Consumers hit back at 'stupid' businesses
A report by the National Consumer Council has criticised British businesses for their 'shoddy' customer service. 'The Stupid Company: how British businesses throw away money by alienating customers' looks at the key customer service peeves of consumers, which include robotic call centres, false promises, poor after-sales service and the hard-sell approach.
NCC chief exec and author of the report, Philip Cullum, claims that widespread poor customer service performance is creating a phenomenon known as 'service rage', in which angry customers boycott firms from which they have received bad service. Larger firms are the main culprits, says the report, and financial services, telecoms, utilities, eletrical retailers and garages are among the industries customers love to hate.
Mr Cullum goes on to claim:
"The scale of company ineptitude must amount to many billions of pounds of lost profits. This isn’t just bad news for companies, it damages our economy."
With more than 800,000 complaints made to the NCC each year from disgruntled consumers, largely about large, faceless companies, this could represent an excellent opportunity for small firms to cash in on the extra personal touch that they can offer their customers.
