Aer Lingus's customer service is under scrutiny, but how do other firms respond to complaints? Armed with fake gripes, Conor Pope gets dialling
A query from an Aer Lingus passenger about a ticket refund due following a family bereavement remains unanswered five months after being submitted. Another customer with a gripe over prices has seen her complaint ignored for three months.
Aer Lingus's failure to respond adequately to such queries has attracted the attention of the Office of the Director of Consumer Affairs (ODCA). Earlier this week the ODCA confirmed it had repeatedly sent inspectors to Aer Lingus headquarters after unsuccessful attempts to contact its customer service department.
When contacted by The Irish Times this week the airline accepted there was a problem and said it was "currently implementing a new system and new procedures" for handling customer complaints "with greater speed". It promised "to have the backlog cleared by the first week in May" after which a new system should cut response times to 10 days.
Director of Consumer Affairs John Shine welcomed the airline's commitment to improving reaction rates. He said while many issues the ODCA has with Aer Lingus are responded to quickly, chasing up its customer service department has been a waste of resources. "We would look forward to timely responses from now on," he said. "It is not the best use of our resources to be following up on correspondence like this." But is the problem unique to Aer Lingus? Armed with bogus complaints, we anonymously contacted a number of companies' customer service departments this week to assess their performance. The results were mixed.
WE CALL THE baggage queries number at Ryanair to complain about a damaged suitcase. The phone is answered by an efficient-sounding woman after two rings. She can't help but provides a name and fax number at the airline's headquarters. We fax in details but, as Ryanair makes clear, we shouldn't expect a response for seven working days.
We then contact Irish Rail about a (very real) problem of overcrowding on a weekend train to Galway. We can't find a telephone number on the website but the customer service page invites us to e-mail our complaint. "Thank you for your e-mail, while not all e-mails will receive an individual response, we do note all comments received . . . your comments will be recorded and acted upon where necessary." That's the last we hear about it.
Undeterred, we telephone the company but are told that verbal complaints can't be made. A form detailing our gripe must be sent in along with our train ticket. It will be acknowledged within 15 working days, we're told.
With Dublin Bus we want to complain about a bus that didn't stop for us. When we phone we're greeted by an automated answering service and the wait begins. After 26 minutes the phone's still ringing with not so much as a few bars of Greensleeves to break the monotony.
We try again and our call is answered immediately. Details of the complaint are taken and we're told it will be forwarded to the relevant depot to be investigated further. Impressively, the "investigation" will include the use of CCTV footage taken from on-board cameras. It's hard to believe Dublin Bus will be so thorough about something so trivial but, just in case, we come clean and save them the bother.
Our fake complaint to Tesco centres around a failure to honour a special offer on orange juice. We phone a central customer service number and are directed to the store in question. "Just bring the receipt back, they'll be able to help you straight away." Not good enough, we say, getting back there will be difficult. Without any prompting the agent offers to post us the refund. There is, she says, no need to return the juice. The following day Tesco replies to an e-mail we sent. The response is hazy on the specifics of our complaint and the customer service agent apologises because our "products did not seem to work correctly". But who cares if it was automatically generated - a refund offer is a refund offer.
THE CABLE AND satellite TV companies don't have a great customer service reputation so we were surprised by the efficiency they displayed. On the NTL website, we fill in a form complaining about intermittent service. Less than 24 hours later a customer service agent responds. It is clear she has investigated the specifics of the complaint and offers a number of solutions. We also call the helpline and, while we're on hold for eight minutes, we eventually get to speak to a customer service agent who would have been able to address the problem, had it existed.
It is even better with Sky. We send an e-mail about patchy reception and get a response from a real person within six hours. Sky are equally efficient over the phone and our call is answered almost immediately by someone who can address some technical issues on the spot.
Anecdotally, Eircom's customer service probably comes in for more stick than any other so we're surprised when we ring with a complaint about bill errors to see it dealt with fast and efficiently. So surprised, in fact, that we try again. This time we complain about a crackle on our line. Within a minute we're connected to the faults department who check the line and find nothing wrong.
To check such efficiency isn't just a fluke, we ring back to complain about Eircom's high line rental and other charges. Calmly an operator takes us through the charges and explains that there's "no system in place" to lodge an official complaint about our bill because there are no errors on it. Politely, he says there are plenty of bills he's unhappy with and suggests we direct our complaint about high fees to the Ombudsman.