Home phone News

Ofcom reveals home phone customer satisfaction levels

Friday 25 November, 2011

By Anthony Hill

How good is your landline provider’s customer service?

Many of us are still unhappy with the customer service of home telephone companies.

According to new Ofcom research, satisfaction with complaint handling by landline providers is just 61% overall.

The watchdog surveyed 3,000 UK consumers and asked them to rate their experience if they had contacted their supplier in the previous three months. Most people’s reason for getting in touch was to change their package or service.

Consumer group director Claudio Pollack said: “Ofcom hopes this research will incentivise providers to improve all aspects of their customer service, as well as giving consumers valuable information about the standards of customer service when choosing a provider.”

Satisfaction with Sky’s customer service was considerably better than most, with subscribers especially pleased that advisers had taken their complaints seriously. Respondents said staff were “willing to help” and offered goodwill payments as compensation.

While overall satisfaction remains below average, complaint handling at TalkTalk was found to have improved by 22 percentage points since February 2011, with ratings increasing across most areas of customer service.

Virgin Media’s home telephone customers were also less satisfied than average. Since February, a growing number of issues have been dissatisfactorily resolved and - possibly as a result - customer loyalty has dropped.

For landlines with BT, Sky and TalkTalk, customer service ratings have generally improved over the past two years.

A recent Ofcom report showed that, despite most people now owning a mobile, we still use our home telephone to make over 20 billion calls each year. In fact, the average UK household spends five hours a month using a landline.