TIO Annual Report 2006/07

Customer Service

This year a new category of Complaint Handling was introduced. Many complaints which were logged under Customer Service are now logged under Complaint Handling, resulting in a reduction in the number of customer service complaints. Nevertheless, complaints about customer service issues remained high at 27,048, or 17.2 per cent of all complaints. Because of changes to the complaint keywords it is not possible to compare all categories of customer service complaints with previous years.

A new sub-category known as “Unable to Contact” has been introduced to capture complaints where the customer has claimed to be unable to contact their supplier because the supplier’s phone line was constantly engaged or disconnected, or the supplier failed to respond to or acknowledge e-mails.

Internet

Internet customer service complaints rose by just over half from 7,059 to 10,965, contrasting with falls in landline and mobile services. Internet suppliers failing to provide a reasonable level of customer service was the third-highest cause of complaint after mobile Billing and Payments and landline Billing and Payments. Of the 10,965 customer service complaints, 4,696 (42.8 per cent) were about one company.

Landline

Complaints about poor customer service for landline services decreased significantly from 13,106 in 2006 to 7,950 in 2006/07. A major cause of the decrease is that, in previous years, Complaint Handling issues were recorded as Customer Service complaints. These complaints now have a separate category, “Complaint Handling”. This year the combined total for the landline Complaint Handling and Customer Service categories was 16,489 complaints.

Mobile

Mobile customer service complaints fell from 13,740 in 2005/06 to 8,133 in 2006/07. As with landline and internet complaints, many complaints previously recorded under customer service issues are now being registered in the “Complaint Handling” category.

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