A new survey from digital publisher Econsultancy has found that nearly half of consumers find the telephone to be the most frustrating channel for customer services.

The survey of 2,000 UK consumers voted the telephone to be three times more frustrating than email, and eight times more frustrating than live chat.

Surprisingly, one in eight of the respondents said that they would be happy to pay a fee in return for a superior level of customer service.

The research was looking at consumer opinions on multichannel customer service, and Econsultancy say that it clearly shows that companies are struggling to coordinate different service channels and keep their customers happy.

Although the telephone is the most established medium for customer service, nearly two thirds of consumers found it to be an ineffective channel when trying to contact a UK brand, citing queues, automated responses and premium rate numbers as the main reasons for their frustration.

Nearly half of respondents said that they preferred to use email for customer service queries, and email was also voted the second most effective channel. However, it still came in second to the telephone as the most frustrating channel.

The survey also asked which industries provided the best customer service. Clear winner was the retail sector with 47% of the vote. Industries that didn’t do so well were banks (16%), travel (15%), automotive (10%), utilities (8%) and telecoms (4%).

If you’re struggling to coordinate your telephone customer services because you’re juggling them with email, internet and social media, why not consider getting some help from a CSnotepad virtual receptionist?