Slow email response fails customers

by Dr Tony Berg

Email is officially the UK's worst channel for customer service, according to research from eService provider Transversal (www.transversal.com). Less than half of the routine customer service questions emailed to 100 leading organisations were answered adequately.

The average time to respond to email was nearly 2 days , with 28 percent of organisations not even replying at all, a major deterioration since 2006.

Transversal's study evaluated the ability of 100 leading UK companies to answer simple routine questions, via email their website and by phone. While websites averaged 5 out of 10 correct responses and 55 per cent of phone calls were answered within 2 minutes, email responses continue to deteriorate year on year.

Many companies simply use email to push customers to other channels rather than attempting to provide a useful answer.

The usefulness of email replies has deteriorated year on year in 80 percent of sectors.

However fast, accurate responses are possible; 80 percent of CD/DVD retailers provided correct answers, with the quickest received within one hour.

The fastest successful response was from a consumer electronics company which answered the question within 10 minutes. A rival company in the same sector took 13 days to respond to the same query.

The wonders of email and the ever growing inbox may be the Achilles heel for many of us in the Internet age.

Do you have a system in place to manage email responses?

Should we be planning to bring back the secretary position?

Dr Tony Berg
Managing Director - Realnet Ltd
tonyberg@realnet.co.uk

Article originally published in Cambridge Network Connection magazine Issue 40, 01/04/2008.

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