For anyone who thinks we live in an enlightened customer service age (a view supported by the growing number of businesses now using ‘quality of service’ in marketing campaigns), here’s a sobering thought.  Last year, of the millions of complaints levied at telecoms companies, three million were unresolved within 12 weeks. 

This has prompted the regulator Ofcom to get ‘tough’, insisting that suppliers inform customers of their right to escalate the problem to an independent body if it hasn’t been fixed within eight weeks.

Forgive me for attacking Ofcom, who are presumably trying their best to fight for consumer rights, but eight weeks really doesn’t solve anything. The timescale seems like an arbitrary figure and it probably is. Yes, eight weeks is less than 12, but two months to resolve a customer compliant is not a service level, it is abject failure of service.

Complaints are difficult thing to handle. They highlight all the problems that businesses choose to avoid - either because they don’t have time or resource to resolve them. But complaints are a microcosm of the stance that businesses take when deciding the level of service they provide to customers.  Those who treat service as a cost tend to treat complaints like a pesky menace and so allow them to fester for weeks before sending out a response.

More progressive businesses treat complaints as feedback and the best way to learn what changes it needs to make to offer a better service. Using this information effectively can be challenge, but one thing is certain. If you send a message to customers that you will wait 12 weeks to respond to their complaint, you prove that you have no regard for their business. It takes little imagination to picture the customer in question dumping you as soon as they are free from their contract.