Resources / Customer support
Public cases from customer support where what customers were told, or weren't, ended in fines, bans or headlines.
Millions of listens and a public apology
A retention agent spent the call arguing with a customer who only wanted to cancel. The recording went viral, Comcast said it was "very embarrassed", and commentators argued the script, not one agent, was the problem.
Listen for on your calls
Agents arguing with, or stalling on, a clear request from the customer.
£4.6M Ofcom fine, its largest at the time
Ofcom found agents lacked clear guidance on recognising complaints, and customers weren't told they could take unresolved complaints to an independent scheme after eight weeks. Separately, top-ups went uncredited.
Listen for on your calls
Complaints treated as general queries, and customers not told their escalation rights.
Global coverage; a widely repeated (but unverified) $180M market-value drop
A musician whose guitar was broken in transit spent about nine months being passed between departments. His YouTube song about it became one of the most cited customer-service failures ever.
Listen for on your calls
Repeat callers about the same issue, each told it is someone else's department.
$2.5bn: $1bn penalty and $1.5bn in refunds
The FTC alleged customers were enrolled in Prime without clear consent and that cancelling was made deliberately difficult. Amazon settled without admitting wrongdoing and must now offer simple cancellation.
Listen for on your calls
Cancellation requests that are deflected instead of processed.
Summaries are our own reading of the linked reports. Amounts and outcomes are as reported at the time; some companies settled without admitting wrongdoing. These cases are listed to show what is at stake on customer calls, not to suggest any particular tool would have prevented them.
