That’s according to a study from Accenture  in which half of the 1,000 consumers surveyed in UK said poor service led them to change service providers in at least one industry in the past year and 62 percent of them blamed poor service or product quality. To get a better price (48 percent), having no customised solution (20 percent) and the provider having bureaucratic policies (16 percent) were also blamed. 

Two other moan factors were identified though - technologies that delay or stop service was cited by one in five and a lack of knowledge about their own services or products among the representatives by just over one in three.

Despite the increased use of new technologies intended to improve customer service, such as automated phone systems and live chat over the internet, just over two-thirds (67 percent) of UK survey respondents said they believed that customer service had not improved in the last five years.
 
’These findings are troubling for any industry with heavy customer interaction, given that poor service was the predominant reason that half of the respondents gave for changing service providers in one industry or another last year,’ said John Freeland, global managing partner of Accenture’s Customer Relationship Management practice. ‘Winning companies strike the right balance between using technology to help reduce costs and streamlining the customer experience with well-considered processes that contribute to more personalised services.’
 
More than one-third of the UK respondents said they felt it was important not to be passed around the company in search of answers but to be able to get what they need from one agent. Being kept on hold (82 percent), having to repeat themselves to different agents, (77 percent) and not getting the answers they needed (70 percent) all ranked highly as customer moans.   The survey also found that the average consumer in the UK spends an average of nearly six minutes on hold to the helpline and 2.7 minutes speaking to service representatives.
 
Other bullet point numbers of things that irritate customers:

Representatives that try to cross or up sell -  51 percent
Inflexible service  - 49 percent)
Slow response - (48 percent),
Lack of personalised solutions - (43 percent),
Not personable - (42 percent),
Computers that are often down - 42 percent,
Representatives request too much personal information  - 35 percent,
Being asked too many personal questions  - 24 percent
Creating too much paperwork  - 14 percent