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Zen tops UK broadband customer service poll

September 11, 2018

Broadband minnow Zen has been voted number one for customer service by MoneySavingExpert.com users in its latest best provider poll – but TalkTalk languishes at the bottom despite an improvement on last time.

The biannual broadband customer service poll saw over 7,000 people rate their provider ‘great’, ‘OK’ or ‘poor’, based on performance over the last six months.

Of those to receive more than 75 votes, Zen came top, with 94 per cent of 126 voters regarding its customer service to be ‘great’ and only two voting it ‘poor’, an improvement on the 90 per cent who voted it ‘great’ in February.

Conversely, TalkTalk propped up the table again. Although Origin Broadband performed worse, it received fewer than 75 votes – and only providers with 75 votes or more are counted in the poll results.

TalkTalk received 885 votes, with 26 per cent voting it ‘great’, 35 per cent voting ‘OK’ and 38 per cent deeming its customer service to be ‘poor’. About six months ago, 45 per cent gave TalkTalk a ‘poor’ rating, suggesting its efforts to improve customer service have reaped some rewards.

Operating out of Rochdale, Greater Manchester, Zen started providing internet services in 1995 and now has over 100,000 residential and business customers. It has a UK-based call centre and claims to offer average speeds of 300Mb with its ultrafast package.

It isn’t among the cheapest providers but unusually for a broadband supplier it has a ‘great’ Trustpilot rating, while a lot of telecoms companies have been relegated to ‘bad’.

Of the larger internet providers, Plusnet came out on top with 58 per cent of 1,083 voters saying its customer service was ‘great’ and only 15 per cent voting ‘poor’. John Lewis, better known as one of the nation’s favourite department stores, features for the first time, in third place, having not gained enough votes last time round to register.

Despite receiving between 50 and 75 votes, Hyperoptic and SSE gained an 88 per cent and a 68 per cent ‘great’ rating, respectively. Sky-owned Now Broadband only received 52 votes but of those 44 per cent went for ‘great’.

It’s also worth noting that Origin and KCOM performed badly, despite not receiving enough votes to register in the results. Just over half (56 per cent) of Origin’s 66 votes were for ‘poor’ and of KCOM’s 74 votes, 46 per cent of them were ‘poor’, too.

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