Tesco Complaints: Here is the email you need to contact them . . .

[Deleted User]

ceo.customerservice@tesco.com

The C.E.O. himself shall not reply, but a senior underling will. Now I've made this public, how long this will be available is anyone's guess.

This took over an hour to find: it's not online, they don't list it in the Tesco help/customer service section, it was only revealed to me after obtaining a telephone number and interrogating every single 'menu' option, until, finally, surprisingly, the system offered to put me through to a real person.

I learn from Tesco that there has not been a customer service contact email since 2021; they undertook research and found (they say) that customers wanted 'instant, 'in the moment' (their words) answers, not 'days', and so it was concluded social media/apps were the way forward; it also means those who preferred email, or did not wish to have to download an app, sign up, on various social media  (Tesco admitted this) were ignored. I bear this in mind after receiving reassurance from Tesco that cash as payment will be kept . . .

MyRealNameToo

[Deleted User] said:

The C.E.O. himself shall not reply, but a senior underling will. Now I've made this public, how long this will be available is anyone's guess.

Its unlikely to be a senior underling... in the vast majority of places I've worked (inc in the executive complaints team of two firms) the cases are just passed to a complaint handler but just one of the more experienced ones... basically equivalent to a team leader in the contact centre. In some places the team manager would review the responses before they went in others they went straight out like the rest of them. In one place it was signed by the COO but that was a digital signature I added when dealing with an exec complaint and in no way an indication he'd ever looked at it.

There was a single place where the exec complaints team was higher but that was mainly because of the complex subject matter and them mainly being actuaries... you can't pay someone who's done 6-9 years of study to qualify just a little above minimum wage when you're using their technical skills. 

Given the nature of what Tesco sells and given they already call their call centre agents Customer Service Managers (so that in store CSAs can escalate to them despite being on the same pay and grade) I'd be highly surprised if anyone in the upper eschelons sees it let alone responds unless you really have found a major problem (which 99.99% of complaints to execs arent)

[Deleted User]

Thanks for the information. My comment about 'senior underling' was meant to be taken tongue-in-cheek, i.e. an underling with a Grand Poobah title (and I note I omitted to include the word 'probably'); it turns out I wasn't far off the mark, it's 'Customer Service Specialist on behalf of the Executive’s Office'. Goodness, that a large badge's worth right there. He was very good, actually.

born_again

Given Tesco are not in a regulated trade. They do not have to have a complaints procedure.
CEO email address will not be read by CEO, at best their PA will monitor it, or it could be filtered so anything with complaint in it just goes to that team.

[Deleted User]

That might be the legal position, but any company that does not have a complaints procedure is lacking in both the 'customer' and 'service' aspect of the term 'customer service' - one they still use on their website. Tesco has decided social media, and its bat sard offspring, is the chosen medium for them because, I quote Tesco, people want 'in the moment', 'instant' answers, and anyone who does not wish to use that method can go hang  - hence why I posted the email address.

outtatune

I'm sure Tesco will welcome the free consultancy service that the OP is providing for them in this thread.

Baffledoldie

I had a very unpleasant experience in Tavistock Tesco on Christmas Eve. The store manager was dismissive of my distress. I have sent several unanswered emails to the advised CEO. Has anyone received a response from anybody at a higher level in the Tesco hierarchy other thanthan a local manager? I do not expect the CEO him/herself to reply -just someone to reply to my complaint.

MyRealNameToo

Baffledoldie said:

I had a very unpleasant experience in Tavistock Tesco on Christmas Eve. The store manager was dismissive of my distress. I have sent several unanswered emails to the advised CEO. Has anyone received a response from anybody at a higher level in the Tesco hierarchy other thanthan a local manager? I do not expect the CEO him/herself to reply -just someone to reply to my complaint.

Companies vary a lot in their approach to customers trying to bother the CEO, some will take it from their inbox before they ever see it and at best it gets chucked into the normal customer service queue or at worst ignored. Some have a dedicated team that deals with complaints to the exec which may or may not be reviewed in some way by someone more senior before the response going. In a few cases some execs do personally deal with their own complaints but they are by far the exception in a large corporation. 

Can't say where Tesco's falls on the scale, I certainly know that the CS Managers in their call centres used to be the same grade and pay as a CS Advisor in store but had the higher title so the in store advisor could legitimately say they were passing the person onto a manager if the in store CSM wasnt available. 

The email above is clearly not the CEO's regular email address, it's very possible it's been decommissioned or no longer monitored. Some people who have a genuine issue reach out to Execs as a last resort but so do a lot of minor gripes before contacting anyone else. If you setup dedicated mailboxes they can get swamped not only with those that require the extra view but by minor issues too. If it was never a formal email address you may just close the account as its not doing what it's supposed to if all and sundry are using it.