Customer Service

How we rate customer service varies from person to person – what one customer finds acceptable, another will not.

But it it can be very frustrating if our expectations aren’t met.

Good practice means that all companies should strive to offer customers a good quality service.

And when things go wrong, they should act to put things right as quickly as possible.

What you can do

If you experience poor customer service, you should highlight this to the company concerned.

All communication providers are required to have a Code of Practice (CoP) on how they deal with customer complaints. Details of this should be available through their website or customer services.

If you follow their complaints procedure, the chances are any problems will be resolved.

If you exhaust this process and remain unhappy, or if your complaint has been ongoing for more than 8 weeks, you may be able to approach an Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) scheme.

At the moment Ofcom has approved two ADR schemes – CISAS and Ombudsman Services: Communications.

Your phone company will tell you which scheme it is a member of, or you can use our ADR checker.

This process is only available for residential and small business customers (with 10 or less employees); if you are a larger business, you will need to consider alternative options such as legal advice.

Watch our video guide to telecoms complaints

Related issues:

Compensation

ParentPort: Working together for media standards