Ryanair voted worst for customer service in UK

LONDON, England – No frills airline Ryanair has been voted as having the worst customer service out of Britain’s 100 biggest brands.

LONDON, England – No frills airline Ryanair has been voted as having the worst customer service out of Britain’s 100 biggest brands.

A league table compiled by consumer champion Which? saw energy giant Npower and phone provider Talk Talk jointly limp into second-last place.

All were given a customer satisfaction rating and judged out of five stars in three categories – knowledge, staff attitude and dealing with issues.

Ryanair was rated lowest, at 54 per cent, and given two stars in each category.

Npower and Talk Talk’s customer satisfaction levels were 5 per cent higher than Ryanair, and apart from Npower’s three-star rating for knowledgeable staff, all other categories were rated two-star.

Cosmetics firm Lush came top with five stars for all three categories, and a customer rating of 88 per cent, just ahead of shopping chain Lakeland.

Then came John Lewis, First Direct, RAC, Waitrose and Amazon. The best supermarket was Waitrose, ahead of Sainsbury’s, Marks and Spencer and Asda.

Richard Dilks, Which? policy adviser, said: ‘Outstanding service can leave you feeling positive, valued and likely to want to repeat the experience.

‘Terrible customer service can leave you feeling stressed, frustrated, angry and, in many cases, never wanting that experience again.’

Many brands that fail to impress are guilty of the top-ten customer service irritations compiled by Which?, including automated telephone systems, staff trying to sell you products you do not want, being passed around and annoying ‘hold’ music.

Then came long queues, rude staff, standard responses to problems and staff lacking knowledge of their products or services.

Eight out of ten of the 3,331 people polled said friendly, helpful, knowledgeable staff and a quick resolution of problems are very influential when deciding which companies to use, with 86 per cent claiming they would leave a brand that treated them poorly.

Four in ten would be happy to pay more for a brand that delivered better customer service.

The no frills airline brushed off the Which? rating.

A spokesman said: ‘In August, we had less than one complaint per 1,000 passengers and 99 per cent of them were answered within seven days.

‘Our customer service statistics speak for themselves.’

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Linda Hohnholz

Editor in chief for eTurboNews based in the eTN HQ.

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