The Truth About ‘The Complainers’

Jane Goodayle explains what Channel 4’s The Complainers really tells us about customer service.

In our industry there’s a lot of talk about seamless customer journeys, immersive end-user experiences, and the need to reduce customer effort.

However, Channel 4’s documentary The Complainers shows a different side to the customer service industry: customers who delight in making as much trouble as possible, who complain compulsively, and who aren’t really looking for First Contact Resolution!

The usual response to TV programmes featuring contact centres is for viewers to agree how terrible the customer service industry is, with commenters providing further evidence of how badly we as consumers are treated.

The first episode of The Complainers focused on Transport for London. Trawling through the many tweets featuring the #TheComplainers hashtag, it was interesting just how different the feedback was this time.

People suggested that Transport for London’s customer services team was actually doing an amazing job, that they were sorry for them having to deal with such customers, and there was a general consensus that some people had far too much time on their hands!

For me, The Complainers only confirmed just what a fantastic job staff in customer contact centres do each and every day. Anyone who’s worked in a busy customer service centre will be immediately familiar with the type of consumers who made The Complainers such compelling viewing – and I’m sure we can all privately recall times when we’ve demonstrated similar traits as we struggle to sort things out!

It would be nice to think it doesn’t have to be this way.

I’m convinced that having the right customer contact environment can play a key role in helping staff deliver award-winning levels of service. That of course means looking beyond technology to ensure that organisations have all the right creative skills, expertise and processes in place and working together to make the task as easy as possible for agents.

The Complainers reminds us that there will always be some customers who operate at the borders of reasonable behaviour.

However, after watching all three episodes, the programme also helps you to feel warmer towards the great majority of customers who engage positively, reward excellent service provision with positive NPS scores and continued loyalty, and who quite rightly challenge organisations to deliver still better service.

With thanks to Jane Goodayle, Head of Marketing at Sabio