Nextel Pick Top Spot in Customer Relationship Survey

The Customer Respect Group, an international research and consulting firm that focuses on how corporations treat their customers online, has released the results of its Summer 2003 Online Customer Respect Study of the telecommunications and networking firms that rank among the USA's largest 1000 companies. In addition, the study included leading wireless firms.

Overall, MCI and Nextel scored highest in Customer Respect. Nextel also scored highest in the Winter 2003 Study.

The study is the only to bring objective measure to the analysis of corporate performance from an online customer's perspective. It assigns a Customer Respect Index (CRI) to each company. The Customer Respect Index is a qualitative and quantitative in-depth analysis and independent measure of a customer's online experience when interacting with companies via the Internet.

The Telecommunications and Networking sector was last surveyed in the Winter 2003 Online Customer Respect Study of the country's largest 500 companies (versus those among the 1000 companies surveyed this summer). Among the trends: While the overall CRI dropped to 7.0 from 7.3, the Responsiveness CRI improved, as fully 10% more (77% vs. 67%) firms responded to Web site inquiries from researchers. As a result, the Responsiveness CRI moved up to 6.5 from 6.0.

"While we were heartened to see an improvement in responsiveness, 23% of surveyed firms still don't respond to Web site inquiries," said Terri McNulty, CEO of The Customer Respect Group. "Beyond responsiveness, surveyed firms should focus on key areas such as clarity of privacy principles and interaction with online customers if they wish to see improved CRI scores and an increase in satisfied customers. We also found MCI's results to be encouraging; given its troubled past, we believe its recently designed Web site sends a positive message to potential and current customers."

The highest ranked organization within the sector was MCI and Nextel Communications (CRI: 9.1 out of 10), while the lowest was Citizens Communications (CRI: 4.1). Beyond these scores, the report conveys in great detail improvement opportunities for each company."

Posted to the site on 21st August 2003