Online Shopping Firms Most Complained About Service

Delivery companies also drew the ire of their customers

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Online Shopping Firms Most Complained About Service
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Published: May 21, 2021

William Smith

Online shopping firms were the most complained about services during the last year. 

That’s according to data from UK-based issue resolution service Resolver, which tallied the 90 most complained about areas over the last year, amounting to nearly 900,000 complaints total. 

Issues with Delivery 

In a pandemic-hit year, it was natural for online shopping to take the top spot owing to the massive transition to eCommerce as physical shops were forced to close. Complaints were duly up by 137.8% on the previous year, reaching 267,141 – dwarfing second-place entrant delivery services on 91,906. That was driven mainly by complaints about delivery and collection issues. 

“The pandemic has changed life for everyone and its impact on our behaviour, how we live and how we engage with services is here to stay,” said Resolver’s Chief Executive, Alex Neill. “Given the upheaval, it’s extraordinary that complaints remain at record levels – and it’s worrying that the things people sought help with have transformed too, involving increasingly serious issues.” 

Interestingly, services and areas subject to regulation such as banking, energy and broadband saw complaint volumes fall, highlighting the utility of effective customer experience solutions such as efficient contact centres. 

“Looking back over the last year, we can see that people showed remarkable patience and restraint when faced with the challenges of lockdown. Only immediate problems like refunds for holidays and flights drove the initial surge in complaints,” said Alex Neill.  

“But as the year wore on, we saw patience turn to frustration across numerous sectors. Hundreds of thousands of people began to struggle as some businesses stopped playing by the rules and started making it much harder to contact them to complain.” 

Automation the Solution? 

With rising volumes of customer inquiries in many industries, companies are having to adapt in order to keep customers on their side. One trend we’ve seen repeatedly is automation, as with the use of AI to coach customer service agents in real-time. Such technologies will continue to be vital even as immediate problems caused by the pandemic gradually recede. 

 

 

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