• by Jack Loechner , Staff Writer @mp_research, January 7, 2002

Still Too Slow To Respond To Customers

Jupiter Media Metrix reports that brick-and-mortar and online-only retailers struggled to respond to customer service e-mails quickly this holiday season. According to data from a December 2001 Jupiter Customer Service WebTrack, just 30 percent of all retailers tracked resolved basic customer service requests online within six hours. While a greater percentage of online-only retailers (33 percent) responded to customer service e-mails within six hours than brick-and-mortar retailers (28 percent) did, online-only retailers were less responsive overall.

According to the report, 40 percent of online-only retailers took more than three days to respond or did not respond to e-mail at all, compared with 28 percent of brick-and-mortar retailers in the same category. Jupiter analysts have found that the impact of poor customer service online cascades across channels. According to the survey, 53 percent of consumers said they would be less likely to buy again from a retailer's off-line store if they had an unsatisfying experience with the online store.

In a separate study, presented in eMarketer's eCommerce: B2C & Demographics Report, the average number of hours it took US retail websites to respond to customer service e-mails declined by roughly two hours between Q4 2000 and Q2 2001, and improved as automated response became more prevalent.

Response Rates Among 50 US eTailers

  +-----------------------------+---------+---------+  |
| Q42000  | Q22001  |  +-----------------------------+---------+---------+  | Avg. hours to respond to    |  14.13  |  12.63  |  | customer email              |         |         |  | Auto responses
(% of sites) |   23%   |   38%   |  +-----------------------------+---------+---------+  

Source: e-tailing group, Inc, 2001

Retailers Responding to Online Customer Service Inquiries

  +----------------------+-----------+--------+------+  |                      | Brick-and | Online | Both |  |                      |  -Mortar  |
|      |  +----------------------+-----------+--------+------+  | Within 6 hours       |    28%    |  33%   | 30%  |  | 6-24 hours           |    22%    |  13%   | 18%  |  | 1-3 Days             |
22%    |  13%   | 18%  |  | More than 3 days and |    28%    |  40%   | 33%  |  | no response at all   |           |        |      |  +----------------------+-----------+--------+------+

Read more here.