt that is complete rudeness and disgusting behaviour. If you are supervising people like that, you should be on them like a ton of bricks. Maybe the recession will bring back proper English customer service. Here's hoping!

I have no problem with complaining when necessary, but it has to be done politely, or you only deserve what you get back! I've just had my details removed from a mail order company's data base, because their 'service' to me before Christmas was non-existent, then they took 2 months to refund my payment, and never bothered to answer the letter I sent them.
On the other hand, my daughter is a publican, and she's had some pretty awful experiences of stroppy customers, refuses to serve anyone who has no manners, and has only once raised her voice to a customer. Some just want their 5 minutes of fame, shouting at staff in front of a full pub/restaurant. One woman made a huge fuss about the food being awful (everyone else on her table looked embarrassed), and brought in the totally irrelevant subject of my daughter being 'a young squit of a girl' and not old enough to run a pub! The customer got the wind taken out of her sails, though, by a well-known tv/radio personality, who knows my daughter from her previous pub, who subtly moved in and praised her. The customer was offered a dessert or drink on the house but, amazingly, decided not to take up the offer, and left very rapidly!
We have ensure we get proper service, but there are ways of doing it. However, British Gas are another situation entirely, and I won't even start on that!

As I've said before, I live in Thailand where customer service is totally alien.

However,some places do believe in this.

A few months ago, I bought a widescreen tv. I thought it would be the next day before they would deliver it, but no, they said they would deliver it at 4.00 pm. The time they told me this? 3.15 pm! As a result, I had to hurry back to my condo to ensure that I was there when they arrived. It was actually 4.15 when they arrived, but they set it up for me and ensured that it was working before they left. They also removed my old tv, which they either sold or is now sitting in one of their living rooms. I was just happy to get rid of it.

Imagine such service in the UK!

Alan

I think that one of the reasons service is so much better in other countries, and particularly other cultures, is that people are proud of having a job, and proud of doing it well. Sadly, we have developed such a negative view of work (well, that might be sorted out!), and take so much for granted. It's the same with education - it's highly valued in other cultures, from the youngest to the oldest, but here? Everything is 'boring', especially with a lot of teens. We need to start valuing just how much we have here.

I always try to chat to the checkout people in my local TESCO and call them by their name (thats why they have nametags!) and I always find that next time I come, they are friendly. Same when asking staff where things are or if they can reach something for me, I am always apologetic and thankful. I find compliments help: 'youre tall and handsome can you reach that for me?'
I think a lot of staff are used to grumpy people and so are grumpy or rude back, so people need to be less grumpy.
Patience is also a virtue we are starting to lack, we think life should be busy busy busy and that we have no time for anything, relax. How many people that send food back when its cold compliment EVERY time it is good?

I don't need people to reach things for me in Tesco, I just climb up the shelves...

I bought a dress at a well-known retailer recently. The first time I wore it was for a wedding and of course it was a rather formal occassion and I had to look my fabulous best!

Well, when I sat down in the church pew there was a terrible tearing noise as one of the side seams failed. Before you assume it was a tight fit - it most certainly was not! I am quite a big girl but the the dress was a size 16 and was a perfectly comfortable fit.

No - the seam had just catastophically failed with the thin chiffon revealing a gaping opening, revealing my bra and slip underneath. I was mortified and had to hold the dress together for the entire service. I dreaded having to stand up at the end for fear that the whole dress would come apart leaving me standing in the church in my underwear. Anyway, grasping tightly on to the open seam, I rushed from the church at the end of the service and made my escape. I was in floods of tears but not for the reason I usually cry at weddings.

Fortunately the wedding was not far from a good selection of shops. I quickly found a replacement dress (pink silk - very pretty but rather expensive)and made it back in time to have my photograph taken (I forgot to mention that I was one of the bridesmaids). Everyone thought I was being a bit of a prima donna with my wardrobe changes (little did they know).

Anyway, I recounted thie whole sorry story to the store where I bought the original dress (actually it was Monsoon if you you must know). They were fabulous. Not only did they refund me the cost of the original dres but they refunded me the cost of the replacement dress too. I'm sure they didn't have to legally, but they showed really good customer service. I think my crazy story about revealing my underwear in church probably helped get them on side. Anyway three cheers for Monsoon - I shall always buy my posh frocks from your stores in future.

What gets me about some shops is when their merchandise has obviously been dodgy and the say that you have choice of swapping it for something new or a credit note. This happened to me in a Mr Shoes store, when because I had a rather tiring day at work and didn't have the enegy to argue with the assistant I accepted a credit note for shoes that has split after wearing them once. And lo and behold what happened - the store went into receivership 2 weeks later. Last time I ever do that!

There are two factors which influence customer service in any environment.

Firstly, there is the attitude of the company directors which is unwittingly passed down through the chain of command.

Secondly, there is the attitude of the customer. This encompasses the complete range of personality from the very good to the appaling. Unfortunately appaling treatment by a customer can often leaving staff fuming without being able to respond. In practice it may take some time for a lowly staff member to recover from this treatment and their response to subsequent customers may leave much to be desired. I work on the front line and know just how tough this can be. You should try it some time. Fortunately about 50% of customers are great to talk to and are very understanding of the problems we face. I love them and I want them to come back again. They really make my day.

P.S. I have a problem with spelling

Should a seen my meat steak, thing is why should people give a shit because the Americans don't.  My steak's a meaty feast for shovin' a treat, the telephone sales organisation lie, the retail sector lies, the most well paid are paid to lie, polititians don't offer the truth and so why should the lowest paid offer good service?  Perhaps you're complaining because you don't like the way we live and perhaps you let the meal go cold. 

Customer Service in the UK is a mixed bag in my experience - it is not ALL bad, it just feels that way.

Most of my experiences of customer service are negative ones and there is a long list - which I wont bore you with.

The most notably apalling have been BT - they are outstandingly poor - they should win an award for it they are that skilled. It actually drove me to tears (of anger and frustration) on one ocassion!

I sit on the phone throughout the day, offering the best possible service to some wonderful, deserving people.  I also offer the same service to a much larger group of complete and total idiots.

Call Centres are actually a wonderful place to experience this, if not to actually work. Our society has a general amonisity towards my profession at the best of times, and combined with a lack of physical presence this bestows some people the freedom to act like children.  I can't count the number of times I've been shouted at because I wouldn't say what someone wanted to hear, regardless of the reason.

1 - you called me, no I will not call you back, would you make Tesco's drag itself to your house so that you can save the petrol?

2 - if I can't give you what you want it's not because I'm a terrible person, it's because you want something that I can not give you.

3 - how is it my fault that you dialled the wrong number?