92% of websites offer email as a customer support option, according to a study by Jupiter Research. Of these, 41% acknowledge the receipt of customers’ messages with email responses.


92% of websites offer email as a customer support option, according to a study by Jupiter Research. Of these, 41% acknowledge the receipt of customers’ messages with email responses.

The report also revealed that 45% of the websites resolved inquiries by email within 24 hours. 39% of the sites took 3 days or more to reply, or didn’t reply to the email. This is a 7% increase year over year from 2000 to 2005.

Zachary McGeary, Associate Analyst at JupiterResearch, said: “Our research highlights a continued struggle among companies to master the email touch point. 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.” [Source]

According to Jupiter Research, there are two main reasons for the lack of response:

1) The continued rise in email volumes and failure among contact centers to invest in better email handling technology.
2) The customer’s tendency to contact call centers when emails are not answered.

David Schatsky, Senior Vice President of Research at JupiterResearch, said: “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.

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.” [Source]

For more information on the report, titled “US Customer Service & Support Metrics, December 2005”, click here.

 

 

 

 

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