Best bookmaker for customer service

Leading tipster site Betting Expert compares bookmakers’ customer service performance across the channels of email, telephone, live chat and social media services.

When choosing which bookmaker to bet with, customer service is an increasingly important consideration for punters. Dealing quickly and efficiently with any question or issue that arises helps build trust between a bookie and a punter, and provides reassurance to the player that their betting account is in safe hands.

Different operators have different strengths when it comes to customer service. Some centre their offering around live chat services, while others concentrate on email and telephone facilities.

The rise of social media has also seen customer service offerings expand across Facebook and Twitter. Therefore, we have also taken this channel into consideration when assessing the top bookmakers for customer service.

For this bookmaker comparison, we’ve analysed the customer service facilities of 25 top bookmakers:

Matchbook
Ladbrokes
Marathonbet
Betsafe
BoyleSports
Energy Bet
Netbet
Paddy Power
William Hill
bet365
BetVictor
Coral
Genting Bet
Winner Sports
Betfred
888Sport
Betfair
Sky Bet
Bet At Home
Leo Vegas
Betway
Sporting Bet
ComeOn
Unibet
Titanbet

We tested each customer service function in full to determine the following:

– Best customer service via live chat
– Best customer service via phone
– Best customer service via email
– Best customer service via Twitter

To ensure an objective and unbiased bookmaker comparison, we asked each bookmaker the same questions. Our data comes from their responses, which we will look at shortly. The questions we asked were as follows.

Live chat and phone
– Do you have a bonus?
    – What is it?
    – Is it available for new players?

Email
– What is your welcome bonus?

Twitter
– What offers do you have for new players?

We carried out our research during April 2019.

The best bookmakers for customer service
After analysing the data we gathered for this bookmaker comparison, we’ve determined our top three. The operators with the highest rating for customer service were as follows:

– Matchbook
– Ladbrokes
– Betsafe

Our number one was Matchbook. First, let’s look at its live chat service. It took just 20 seconds to make contact with a member of the team, and 115 seconds to receive an answer that satisfied our query.

Matchbook was also quick to respond to our email and telephone queries, and it took less than half an hour for a response on Twitter.

Matchbook doesn’t provide a 24/7 live chat service, which is something of a drawback. However, this function is available most of the day, so for overall customer service, Matchbook came out on top.

Second in our bookmaker comparison was Ladbrokes. Using its 24/7 live chat service, we received a satisfactory response to our query in 185 seconds. Our phone call was responded to very quickly too, although it took about two hours to receive a reply via email.

One disappointment was the length of time it took to receive a response on Twitter. It took about 75 minutes for an answer. This isn’t too surprising, however, considering the bookmaker giants have thousands of followers, and Ladbrokes was one of only 11 bookmakers to even reply via this method.

Coming out in third place was Betsafe. It took about five seconds to make contact with its live chat team, and we got the answers we were looking for in about 30 seconds.

Our telephone and email queries were dealt with extremely quickly and efficiently too, and we waited only about 30 seconds to get an answer via telephone and about half an hour for a satisfactory email response.

We were let down by the lack of response via Twitter, though. Betsafe could certainly improve on what is otherwise a pretty decent customer support facility.

Just missing out on our general top three were Marathonbet and BoyleSports. Both offer adequate customer support services, but Marathonbet’s lack of Twitter response put it in fourth place. As for BoyleSports, we were unable to make contact via live chat, which should be considered a basic customer contact point.

Best bookmaker for live chat services
Now we’ve discussed our top three bookmakers overall for customer service, let’s delve into more detail and look at the best customer service via live chat.

In our bookmaker comparison, we established that the best bookmaker for live chat was Betsafe.

It took just 30 seconds to receive a satisfactory response via Betsafe’s live chat function, which was the fastest time by some distance. The first point of contact is a robot, but chatting to a real human is an option too. Its live chat  is available 24/7, so no matter what time a problem arises, it can deal with it quickly.

According to our data, the second best bookmaker for live chat services was a tie between Betfred and Matchbook. Both bookmakers came back with a satisfactory answer within about 115 seconds, and Matchbook’s live chat service is a big part of the reason why it was ranked number one overall in our comparison.

With Betfred we did have to wait slightly longer before contact was made, but that’s to be expected with such a popular online bookie.

Best bookmaker for phone customer service
A surprise outcome possibly, but our best customer service via phone was Energy Bet. Our team had to wait just 10 seconds to make contact via telephone, an extremely rapid response time and the fastest time of all the bookmakers analysed.

Making up our top three best bookmakers for phone customer service was BoyleSports in second place, with a response time of 15 minutes, and Winner Sports in third place, with a response time of 18 seconds.

Best bookmaker for email customer service
We received automatic responses from 14 of the 25 operators we tested in this bookmaker comparison. In terms of responses that resolved our queries, it was Matchbook that got the highest rating, with a response time of about six minutes.

Also impressive in this category were Betsafe, Energy Bet, Bet At Home and Sporting Bet, which all provided an average response time of 15 minutes, making them equal second place.

Best bookmaker for Twitter customer service
Using social media can make contacting customer support much easier. A number of bookmakers seem to agree, with many taking their social media interactions with customers seriously.

Not all do, though. We only received Twitter responses from 11 of the 25 bookmakers we attempted to make contact with. Of these, we received the quickest responses from the following bookmakers, which all replied within one minute:

– BoyleSports
– William Hill
– Bet365
– Betfair

The next fastest was PaddyPower, with a response time of three minutes, followed by  Sky Bet, with a response time of eight minutes.

Conclusion
What we found interesting was the number of so-called ‘small’ bookmakers who made appearances in our top three lists. There are a number of reasons why this could be the case.

The more famous bookmakers have thousands of members, and therefore receive many more customer requests. In addition, bookmakers with a smaller number of members seem to focus more on retaining the customer base they already have, in the hope this could encourage others to join.

It was also interesting that relatively few bookmakers seemed to use Twitter as a way to offer customer support. We were disappointed that 14 of the bookmakers we researched failed to make contact with us via their Twitter channels. We expect these operators to improve on their social media communication in the near future.

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.