Consumer magazine Which? has today written to the CEOs of Virgin Media (O2), Scottish Power and British Gas in the hope of “urging them to improve their customer service“, which comes after a survey conducted by the magazine found all three to be the “worst broadband and energy firms for customer service.”
According to the Yonder survey of 4,101 nationally representative adults, which was conducted in May 2024 with the aim of identifying the worst firms for customer service and where they are falling short – consumers in the UK are “most satisfied” with financial services for overall customer service, which leads with a net satisfaction score of +72. But energy and broadband is a bit.. different.
By comparison, energy and broadband remained two of the worst performing sectors for customer service – with net satisfaction in customer service interactions in energy and broadband at +51 and +52 respectively. Sadly, Virgin Media was crowned the “worst performing broadband firm” – receiving +29 for overall customer service, which is well below the sector average of +52.
The survey itself asked respondents about several aspects of customer service, including how long it took to get in touch with someone who could help, the variety of contact options available, how seriously the customer service representative took an issue and how well the issue was resolved.
Sadly, Virgin Media received “dismal scores” across the board – scoring just +18 for how long it took to get in touch with someone who could help and +38 for both how well customers’ issues were dealt with and how well queries were resolved. By comparison, Plusnet appeared to do somewhat better in the survey, although annoyingly Which? didn’t include any results from the other major ISPs.
Some 50% of Virgin’s customers also experienced at least one customer service issue – most commonly waiting a long time on the phone to speak to an advisor (51%), being passed between departments without a helpful response (36%) and speaking to unhelpful or dismissive advisors (34%).
Rocio Concha, Which? Director of Policy and Advocacy, said:
“Our research lays bare the dire state of customer service – with some companies simply not up to scratch.
Virgin Media, Scottish Power and British Gas remained the worst performing broadband and energy firms for customer service. It is never OK for firms to provide sub-standard customer service, but in essential sectors providing vital services millions rely on every day such as energy and broadband, it is completely unacceptable.
We have written to all three firms about their consistently poor performance in our research. Which? is calling on them to give consumers the customer service they deserve and clearly communicate the steps they are taking to improve.”
The fact that Virgin Media has done so poorly in this survey probably won’t come as too much of a surprise to ISPreview’s readers. Ofcom’s separate Q4 2023 consumer complaints study (here) similarly found that the provider managed to attract the most gripes for broadband, phone and pay TV services (O2 also did the same for mobile).
In addition, Ofcom also have a number of investigations open with the provider, such as their probe into problems with customer cancellations (here) and digital phone migrations (here).
A Virgin Media spokesperson said:
“We are making real changes across our business to deliver customer service improvements and we’re already seeing tangible results that wouldn’t be reflected in this old survey from Which? that, incidentally, represents less than 0.01% of our customer base.
We have boosted the number of agents, including in specialist teams that handle the most complex issues, and are investing more money in customer-facing areas of the business. We’re also multi-skilling our teams, transforming our IT systems and improving our digital tools, including through new technology that will solve customers’ issues even before they report a fault.
While change can take time, this programme of targeted investment has already seen us reduce average call waiting times to just two minutes, and last year 95% of customer complaints were resolved first time. We’re continuing to focus on removing pain points and delivering the best possible service to our customers.”
Suffice to say that the provider is in danger of establishing a negative reputation within the market, which is something that can be very difficult to unpick once such experiences become ingrained within the consumer subconscious (TalkTalk has had similar challenges in the past). But it is good to see that the provider has been making practical improvements on this front. Hopefully we’ll see this effort being reflected in future surveys.