Jayne Dowle: The lost art of customer service

If the events of the past few months in our house are anything to go by, it has disappeared and been replaced with a sullen, unhelpful attitude from those we are paying to provide services and help us fix our problems.

I’ve told you before about how BT managed to cut off my broadband and change my home phone number without warning. It got worse.

On the day which will now be forever known as Black Saturday, my mobile phone inexplicably died too.

Then, two days before Christmas, when all the family were about to descend for the festivities, the shower pump packed in.

At the same time, the diesel pump on the car started leaking. And because we didn’t have quite enough stress to deal with, my daughter’s laptop developed a serious and mysterious virus.

Oh, and our cat got his leg caught, dislocating his hip and breaking all his toes. He ended up having to have it amputated at a specialist pet orthopaedic hospital in Leeds.

And then – because it got even worse – all the plug sockets in the house fused. Not once, but twice.

Then people wonder why I’m obsessed with insuring and protecting everything that lives, breathes, ticks and whirrs in the house. In my experience, everything that can go wrong will go wrong, probably all at once. And when it does, I expect customer service to be there to help to put it right.

I have to say though, with a few honourable exceptions, I have been terribly let down during my recent troubles. I’m not surprised to read this new report from the Competition and Markets Authority, which says that loyal customers are usually treated worse than new ones by energy companies. They miss out on the tempting introductory offers and deals, and generally get forgotten in the rush to secure new business.

When something goes wrong, the fact that we have been signed up for decades means nothing. In fact, judging by the contemptuous tone by which I’ve been addressed, loyalty is something to be pitied not admired.

I don’t know whether I’m getting old or what, but Age UK and myself are as one on this. The charity says that it’s not only energy companies, but banks, broadband companies, and insurance companies treating loyal customers like dirt.

Take my mobile phone, for example. I wish someone would. Anyway, my company, Vodafone, certainly won’t take it back or let me swap it, even though it’s a make which is on its way to being obsolete. The shiny shop-fronts you see in every shopping mall don’t even stock it any more.

Meanwhile, I’m locked into a contract which doesn’t expire until March next year, and despite my pleas, there is no way I can get out of it. The fact that I have been with this same company since 1996, when most of the staff in those shiny shops weren’t even born, means nothing. Yet, if I was a new customer, I would be welcomed in and offered the latest iPhone for a few pounds a month.

It’s the same with the AA, I’m afraid. They were very good at rescuing me that stormy night when the diesel pump finally packed up. In fact, I’ve been so impressed with their exemplary service in this area that I also took out a home insurance and home maintenance contract with them too last year. The latter might sound like something of a luxury, but it’s a necessity – believe me – in an old and unpredictable house.

For a reasonable monthly premium I’m promised 24/7 emergency cover for electricity, plumbing and so on. Turns out though that my definition of “emergency” and theirs differs radically.

We were left without working sockets for almost a full day, because they had to send an engineer from Skipton to Barnsley, a journey of about 50 miles. Twice. The first time he came, he failed to identify the fault, so it happened again and he had to return. And we’ve still not had so much as an apology, never mind any form of compensation. So much for loyalty, again.

I’ve learnt two things from these bruising experiences. Not only that loyalty means nothing, but that too many of these companies promise so much then fail to deliver. As the marketplace becomes ever more competitive, these promises become ever more wild.

What we end up with is a serious mis-match between customer expectation and commercial pressures. No wonder we customers are left high and dry, feeling cheated and disappointed. And what’s worse, they persuade us to stay with them year after year and trust them, only to let us down when we need them most. We wouldn’t put up with this behaviour from a friend. Why should we put up with it from companies making money out of our misfortunes?