CorpComms Magazine

More than two thirds of homeowners think that customer service in Britain has either stayed the same or worsened over the past three years, according to a recent survey by YouGov.

More than one fifth of those surveyed believed that customer service had improved over the past three years, if only a little, while just three percent believed that it had improved a lot.

Almost half of respondents cited impolite staff as the most common reason for poor customer service while 19 per cent believed that the inability of staff to fix a customer's problem was a key reason.

Over the Christmas period, more than two fifths of homeowners rated customer service they received as good, while almost a third rated it average. In London, just five per cent rated the customer service they received as very good, compared to the national average which came out at 11 per cent.

Jonathan Chevallier, strategic development director at Cognito, the company who commissioned the survey, said: 'An organisation's service has a real impact on their brand and market share, so boardrooms should start recognising this as an opportunity and that the first place to start is by focusing on service performance management... In these times of economic uncertainty, there will be a polarisation of approach: those that invest to improve service and efficiency and those that slash costs. We expect those that invest to be the overall winners in the long term.'

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