RACHEL RICKARD STRAUS: Beaten down by BT’s woeful customer service

BT beat me. The final scores are in and it’s BT: 1 – Rachel: Zero.

In February, I called the telecom giant to make some simple changes to my account.

But I spent over four annoying hours on the phone with customer service over the next two weeks trying to sort it out.

BT staff promised to call me back – and didn’t. I waited at home for the equipment to arrive – it didn’t. I was promised compensation – it never arrived.

Then earlier this month I got an email saying my complaint had been resolved and closed.

It is most certainly not resolved. But BT has worn me out. I normally thrive on standing up for the consumer. Making sure companies treat their customers fairly is what gets me out of bed in the morning.

But I can’t bear to spend any more time fighting BT. Just thinking about it makes me cook. I give up.

So I was shocked to see BT’s announcement last week that it plans to replace more than 10,000 customer service jobs with technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI).

Judging by my experience, they need more staff – not less.

BT isn’t the only company that thinks it can improve customer service by using more robots. As a result, hundreds of thousands of customer service positions are likely to disappear this decade.

But automation and AI have already taken over parts of customer service in recent years. Has it gotten better? No chance.

Phone and broadband customers waited longer to speak to their provider last year than in 2021, data from regulator Ofcom showed last week.

Only half of the mobile, broadband and fixed customers who submitted a complaint to their provider last year were satisfied with how it was handled.

Energy suppliers are no better. E.On Next, Good Energy and Octopus Energy were forced to pay £8 million in compensation to customers after huge delays in preparing final bills when they switched suppliers, the regulator Ofgem said last week.

Customer service at NS&I is confused as we reported on these pages. The DWP sometimes spends months solving AOW errors.

Even investment platform Hargreaves Lansdown is reportedly upsetting some customers by introducing automation to its once excellent phone customer service.

I don’t know anyone who thinks their life has been improved by being able to interact with a chatbot. If this is the state of customer service in the UK right now, I can’t imagine what it will be like when the next wave of AI hits.

Be polite to the staff

I really feel sorry for anyone being shown around a company. But I feel little sorry for the reader whose case Money Mail consumer champion Sally Hamilton investigated this week.

There’s no excuse for being rude to customer service staff. Their jobs may eventually be taken over by AI, but the workforce is not yet a robot.

Time well spent

Last week I asked what money lessons you wish you had learned in school. Many of you, like me, don’t remember receiving one.

Fortunately, 72-year-old Norfolk reader Patricia Finch learned personal finance lessons from her father, which she believes all children should learn in school.

“My father advised me that if I received my first paycheck in a brown envelope as cash, I should make a list of payments such as travel, lunches, and expenses before thinking about clothes or luxuries, to make sure I the week,” she says.

Patricia has also successfully taught these lessons to her own children, although some had to learn the hard way.

Reader Kay says that when she was growing up in the 1960s, money was not discussed at home or at school.

She was able to pick up on how to prioritize expenses on her own. “I wanted to have my own house, so I worked three jobs,” she says.

“But I think personal finance should be taught in schools. We are all born with different strengths, but financial awareness is so important to all of us.” Hear hear.

P.S..

I just called BT to reopen the complaint. How can it improve if I let it get away with bad customer service? Looks like we’re going into extra time after all. Wish me luck.

r.rickardstraus@dailymail.co.uk