UK Telcos Worst at Replying to Customer E-Mails

According to research announced by eGain, 38 percent of major UK companies are ignoring e-mails from their customers, resulting in lost revenues. Two-thirds of companies (67%) fail to deliver an acceptable response to customer e-mails.

eGain's research revealed additional customer service weaknesses. Of those companies that did respond to customer service e-mails, only a third (36%) responded within 24 hours and only 16 percent within one hour. This is a downturn from similar research conducted by eGain in 2004, when almost half (48%) responded within 24 hours.

Additionally only 19 per cent of responding companies provided an accurate response to their customers' queries. Only 18 per cent of companies sent an automatic acknowledgement as an initial response to the customer?s e-mail.

The telecommunications sector performed the worst with 58 percent of companies ignoring e-mails and 15 percent offering no e-mail facility via their website. Less than 15 percent of telcos answered within one hour and this stayed the result for the percentage of companies answering within 24 hours. Of those that did reply, almost a half delivered a poor to fair response. The retail sector was the best overall performer with a 70 percent response rate, meaning that still one in three customer emails are being ignored. 49 percent of the responses actually delivered, were of a good quality.

eGain's analysts posed as prospective customers in December 2006 and sent e-mails requesting information on high value products and services through web forms or e-mail addresses published on company websites. The companies were evaluated on their response times and the quality of their responses. 125 major UK companies were assessed covering the retail, telecommunications, financial services and local government sectors.

"The lack of importance placed on customer e-mails is a worrisome trend, especially in such a highly competitive sector as telcos. Given the increasing popularity of electronic channels with customers, this downward trend in email customer service responsiveness and quality is shocking," commented Andrew Mennie, General Manager and Vice President EMEA eGain. "The failings uncovered by this research, as well as the gulf developing between best and worst performers, show many telcos need vast improvements in their email customer service if they are to effectively compete into the future," he concluded."

Posted to the site on 2nd May 2007