Bad customer service examples to avoid in 2025

Customer service is the quality of support and interaction that a business provides to its consumers before, during, and after a transaction. 

Offering excellent consumer care in all areas of your business plays a significant role in retaining customers, resolving issues, and foreseeing potential conflicts.

However, it’s best to be informed of some bad customer service examples that you might be doing unintentionally.

Avoid these 3 bad customer service examples

We think that as long as the staff is not being rude to customers, and as long as our physical stores are clean, we are practicing the best consumer care.

However, that’s not the case. Since 86% of buyers are willing to pay more for a great customer experience, they’re expecting businesses to go above and beyond.

To start providing better assistance, be aware of these bad customer service examples you probably didn’t know you were doing.

1. Ignoring customer feedback

It’s probably safe to assume that feedback forms and other types of evaluation forms are provided on your website or store, and that’s a great practice. 

However, it doesn’t end there. Being customer-centric means asking for your customers’ feedback and addressing their concerns to provide them with a better experience.

Making your customers feel like their opinions and comments matter is a good thing, but the real (and forgotten) challenge is implementing guidelines and rules to ensure consumer satisfaction.

2. Hiring untrained customer service personnel

Customer service is a department on its own. It may not be thought of as “relevant” compared to other departments that bring in sales and customers, but it plays a vital role in everyday operations.

Hiring untrained and unprofessional employees to provide consumer care for your brand is an insult. It actually says negatively about the kind of service you’re willing to provide to your customers.

To ensure the delivery of high-quality assistance, it’s best to seek the services of top-notch external providers like iContact BPO.

3. Mismanaging your social media accounts

Social media is an accessible way to stay connected and post your thoughts and comments for the world to see.

With social media, customers get to complain publicly, letting everyone—including regular and potential customers—see how “terrible” your service has been.

Social media complaints need to be manned by professional social media managers to resolve and take them away from the public eye as soon as possible. 

Mismanaged or unattended social accounts do not only ruin your brand but can also cause headlines, like what happened to British Airways several years ago.

After the airline company lost his father’s luggage, Hasan Syed paid for a sponsored tweet to air his frustration directly to British Airways’ Twitter followers. The tweet, which said, “Don’t fly @BritishAirways. Their customer service is horrendous,” had thousands of impressions.

This quickly caught the attention of many media outlets for the novel way the customer aired his frustration. It also served as a lesson on the importance of maintaining engagement on social media to avoid customer issues from escalating.

Horrible customer service = ruined reputation

Did you know that a single negative interaction can lower your sales and ruin your hard-earned reputation?

In a study conducted by Dimensional Research and Zendesk, 95% of respondents said they usually tell at least one other person about a bad customer experience with a company.

Fifty-four per cent said they share it with at least five other people.

This could lead to a domino effect, and the brand name and reputation you’ve built for years could crumble before you know it.

The good news is BPO firms like Helpware can take charge of your customer support services to ensure that your clients are satisfied in every interaction.

The bad customer service examples above can be avoided by listening to your patrons and employees. Their feedback is important to all consumer-centric units of your business.

With the right partner and proper systems in place, you can deliver a positive customer experience every step of the way.