The Daily Mail Wooden Spoon Awards

It is that time again when the Daily Mail run their annual Wooden Spoon awards for customer service.  Last year this award was won by a long way by British Telecom who will be hoping not to have the “honour” of winning this award again this year.

It will be interesting to see BT’s place this year and to see whether they have made any improvements following the bad press they received last time.

If you would like to vote in the awards you can do so here – thisismoney.co.uk/shortlist

As well as the award for worst customer service in 2009 you can also vote in a number of other categories including -

• Longest time to solve a simple problem
• Biggest incorrect bill
• Most pathetic excuse

There are already some incredible stories submitted in, such as a phone company that told a customer they couldn’t help because they didn’t fix phone lines or a customer who was told that his details were lost in the post even though his wife’s information that was in the same envelope had arrived.

So far telecoms companies are leading the way in complaints about call centres which is staggering really considering they are in the communications business.

Energy firms are apparently leading the way in terms of incorrect bills – something I have bitter personal experience with.

The results of the survey will be published in the New Year and we will bring you an update on this when the results are in.

We are pleased to say that no company for which we have provided customer service courses has ever been anywhere near the Wooden Spoon awards or indeed any other bad service award and this is a record that we hope continues for a long time.