Betfred top for customer service

Following on from last month’s social media rankings, leading tipster site bettingexpert.com has compared customer service among the world’s top bookmakers.

Anyone with a bank account knows how important timely accessible customer service is, and it’s no different with bookies. When it comes to customers’ money, it’s reassuring to know they can instantly discuss any issue or concern and find a resolution with the institution in question.

While most bookmakers offer similar methods for contacting their customer service support team, not all are as available as the next. Some may be quick to reply via live chat, some may be available via phone or email, while others offer dedicated help and customer service Twitter accounts.

With the World Cup approaching and many punters signing up with a bookmaker for the first time, we decided to review the customer service channels across 26 of the world’s most popular bookmakers.

10bet
888sport
Bet At Home
Bet365
BetBright
Betfair
Betfred
Betsafe
BetVictor
Betway
Boylesports
ComeOn
Coral
Energy Bet
Genting Bet
Ladbrokes
LeoVegas
Marathonbet
Matchbook
Netbet
Paddy Power
Skybet
Sportingbet
Unibet
William Hill
Winner Sports

Bettingexpert.com tracked average recognition reply times and average time for an effective response, meaning, the time it took to have the query answered satisfactorily. In particular we assessed:

• Live chat
• Email
• Phone
• Twitter
• Mail

For live chat and phone, we asked the following questions:

• Do you have a current welcome offer?
• What is the minimum deposit?
• What is the best way to withdraw funds?
• Do you have live streaming?
• Do you have cash out?

For email we asked:

• What is the process for validating customer identity?
• What is your current welcome offer?
• Do you have live streaming?
• Do you have cash out?

For Twitter we asked:

• Do you have a current welcome offer?
• What is the minimum deposit?

The data was collected between 29 March and 16 April 2018.

And the winner is…

After analysing the data, we determined that the best bookmaker for customer service was Betfred, followed by Boylesports in second position and Betway and Marathonbet in joint third.

While Betfred only ranked first in the email category, it was repeatedly among the best performing bookmakers across each category, ranking highly for live chat response time, phone, email and Twitter.

Betfred was also one of only two bookmakers to respond to customers’ land mail enquiry. However, even if we disregard the land mail category, Betfred still ranked first among all bookmakers.

Similarly, Boylesports ranked highly across each category. While not ranking among the top two or three for live chat, Boylesports more than made up for it when it came to email, phone, Twitter and land mail.

Again, Boylesports was one of two bookmakers to reply to customers’ land mail within the data collection period. Again, even if we disregard the land mail category, Boylesports would have ranked second among all bookmakers.

Marathonbet and Betway were tied in third position. Marathonbet ranked third overall for live chat response time and was mid-table for Twitter response. Betway also ranked highly when it came to live chat as well as phone call response time, however it was mid-table for email and Twitter response.

So, why did four rather low profile bookmakers rank so well against the giants of the betting industry? One could argue that bookmakers with a greater pool of customers have far greater stress placed on customer service resources.

However, it could also be argued that due to a smaller pool of customers, bookmakers such as Betfred, Boylesports, Betway and Marathonbet place a higher emphasis on customer retention and, as a result, provide their customer service departments with greater resources than the more prominent bookmakers in the industry.

Best for live
Our analysis showed that 17 of the 26 bookmakers offer live chat 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, while seven had restricted hours of availability and two had an unreliable live chat functionality.

Overall we found Unibet to be the best bookmaker for live chat customer service, recording the third fastest average response time and first among bookmakers for providing a satisfactory answer to customer queries via live chat. William Hill, Betfred and Paddy Power deserve a mention as each recorded impressive response times for live chat customer service.

1. Unibet
2. Betfred, William Hill, Paddy Power

Best for phone
When it came to phone customer service assistance, Marathonbet ranked first among the 26 bookmakers with an average time to receive an adequate response of two minutes. Second place in this category went to Sportingbet, while BetBright and Betway ranked tied for third.

1. Marathonbet
2. Sportingbet
3. BetBright, Betway

While most bookmakers were able to respond within a reasonable time, a total of seven bookmakers were not able to take customers’ calls within the allotted time of ten minutes.

Best for email
When it came to email customer support, five bookmakers replied within an average time of half an hour. These were Betfred, Matchbook, Skybet, Boylesports and Gentingbet.
While most bookmakers replied with an adequate response within 24 hours, a number failed to respond at all within three days of customers sending the original email.

1. Betfred, Boylesports, Matchbook, Skybet, Gentingbet

Best for Twitter
Given last month’s analysis of bookmaker social media, it will come as no surprise to the industry that Paddy Power ranked first among all bookmakers for customer service.

The bookmaker replied to customers’ enquiries within two minutes of posting, well ahead of Ladbrokes in second place which took on average ten minutes to respond. All told, eight bookmakers responded within 24 hours of our tweeting.

1 Paddy Power
2. Ladbrokes
3. Coral and Betfair
4. Betfred

Surprisingly, despite the growing emphasis on social media, 15 of our 26 bookmakers failed to reply to customer tweets including some of the industry’s biggest names.

Best for mail
After two weeks, customers received responses from just two bookmakers, Betfred and Boylesports, who ranked one and two among all 26 bookmakers regardless of the results of the mail category. 888sport replied by email, three weeks after posting.

1. Betfred, Boylesports
2. 888sport

Conclusion
While a number of bookmakers have made a focus of their customer service, a number of bookmakers lag behind including some of the world’s biggest names in the industry. What is most peculiar is the general lack of customer service support available via social media such as Twitter.

About bettingexpert.com
Providing expert tips and in depth betting theory, bettingexpert.com is the world’s biggest social network of sports betting tipsters. Its global community of experts compete for prizes by sharing their strongest tips on upcoming matches across 25 different sports to help millions of sports bettors place knowledge-supported bets, with the best odds available from a variety of bookmakers. Betting Expert is owned by Better Collective, the leading developer of educational platforms within the igaming industry.