A new survey of 4,101 nationally representative UK adults, which was conducted by Which? in May 2024, has estimated that 950,000 consumers were £89m worse off over the last year due to giving up contacting their broadband provider after a poor experience. The magazine previously named Virgin Media as being the worst ISP for customer service (here and here).
The survey, which claims that an estimated 9.2 million broadband consumers also experienced emotional harm as a result of poor customer service, found that 14% who contacted their ISP said they gave up seeking a resolution due to problems they experienced with the customer service and 29% said that this left them financially worse off (on average they estimated they were £93 worse off as a result, which is quite anecdotal).
A small proportion of consumers (c.2%) said they did not even contact their broadband provider due to previous bad experiences with their customer service, which the consumer magazine said added an additional £6m to consumers being worse off due to poor customer service in the broadband sector.
Summary of Further Survey Findings
➤ Some 36% of people who contacted their broadband provider reported having at least one problem that wasted their time (e.g. not being able to reach customer service, phone calls being disconnected, being passed between departments and long call waits).
➤ On average, Which? estimates those who experienced time-wasting customer service issues lost 1 hour 38 minutes of their time due to broadband customer service problems.
➤ Which? estimates that consumers experienced time harm in 18.3 million customer service problems with their broadband provider in the past year.
➤ In total, broadband customers spent an estimated 13.4 million hours in a year on customer service issues.
➤ Some 57% of respondents that experienced at least one broadband related customer service problem reported feeling frustrated, while 29% said they felt angry and 19% reported feeling helpless.
➤ More than one in ten of those who had experienced a customer service problem reported feeling upset or distressed. Feelings of helplessness and “upsetness” were most commonly reported amongst customers who did not receive a response to their email (43% feeling helpless and 41% upset) or spoke to an unhelpful or dismissive advisor (38% helpless and 33% upset).
Clearly, there’s a general need for broadband providers to improve their customer support. Such firms must ideally be providing a range of easily accessible contact methods, while problems should be resolved in a timely and efficient way, and customers should be treated with empathy and care. But it’s clear that many businesses are failing to deliver against this most basic of criteria.
However, experiences do tend to vary quite a lot between different ISPs, which is something that the consumer magazine has previously covered (here and here). Earlier this year Which? named Virgin Media, Scottish Power and British Gas as the worst energy and broadband firms for customer service. Both British Gas and Virgin Media responded to that by saying they were making improvements, but Which? highlights how their research shows many of their customers remain dissatisfied.