GOOD CUSTOMER SERVICE is HARD to FIND

It seems a shame, but standards of customer service are slipping. Now in my experience the problems usually occur due to the geographical location of the customer support centre. These days, if you have a problem with your Sky TV service, phone service, bank or broadband provider then your phone call is likely to be re-routed to India.

This causes several problems. Firstly, it can be incredibly hard to understand some of these customer service agents. The second issue is nearly all the time the call is a premium rate number. I am not a fan of this, because I think customer service phone numbers should be free phone or local rate numbers. Anyone that has called one of these call centres, will know how frustrating it can be especially when you can never talk to the same person twice.

Recently I had some personal experience on how difficult dealing with customer service in this country can be. My problems started when I switched to a new broadband provider. First of all I was sent the wrong router. That situation was rectified and the correct router was sent out. However, that was not the end of my problems because the new router's signal was not reaching to a particular room in my house.

Obviously my next step was to call back the customer support line. At which point I was asked to do various things such as change router settings and update the driver for my wireless card. Of course neither of these things made any difference. In the end I was told the only way to get it working would be via a wired connection.

As a last resort I went online in search of a solution to my problem. Fortunately, I discovered something which I thought may solve my problem known as a Homeplug. However, I needed to find more so I went down to my nearest PC World, and after quizzing the sales assistant discovered the Homeplug was exactly what I needed.

Fortunately, for me my story had a happy ending, but I still maintain that customer service has room for improvement. The first suggestion, I would like to make is for more companies to provide a UK based customer support centre. Secondly, I would like to see local or free phone numbers to call these support centres.

Despite what I have said here not all customer service is Poor. Recently, I purchased an item from a British company and received it the next day. This is despite being offered free shipping. I was very impressed with this service.