Customer service in Ireland is getting worse with nearly half the top 150 brands performing poorly last year, with Aer Lingus nosediving and Ticketmaster paying for high-priced, hard-to-get tickets.
After two years of rising scores, Ireland’s Customer Experience (CX) score fell by 1.9 per cent with 42 per cent of companies’ overall scores falling, the annual CXi survey of Irish brands published on Tuesday suggests.
The report ranks brands based on consumer experiences and while its 10th edition recorded strong performances by supermarkets and pharmacies, the standout performer was the Credit Union Movement.
It topped the survey for the 10th consecutive year, an unheard of achievement across global CX league tables, the author of the report, Michael Killeen, said, adding that the credit unions’ formula for success was simple – “members are always put first”.
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Pharmacies made up three of the top 10 with Life Pharmacy in second, McCabes seventh and Hickey’s ninth.
An Post’s mail and parcels division was third while Shannon Airport touched down in the top 10 for the first time, finishing in fourth position. It was also a good year for Dunnes Stores with its supermarket claiming fifth and its broader retail section coming 10th. Specsavers in sixth and Eason in eighth completed the top 10.
The top 30
The bottom 30
KFC recorded the biggest jump up 67 places to 15th while Burger King was the second biggest jumper, moving up 50 places to 53rd.
The biggest fallers were Power City and Aer Lingus with the former plummeting from third to 95th and the latter dropping from 41st to 123rd, still 15 places ahead of Ryanair which was in 138th place.
Aer Lingus’s decline is linked to recent industrial action while Power City’s fall appears connected to a decline in value and staff scores by consumers, the survey, carried out by Amárach Research, suggests.
Eir and RTÉ continued to feel the wrath of customers along with brands such as Fastway couriers and Irish Water and although Ticketmaster climbed four places to 143rd place, it remains rooted to the bottom end of the table alongside last-placed Facebook, Instagram in 147th and Google in 144th.
Customer anger and frustration was clear in the Ticketmaster comments, Mr Killeen said, and he pointed to the high price of tickets for high-profile concerts and its “inability to handle the demand for the tickets”.
He said that “rather than listen to their customers, they continued to use dynamic pricing this year, and this led to the massive controversy we saw around the recent sale of Oasis tickets”.
He expressed the view that if the survey had taken place after the Oasis ticket sale it “would have recorded an even lower score”.
Last year RTÉ tumbled to last place and while it has moved off the bottom it is in 145th position, the lowest performing public sector organisation.
Eir was taken to court by ComReg over its poor customer service this year and Mr Killeen said the case was a major setback when it came to its rank. More broadly, the telecoms sector was the second worst performing category overall, with Virgin Media and Sky joint 139th and Vodafone in 134th, not far ahead of eir.
Gerard O’Neill of Amarách said a post-Covid CX bounce appeared to have fizzled out in the face of new challenges such as the cost-of-living crisis and increased digitalisation.
“While scores are now generally higher than pre-Covid, they are still not back at the levels we recorded in 2017 and we are also seeing a greater degree of ‘CX polarisation’ between the best and worst providers,” he said.
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