Top 10 Companies With the Most Customer Service Complaints on Twitter: AT&T Worst, Apple Sixth
We analyzed thousands of customer service complaints on Twitter (from 13 Aug 2010 to 16 Aug 2010), to find out which corporations caused the most frustration.
Data was first collected from the Twitter Search API, using a search for “customer service” together with any one of: fail, sucks, worst, poor, bad, terrible or awful. Tweets that included links were filtered out, as were re-tweets, to maximize the likelihood of personal experiences and reduce tweets about articles or stories (e.g. Jet Blue, Santander and O2 customer service stories were prevalent over the survey period).
The extracted tweets were placed into an Excel spreadsheet and manually verified over the course of a day, to check the validity of the complaints (i.e. to ensure that tweets like “I’ve never received bad customer service from X” weren’t included), and to extract the correct names of corporations (i.e. some people use the full company name, others use Twitter usernames, hash-tags, or abbreviations). Where described in the tweet, we also recorded the cause of the frustration, e.g. slow service or rudeness.
Over 500 unique businesses were mentioned, including many local stores and services. The winner (or, rather, loser) is undoubtedly AT&T, whose customer service complaints occupy over 5% of the total volume of our survey. In fact, the telecommunications industry receives the most complaints, as is evident from the top 10 graph (companies 11 and 12, not shown, are also in this industry: Vodafone and Rogers). Perhaps ironically, there seem to be as many “I’ve had enough of AT&T customer service, I’m switching to Verizon” tweets as “I’ve had enough of Verizon customer service and am switching to AT&T“. As consumers, we just can’t seem to win.
Apple, the largest US company in the top 10, rank sixth, with the majority of complaints about in-store customer service.
The reason for the customer service complaint was evident in 22% of the survey tweets; we divided these into seven categories:
- Slow. Approximately 40% of the complaint-reasons mentioned wait times, being put on hold, or otherwise having a difficult time reaching the relevant people.
- Rude. 17% thought that the customer service representative had been rude to them.
- Money. 12% mentioned a financial reason for the poor customer service, usually hidden charges or a refusal to reimburse.
- Care. 11% felt that the customer service rep didn’t care about their problem.
- Clueless. 10% thought that the service was incompetent or lacking in appropriate knowledge.
- Quality. 5% mentioned a product or service quality reason, rather than a specific customer service reason.
- Language. 5% of the complaint-reasons noted a communication problem with the representative, usually referring to outsourced call centers.
Although many of these complaint reasons are undoubtedly caused by cost-savings (slow response, inappropriate training or outsourced support), it is surprising that almost a third of complaints are made because of rude behavior or a feeling that the customer service representative didn’t care – complaints that could probably be avoided with a little grace, tact and minimal financial investment.
If you’ve recently experienced poor customer service, you should add a groubal now. A groubal is a complaint petition – we will fight for the most popular petitions on your behalf, by taking the issue direct to the business and demanding answers.
This guest blog post was written by Dan Zambonini from Content Strategy agency Contentini.
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What we need is a way to account for the total volume of tweets for each company. Obviously the more a company is mentioned, and the more their customers use twitter, the more complaints they will get. You need to look at the ratio of the bad tweets to the neutral or positive ones.
No great surprises there. Mobile service providers employ a wide variety or predatory business practices that drive their customer satisfaction scores down from the jump. Their level of negative presence on Twitter is simply a reflection of their “revolving door” customer (non)retention philosophy.
As businesses like security providers (ADP and the like) and financial service companies adopt more active engagement strategies, they’ll quickly bump the more ubiquitous retailers (who really do care about customer satisfaction) right off this chart.
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Amy,
I’ve been happy with AT&T. They must be leading the pack due to the nature of the business and due to their large number of customers. Wal-Mart is not much of a surprise. Apple is somewhat of a surprise. My family loves Mac’s and we have purchased several-no PC’s since the mid 90′s. They are nearly trouble free from our experience, but that’s good because getting help is a pain in the neck! I suspect that’s why they made the top 10.
Thanks,
Chris
Consider the distinct possibility that a company with a reputation for addressing customer service issues on Twitter will be much more likely to garner larger numbers of Tweets about their company, both good and bad.
It doesn’t make sense to punish a company for being proactive enough to embrace social media in the first place. Robert Bacal’s suggestion to look at the ratio of good Tweets to bad Tweets would help address this.
hey, nice blog…really like it and added to bookmarks. keep up with good work
Apple is named because of the iphone and the connection to ATT. It stands to reason that Apple may have lower numbers if they were only more flexible and prudent in picking partners. It also would then make sense that ATT would be much higher due to the failure to keep the network up to the demand of consumers. I have had Mac’s for 6 years now and never had an issue with support, either via telephone or in the Apple store.
I love my Apple IPhone and the Mac computers we have. Have always been a fan of Apple, but the relationship to AT&T is the problem and when I upgrade my phone I’m stuck with AT&T for another 2 years. I dislike being forced to use AT&T due to all the dropped calls. It is frustrating to conduct business when I can’t make it thru an entire conversation without at least 1 call dropping out when I’m not even moving! Purchased the AT&T cell tower and have noticed NO Improvement.
I’ve had multiple bad experiences with Apple in the past few weeks. Many, many problems with my iPhone 4, all of which have not been resolved, regardless of the fact that they replaced the phone.
Multiple different people have helped me at the “genius bars” and all have been rude, condescending and pretty much unhelpful. Not to mention the countless hours I’ve wasted standing around waiting for someone to help me, for my phone to be “fixed” and so on.
It seems that Apple tells these employees to NEVER, EVER acknowledge the very well known and documented issues associated with the iphone 4. Instead, I’ve been made to feel like I’m the idiot for expecting it to you know, work.
Both my iMac and MacBook Pro are great computers, which I’ve had very little problem with, but it’s their employees and tech people that really bring down my opinion of Apple.
On several occasions, I have waited at the Apple store in Chicago to get customer service so that I could buy presents for family or friends. Every instance, daytime or evening, I have been unable to get a representative and have ended up leaving. Given, Chicago is a major city but you’d think they’d beef up the staff a bit to meet demand. One time, I showed up ten minutes before closing and they had two staff standing in front of the door saying the store was closed while everyone else rang up their orders inside. Thank you Apple, for encouraging me to shop elsewhere.
if were talking about costumer satisfaction here i do agree on this blog..
but with the product..will let me think ^_^
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Twitter is a interesting thing. One Hundred Forty characters to speak about what you would like to share. Somehow it does not seem enough while it sometimes feels plenty…
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I had an iPhone 3G, which did have problems, especially after the iOS4 update. WHen I took it to the Apple Store to speak to a person at the Genius Bar (For which I had made a reservation), I was told that I had no reservation. That’s fine, go ignore my reservation, but what pissed me off was how incredibly rude the staff were. They were belligerent and spoke down to me, as if I know nothing about iPhones and how they work. This was the reason why I got rid of my iPhone and bought an Android device (a HTC Desire A8183), and now I’m as happy as can be. HTC seems to be one of the very few companies getting customer service right.
At and t asked me for my e mail address ,they then sent me an e mail completely contradicting what we had agreed to over the phone. Well you know what they do not answer e mail . Then I tried to call for an hour with no success and han to leave for work. Its fairly obvious they are going out of biz. Get out people it can and will only get worse. At&t is a dying company and deserve to be
When a computer answers the phone and starts asking questions, you have been insulted. People want to talk to people. When a computer starts directing your call it means that the business considers you to be worth-less than a dime. A real person can direct calls for less than 10 cents a call. It also speeds up your service. As you chat with a computer keep in mind that you are talking to a company that considers customers like you only worth penneys and your time worth nothing at all. If you call a super rude company like AT&T that does everything possible to avoid your talking to a real person. Remember that doing business with them is sending a real person in to unemployment. If you believe in jobs, take your business elsewhere. If your own time is valuable never never do business with the likes of AT&T.
Communication is key in customer service. Anybody else find it funny that 7 of the top ten (I include Apple cause of the iPhone) are in the communications industry?
Seems like Dell must be a close 11th??? They are sooooo bad. Left-hand/right-hand mix-ups.Parts out of stock and completely miss their “usually delivers by…” assurance. The top it off, they don’t care when you complain that they screwed you.
The 10 WORSE of the WORSE companies in the United States are:
1.) Continental Airlines
2.) Comcast
3.) USAir
4.) Delta
5.) American
6.) Bank of America
7.) Wachovia and Wells Fargo Bank
8.) Chase …J.P.Morgan Chase
9.) Marriott Hotel
10.) Budget Rent A Car
These are the WORSE of the WORSE in my books! CONFIDENT that there are Countless people that believe I am CORRECT!
Stay away from these LOSERS! All the BEST!
Half of the people who responded to this are idiots. Try working for a company based on “obtaining” the best customer service possible and not being able to do Jack because they want you to screw the customer while getting it in the ass as an employee not only by the company you work for but the customer as well. Att may treat their customers like Shit but I assure you that we as employees get it way worse from the pos corporation
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I just filed a complaint against AT&T for fradulent charges. They just charged me $230 and said in 19 days I owed $120 more for a $20 phone and a $19.99 (for 1 yr. internet). I strongly suggest that everyone having problems with them file a complaint with the FCC. You will be given a number so you can send them relevant info. like proof of prior payments and bills you have received.
ATT is evil. There are better phone companies out there without a contract.
AT&T customer service is absolutely a nightmare to deal with. AT&T owes me over 700.00 for a service that was never received and they always give me the run around when calling them like transferring me over 5 times when I call to finally I reach a English speaking customer rep that cant help me.
BOYCOTT AT&T
Out of all my phone calls I finally stumbled across the PRESIDENT OF AT&T’s Number HIS NUMBER IS
1.800.791.6661 it is a southern California number and if you call remember this is AT&T your dealing with and they are NOT NICE PEOPLE the president and all of his people that works in his office are worthless as well
GOOD LUCK
1.800.791.6661
Apple, Apple, Apple! They have to be #2 only behind Comcast in my opinion! I never had to deal with At&t so I guess I am lucky. We have had so much down time due to issues with our multiple top of the line Desk top and multiple top of the line lap top pro’s.
Software issues as well, Final Cut Pro and Motion. The Wireless Mouse and wireless keyboards work at random and the same goes for Safari.
Their employee’s have been completely unprofessional, arrogant and rude to everyone from our company that has attempted to call for assistance. Apple needs to retrain their customer service and supervision staff at all locations…At stores and corporate! Seriously considering returning to PC.
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