Mystery shopper: Tesco Mobile customer service, PAYG advice

Our mobile mystery shopper puts Tesco Mobile’s customer service to the test and discovers how well a Tesco Mobile rep answered our query on switching from pay-monthly to pay-as-you-go.

For more details on our mystery shopping series, including the questions we ask, the dream response to our customer service query, and a run down of how Tesco Mobile compared to the competition, head over to our summary page.

Getting through to Tesco Mobile’s customer service

With Tesco there’s not a lot of mucking about, with only one option to get into a queue to speak to someone, but this also led to a slightly longer wait in the queue.

After almost three minutes I found myself in the company of a rep (who we will call Gretel), who greeted me in a very friendly way, but turned out to be one of those people that start every other sentence with the word “basically”.

Gretel

As soon as I tried to get some answers to my pay-as-you-go questions, Gretel immediately tried to divert me to the sales team – ‘basically you wanted to call our sales number on…’ – but if she thought she was getting away with it that easily she was in for a big surprise.

Pushing for just a bit more information I got her to give me a quick overview of PAYG, and all that it entailed, by saying I just wanted to know a bit more about it.

‘Basically you get triple credit when you top up’, seriously every sentence began like this. ‘And you can also link your account to your clubcard.’

Dealing with the problem

Gretel did a good job of getting across what was different about Tesco PAYG and then went through the top-up process. Although it felt a tad scripted when she explained that I could register a card and top up in a ‘whole host of places’.

After this quick explanation she seemed very keen to get rid of me and send me over to sales -although it seemed a little strange that there wasn’t the option to directly transfer me.

I eventually surrendered to her demands and let her wind up the call and she wished me well.

Tesco Summary

‘Basically’, when she wasn’t trying to off-load me on to the sales team, Gretel was clear, helpful and clearly had the knowledge, but her desire to get rid of me came through a little bit too strong.

To read the rest of the mystery shopper series take a look at our summary page, where you can also get an overview of the customer service questions we asked and the ideal response we were looking for.