CalMac has received a 90 per cent satisfaction rate from customers for its customer service during the coronavirus crisis.

Between March and May, the ferry operator’s customer service team processed 30,000 refunds and answered 11,000 social media enquiries from passengers.

Social media messages to CalMac’s social media team rose by 96 per cent on the same period last year, with email and phone enquires also significantly increased.

The company polled more than 7,000 customers on their experience with staff during their travel, and CalMac scored highly for email interaction, refunds, website contacts and phone responses.

CalMac’s commercial director, Diane Burke, said: “We were recently awarded the top level of recognition by the Call Centre Association and the results of this survey would seem to reinforce the faith they have in the professionalism of our staff.

“They have worked tirelessly through this crisis to keep customers informed and to manage their booking through what has been a very difficult period for everyone.

“The demand we are seeing from the public to come back and travel with us to our beautiful islands is in no small part down to the way our whole team has dealt with our customers throughout this period of disruption.”

Every year CalMac deals with almost 400,000 phone calls, 37,000 emails covering ferry bookings, enquires, claims and complaints.