Leo Varadkar said Eir’s customer service has been causing “huge frustration”.
The Irish government has met with Eir and Vodafone over allegations of recent “poor customer service”.
Leo Varadkar confirmed that he and Eamon Ryan met with the companies after “hearing a lot about poor customer service from constituents”.
The Tánaiste said that it was a “useful meeting”, and that he really expects things to improve in the future.
In a statement issued to JOE, Eir said that it can not give any details on the meeting that took place earlier today, but confirmed that it centred around assessing issues in the company’s industry.
A spokesperson for Eir said: “Resolving care wait times is the number one priority for eir.
“The average wait time for care in the last week was under 10 minutes, and while this is not where it should be we are making steady progress and we wish to apologise for the delays some customers have experienced.
“The Covid-19 pandemic has made managing our call centres in Sligo, Limerick and Cork challenging, with more than 400 care agents transitioned to working from home overnight, the closure of our retail stores, and a dramatic increase in call volumes due to more households working and learning from home.
“We have been recruiting nationally since restrictions eased during the summer and we are proud to have hired 92 new recruits to our care team, with further team members joining in the weeks ahead.
“Hiring and training new staff safely under Covid restrictions is challenging and does take time but these changes have already led to reductions in call wait times.
“We have also introduced priority care hours in eir retail stores for elderly and vulnerable customers and for carers before 11:00 am Monday to Friday.
“Our digital support and social channels continue to operate as usual, and we have made additional self-service forms available on eir.ie to provide customers with answers to many frequently asked questions.”
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