Some companies had quick response times, but others definitely need to improve, Consumer says. File pic Photo: 123RF
Uber is among the country's worst performing businesses when it comes to answering customer calls, a Consumer NZ survey has found.
Consumer NZ recently found wait times for 21 companies across telecommunications, banking, food and transport sectors ranged from 15 seconds to about an hour.
All of Consumer's test calls were made on a weekday between 9am and 3pm.
When it came to time spent on hold, Hello Fresh was the speediest responder, with a swift 15-second wait time.
Meanwhile, 2degrees was among the worst with a wait time of 54 minutes and 50 seconds.
Uber was even worse, not answering calls at all, and finally after one response still refusing to engage in a conversation.
The average wait time was about 12 minutes.
"Many of us get incredibly frustrated stuck in on-hold hell," said Consumer's head of content, Caitlin Cherry.
"Some companies had incredibly speedy response times, whereas others definitely need to up their customer service game."
She told Midday Report it was ironic that telecommunication companies were poor, "given they're all about cellphones and communicating with people".
Airlines also did not fare well, with Air New Zealand taking 38 minutes and Jetstar seven minutes to answer their calls from Consumer NZ.
The banking sector also proved to be missing in action, with Kiwibank taking 40 minutes and ANZ and BNZ taking over 20 minutes.
"We were surprised that the ones that did best were the food bags. Hello Fresh answered within 15 seconds, Woop and My Food Bag were less than two minutes."
Cherry said many businesses were contactable in other ways, such as email and a chatbot on the website, but if people had complex inquiries personal contact was better.
There were also people not connected to the internet and they needed to be able to reach someone by phone.
Phone numbers hard to find too
As well as assessing call wait times, Consumer also checked how difficult it was to find a company's customer service number on Google. The watchdog documented how many website clicks were needed to find each company's phone number.
"It was surprisingly hard to find a customer service number for many businesses," Cherry said.
Of the 21 companies investigated, only 11 contact numbers could be found easily.
"Uber came bottom of the pack again. It took over 14 minutes and three searches of its website to find a contact number for Uber."
Only one company, Norton Security, didn't have a phone number listed online. Instead, customers must submit a request for a call back from Norton Security's support team.
"Although Hello Fresh had the fastest call response time, its number was hard to find - taking two minutes which included 14 clicks on its website and an interaction with a chatbot," Cherry said.
Netflix and Disney+ kept Consumer on hold for one and five minutes respectively, however they both offered themed hold music, making the wait more entertaining.
