New York, NY, March 21, 2006--JupiterResearch, a division of Jupitermedia Corporation, has found that of the 92% of Web sites offering email as a customer support option, only 41% acknowledge receipt of customers' messages with automated email responses.
According to the JupiterResearch report entitled: "U.S. Customer Service & Support Metrics, December 2005," retail companies remained relatively consistent with results of previous years and other industries, such as finance and travel, showed significant decreases in auto-acknowledgement response performance. JupiterResearch is a leading authority on the impact of the Internet and emerging consumer technologies on business.
The research also shows that since 2000, the number of sites meeting a 24-hour threshold for email response continues to decrease. In fact, only 45% of sites resolved email inquiries within 24 hours. The most significant trend, however, is that 39% of sites took three days or longer to reply or did not respond at all. The number of these sites has grown 7% year over year from 2000 to 2005.
"Our research highlights a continued struggle among companies to master the email touch-point," said Zachary McGeary, associate analyst at JupiterResearch and author of the report. "This growing segment of unresponsive companies is damaging customer loyalty and retention. These companies must either invest in appropriate technology or deprioritize email as a service touch-point," added McGeary.
JupiterResearch pinpoints two main elements driving this unresponsiveness. The first is the continued rise in email volume, and the broad failure among contact centers to invest in appropriate email-handling technology with the automation necessary for handling email in large volumes. The second pertains to a consumer's propensity to contact the call centers when emails go unanswered.
"Failure to resolve requests via email is driving continued use of cost-intensive telephone work, negating any potential cost savings from handling inquiries via email," said David Schatsky, senior vice president of research at JupiterResearch. "This continued rise of unresponsiveness does not bode well for customer satisfaction, which is ironically a top driver of investment in most customer service-related technology," added Schatsky.
For additional information: www.jupiterresearch.com or contact Kieran Kelly at researchsales@jupitermedia.com.
