• by Kate Kaye , November 4, 2002

When the Conference Board determines its Consumer Confidence Index, it surveys consumers about their spending habits, purchase intent and employment status. Maybe it should start asking them about their Internet experiences.

As far as Donal Daly is concerned, the way consumers view their online experiences with corporations is a major indicator of how they’ll respond with their pocketbooks.

“What’s often missed,” asserts Daly, executive chairman of International Ventures Research, “is today’s Internet generation is typically going to have a greater lifetime customer value to corporate America. They use the Internet as a key method of communication. It’s a valid market channel and it’s not going away.”

The high tech consulting firm has just released the “Online Customer Respect Study of Fortune 100 Companies 2002” through its Web-focused research division, CustomerRespect.com.

From the looks of the study, the Fortune 100 had better get crackin’. Not one of them got a perfect score, and a paltry 16% came out above average.

The report’s findings are based on a set of criteria that CustomerRespect.com believes reflect offline guidelines for respect: Privacy, Responsiveness, Principles, Attitude, Simplicity and Transparency. Over a three month period, the research team compiled data based on whether the corporate and brand sites in question had privacy policies, opt-in or out policies, sent auto responders to email inquiries, communicated in a personalized or pleasant tone, provided contact information, and the like.

The conclusion: “The correlation between ‘Enronitis’ and a low customer respect is striking.” The study singled out firms including Merck, Worldcom, Dynegy and AOL as some of the worst culprits of customer disrespect.

Overall, the Retail sector fared best while the Insurance industry came in at a close second. Lowe's and Compaq Computer tied for best in Privacy; Alcoa was among the worst in the Transparency category; Merrill Lynch and Prudential Financial scored highest when it comes to Principles; GM and Allstate hit the Responsiveness mark while Ford rated lowest; PepsiCo came in last for Simplicity; and Pfizer, Goldman Sachs and American Express all got the worst possible scores in the Attitude category, determined by the overall “body language” of a website and a consumer’s experience with it.

Those in customer respect detention failed to respond to customer email inquiries in a personable manner (if at all), neglected to make contact info readily accessible, and didn’t post easily understood information regarding data collection and usage.

“The value of the report is it validates and strengthens the case of agencies when they engage with companies of this type,” opines Andrew Rosenman, director, Account Management at Bates Worldwide’s CCG.XM. “There’s a verisimilitude to it.” Rosenman hopes showing the report to certain clients just might nudge them towards seeing that “clarity and corporate values in communications” are essential.

Keith Alexander, project manager at Meredith Publishing and former senior producer at atmosphereBBDO has also dealt with advertiser clients “that don’t get the fact that [having a Web presence] is a two way communication.” To him, “Success should mean successfully interacting with your user.” Yet, he wonders, “Why are we still screwing up?”