Eir’s customer care reputation: can it be restored?

Eir claims it has turned a corner in terms of its customer care issues, citing new figures from regulator Comreg showing a fall-off in complaints.

Doubtless many punters will take this with a pinch of salt. The company, for a variety of reasons but principally for its atrocious record in dealing with customer queries and problems, has turned into one of those companies consumers love to hate.

Tales of how customers have been put through the wringer when attempting to get simple, everyday issues remedied, tend go viral, suggesting they resonate with a lot of people.

Eir claims it is aware of the problem and attempting to fix it and that the first fruits of this can be seen in the latest Comreg numbers, which show complaints relating to the company’s landline and broadband services fell to 22.3 per 100,000 in the first quarter of 2022, down from 30 per cent in the previous quarter.

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It noted that this was fewer than those received by rivals Sky and Vodafone. The Comreg figures also point to a 25 per cent reduction in complaints made by Eir’s mobile customers.

The regulator later clarified, however, that the data referred to complaints made to the regulator as distinct from complaints made directly to the company.

Nonetheless Eir chief executive Oliver Loomes seized on the figures, claiming they represented a "remarkable turnaround from 2020 and demonstrates our utter focus on improving the quality of our customer service".

At the height of the pandemic in 2020 the telco moved hundreds of customer care agents to remote working. With workers stuck at home because of lockdown and increasingly reliant on telecommunications, call volumes and queries surged.

This triggered a near complete meltdown of its customer care services. At the worst point, call waiting times were averaging about an hour while customers complained of calls being dropped and of routine issues being left unresolved. The company later apologised for the poor performance.

As Eir knows only too well, good reputations are hard won. Conversely, battered ones take time to restore.