Vodafone and Virgin customers the most happy with issue resolution

It’s hardly breaking news that we dislike our Telcos and the way they handle our complaints, but a new report by the Australian Communications Consumer Action Network (ACCAN) shows there’s some amazing delays in resolution and gives us some insight into how to get action on our complaints.

On average it takes us 2.6 contacts to get a resolution to our problems – 3 for Telstra customers, which when you’re sitting on the phone would see around three phone transfers before you finally get to the right person on the other end.

We’re having to wait 13 days for a resolution, while Telstra, Belong and Satellite NBN providers Activ8me and Skymesh have numbers much higher than that again.

It’s not a good look.

66% of us seem to phone our telco when we want an issue resolved, but the real news is that you’re better of getting down to the shops and walking into a telco store – that’s the fastest way to get a resolution – as short as 8 days on average and just 1.6 contacts.

Social Media is the next best way to get in touch because that will get you a resolution in just over a couple of weeks.

Online chat, messenger, email are less useful overall.

Don’t be thinking it’s all bad – 58% of customers had their issues sorted on first contact – not bad really, and only 18% of people actually noted they’d had a negative experience with their telco – seems high, and should be lower – but with perspective – not a bad outcome.

The biggest loser is actually Virgin Mobile – they received the highest rating for positive customer service.  With them shutting down, that makes Vodafone our best telco for customer service based on this survey.

Optus, Telstra and their low-cost carrier Belong need to lift their game.

Important to note, this is not Telecommunication Industry Ombudsmen data – this is a survey of just over 1,000 people – so again – perspective folks!