• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer, April 3, 2023

The high cost of Internet disruptions for businesses continues to increase, while consumer tolerance for digital disruptions is low.

Consumers want flawless experiences and are ready to go elsewhere if expectations are not met when it comes to a search function, inventory database, or ecommerce platform that is slow or unavailable.

The same now applies to the workforce. From video conferences and email to online working documents and cloud-based customer-management resources, employees are bringing the same expectations to work.

Some 74% of participants to a Catchpoint survey fielded by Forrester Consulting say customers have little tolerance for disrupted experiences, and 71% say employees expect the same frictionless digital experiences as customers.

The survey of 262 respondents responsible for their respective company’s ecommerce strategy and technology in consumer goods and retail companies found that nearly 40% suffer customer-impacting disruptions, costing up to $1 million per month. About 61% said downtime or latency have resulted in lost revenue, while 64% reported damage to their brand’s reputation, which has led to lack of consumer confidence caused by the disruption.

Forrester completed the online survey in February 2023, with a focus on consumer brands and retailers that see a “significant volume of online transactions” and have more than 1,000+ employees.

Ecommerce does not work without the internet, yet few companies successfully monitor internet performance.

The inability to quickly identify and fix downtime or latency issues can cause companies to lose millions of dollars annually.

Some 39% of respondents said internet disruptions cost their company between $500,000 and $999,000 due to lost revenue, compensation to customers and extra time spent fixing the issues. About 12% stated that it costs their company more than $1 million.

Still, 65% of respondents reported even small disruptions in the flow of commerce can cause customers to halt their purchase cycle, highlighting the importance of identifying and resolving internet disruptions.

The survey also examined states of readiness for disciplined Internet Performance Monitoring (IPM) to ensure that websites stay up and running efficiently without disruption and latency.

Only 29% of companies monitor the full internet stack, according to the stud. This includes routers, firewalls, ISPs, DNS, CDNs, cloud services, website payment providers, video hosting services and more. On average, disruption affects the performance of these devices 76 times per month due to inadequate visibility.

About 61% of those responding to the survey believe their respective companies require tools to anticipate, detect, and fix Internet performance problems quickly, indicating a need for better management of Internet performance.