Indian call centre closure sees TalkTalk top broadband complaints league

TalkTalk's attempts to repair its poor reputation for customer service have suffered a blow after it topped the telecoms watchdog's table of broadband complaints between July and September last year. 

Complaints about the company's broadband service reached the highest level in 18 months as it shut down call centres in India following accusations employees were scamming customers.

TalkTalk grew suspicious in 2014 that workers were stealing customer details to convince them to hand over personal banking information. After concluding an investigation, TalkTalk said it withdrew all customer service operations this summer.

On Friday it claimed that this had caused "temporary disruption" to its customer care process, and was responsible for the rise in complaints to Ofcom.

"That move, and a radical shift to self serve is already delivering a material improvement in customer satisfaction and we expect complaint data for 2018 to reduce significantly," a spokesman said.

TalkTalk has been haunted by a reputation for poor customer service since buying Tiscali UK in 2009. Until the latest set of data, customer satisfaction had appeared to be improving,  dropping to second place for broadband complaints between April and June last year.

Ofcom's latest data takes into account the number of customer complaints it has received and found that TalkTalk generated the highest volume per 100,000 customers. 

Faults, service and provision issues were the main point of contention, followed by complaints handling and billing, prices and charging, an Ofcom report revealed.

Plusnet and BT took second and third spot in the broadband complaints league, respectively. Sky generated the lowest volume of complaints per 100,000 customers. 

"We’re shining a light on how different providers perform, and it’s clear many need to up their game on service quality and complaints handling," Jane Rumble, Ofcom’s Director of Consumer Policy, said.

"People expect high standards from their providers, and companies must put their customers first.”

There was a slight increase in the total number of complaints for landline and pay-TV services between Q2 and Q3 in 2017 and overall, broadband and pay-monthly mobile complaints figures remained steady.

Broadband and landline services continued to generate the highest volume of complaints. Ofcom said it receives nearly 250 customer calls, emails or letters a day, typically after a consumer has been unable to resolve an issue with their provider to their satisfaction. 

If a complaint is not resolved within eight weeks, a consumer can apply to the independent Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) scheme. The ADR scheme can examine the complaint and make a judgement, which companies registered to the scheme must consider.