Why is Olio customer service slow at times?

• Olio customer service is not yet where we would like it to be.
• This is because Olio is a complex business to administer, and we have limited resources, unfortunately.
• We have over 1 million listings added to the app every month, and we enable people to share everything from half a jar of marmalade to an unused TV, to food collections from businesses. We also have significant food safety obligations, with the amount of monitoring, training, and compliance that this involves. 
• Our strategy in customer service is to Mitigate (improving the app, processes, and policies so that fewer issues occur), Automate (allow less complex issues to be handled instantly and automatically), and Prioritise (ensure our agents are picking up the highest importance and most time-sensitive issues first). 
• Over 90% of the highest priority issues are responded to and resolved within 24 hours, we have food safety complaints below industry standards, and we continue to make good progress in these areas.
• Some of the things that put the biggest strain on our resources are:
  • Inter-squad disputes where the “he said, she said” nature of complaints means having to manually trawl through page upon page of Squad Chats to try and get to the bottom of the situation - often without a clear or satisfactory conclusion for either party.
  • Issues categorised as “other” in the issue report form. In some cases, this is absolutely the right thing to do, as they don’t fit any of the options given on the form. But what we actually see is a huge number of ‘other’ reports actually could be reported as one of the options on the form, which would allow us to handle them (and as a result, other people’s queries) that much quicker.

• Here are some of the things we’re working on to improve the situation:

  • We’re reviewing several of our policies to remove any ambiguity allowing us to be much quicker and more decisive
  • Automatic detection of keywords, inappropriate behaviour and other conduct related issues using artificial intelligence, thereby freeing up agent time to focus on the trickier issues
  • More specific flag reports and more automations so that repeat offenders are identified and the appropriate action is taken

🙏🏼 Thank you for your support as we continue on our journey of improvement.