• by Jess Nelson , February 25, 2016

There is a wide discrepancy between customer service expectation and delivery, according to a SuperOffice report released Wednesday that shows that a third of businesses do not respond to customer emails. 

The European CRM software supplier discovered that 32% of companies, in a study of over 250, do not respond to customer service emails. SuperOffice sent a consistent email template containing two questions to each company, and then graded the results based on response time, content, quality and tone.

This is similar to a recent Eptica study, which found that 27% of companies to not respond to email inquiries. Email was the overwhelming favorite for best customer service channel, per Eptica’s report -- compounded by the even lower response rates for customer service questions delivered over social media.

In addition to a third of all inquiries remaining unanswered, 66% of companies do not acknowledge or inform the customer that their emails have been received in any way, according to SuperOffice. This situation could be easily remedied with a simple triggered message.

Furthermore, 92% of companies fail to follow up with customers to determine whether their response was satisfactory. This is especially troublesome considering that only one in five are able to answer a question correctly in the first reply, according to the SuperOffice report.

The study further concluded that the average time needed to handle a customer service request is 17 hours and 28 minutes -- significantly higher than Eptica’s study, which found that the average response time on email was almost eight hours long.  

SuperOffice’s report concluded that Sweden, Denmark and Estonia provide the highest level of customer service quality online.