Customer service ‘improves’ at Talk Talk

In its financial report, the telecommunications said that it was benefiting from a ‘major restructuring’. For the year to 31 March 2011 the company reported a 4.7 per cent rise in turnover to £1.77billion compared to the year earlier.

In November, Talk Talk said it aimed to deliver £40-50m of operating efficiencies over the medium-term by ‘simplifying business processes, eliminating significant duplication, and creating a leaner operational structure’.   

Since rebranding Tiscali to Talk Talk in January 2010 and demerging from Carphone Warehouse in March 2010, restructuring of Talk Talk has included integrating all technology and IT capabilities, streamlining non-customer facing business operations. 

It 27-page financial report said changes will ‘significantly improve the quality of the end-to-end experience we deliver to our customers, which will enable us to address customer services issues and also start to reduce our overall customer service costs’.  It adds: “We are already seeing lower customer call volumes in some areas as a result of improvements we have made in certain customer processes, such as enabling customers to better manage their accounts on-line.”

Dido Harding, TalkTalk chief executive said: “All the major elements of our programme to integrate the former Tiscali business were completed by the year-end, and we achieved our target of £55m of synergies. During this process a number of customers suffered disruption, which caused higher levels of complaints and churn.  

“We have worked hard to mitigate the impact of this disruption, and we are confident that we are now making major progress in improving the experience for our customers, which will lead to lower churn.”