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Less the half of the worlds best-known companies respond to e-mails requesting product information. The tepid response of the world's top 100 brands to messages from corporate Web site is the primary finding of a survey conducted by Common Sense Advisory (CSA), an independent research and analysis firm based in Chelmsford, Mass.
CSA used companies' info@e-mail address or Web forms provided on corporate Web sites to contact the top 100 global companies. The top 100 brands were taken from the 2003 Interbrand/BusinessWeek ranking of global corporations. Among the companies included were Colgate, Heineken, Kellogg's, and Toyota.
The survey measured the response to four types of questions. In addition, CSA sought to gauge how brands respond to the U.S. Latino community by e-mailing or submitting the same questions in Spanish and English.
CSA sent the following four types of messages to corporations:
Request for product information (42.7% response rate to English message, 46.9% response rate to Spanish message)
Compliment about the corporate Web site (35.4% English, 35.6% Spanish)
Minor complaint about the corporate Web site (49.4% English, 35.8% Spanish)
Inquiry about where to purchase the company's products (50% English, 33.3% Spanish)
The survey looked not just at the response rate, but also at the accuracy of the responses. Many of the responses to Spanish messages were in English. Regardless of the language, many companies did not address the question or issue of the message. Responses in English were more likely to be useful, outpacing useful responses in Spanish by as much as three to one.
Most of the companies in the survey used Web forms to facilitate communication. However, there was no significant difference in the response rate for e-mail vs. Web forms. Sixteen of the 100 companies in the survey provided no venue for online contact at all, either by Web form or e-mail, and two companies directed their Web site visitors to contact them by telephone.
Although companies can use Web sites and e-mail to communicate directly with customers and prospects, most squander this opportunity according to a statement by CSA lead analyst, Donald A. DePalma, Ph.D. "Given the Web's role as the first stop on the way to a relationship with your company, you will ignore Web inquiries at your own peril. However, our research showed that responding to prospects and customers appears to be a problem for most companies, whether the communication is in English or Spanish."
"Companies assign low priority to Web communications," said DePalma. "Low overall response rates, long latencies in answering, and the small percentage of useful responses bear witness to underinvestment in online customer service."
Just as the rate of response varied, so too did response time. Response to English messages ranged from several minutes to as much as 14 days. The quickest response to a Spanish message was one minute and the lengthiest was 38 days.
Request for product information (average response time to English message: 2.9 days, average response time to Spanish message: 2 days)
Compliment about the corporate Web site (English: 3.1 days, Spanish: 1.8 days)
Minor complaint about the corporate Web site (English: 1.6 days, Spanish: 3.8 days)
Inquiry about where to purchase the company's products (English: 1.7 days, Spanish: 2.8 days)
In a statement about conclusions that can be drawn from the survey, DePalma said, "These statistics reveal and solidify the fact that companies need to be proactive in deploying the tools and resources to effectively respond to customer inquiries and train employees how to maximize the productive use of such tools. Except for not being interested in communicating with prospects and customers, there is no excuse for remaining incommunicado on the best two-way channel for communication on the planet."
