by Tena Kight

Created on: May 22, 2010

American consumers have had a tough year with a troubled economy, high unemployment rates, and Wall Street turmoil. Now the Better Business Bureau released a report showing that consumers have taken another hit in the customer service department with customer complaints up 9.7% in 2009. American consumers are increasingly having bad experiences with big businesses, and the offending companies might surprise you.

The cell phone industry received the largest number of complaints with 37,477, a 2.1% increase. The cable and satellite TV industry followed with 32,616 complaints, an 8.7% increase. The number three spot goes to banks with 29,920 complaints, a 42.3% increase for the year.

According to the Better Business Bureau news center reports available at www.bbb.org, this is the second year that banks have had a significant jump up in complaints. While the cell phone industry and television companies have improved their resolution rates over the year, the banks resolution rate has slightly declined. This has many American customers asking, “What happened to customer service?”

One would think that improving customer service efforts would be a great way for businesses to start regaining consumer trust. With bank bail outs and bank failures a known fact for the year, poor customer service such seems to some Americans like a blunt act of disrespect.

Consumers do have choices. The cell phone industries and television/satellite companies are expanding coverage to more and more areas giving customers back the upper hand with the power of choice. A little competition mixed with customers that are fed up and customer service might just improve. The banking industries might consider stepping up their customer service also because there might be a credit union in the neighborhood that would treat American customers with greater respect.

Some might argue that the businesses topping the customer complaint list do so because they service a large amount of “inherited” customers due to the mergers and takeovers. This way of thinking might spark good news for the unemployment rate if the businesses start to hire the staff and obtaining resources to accommodate the larger volume of customers.  

Today's industries might want to focus more on customer satisfaction simply because consumers have easier access to reliability reports. American consumers can research a company's accreditation status and complaint history free on line with the Better Business Bureau. Consumers also have access to networking sites that give a new meaning to “word of mouth advertising” and those same sites offer a larger audience for customers wanting to vent their complaints.  

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