Citation
(2004), "No respect", International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management, Vol. 53 No. 5. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijppm.2004.07953eab.007
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2004, Emerald Group Publishing Limited
No respect
According to a study by The Customer Respect Group, transport and logistics companies score lowest among sectors studied this year, with a third failing to respond to online queries, and an alarming number admitting to sharing customers’ data without permission.
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 Spring 2004 Online Customer Respect Study of 25 transportation and logistics firms that rank among the USA’s largest 1,000 companies.
The study is the only one to bring objective measure to the analysis of corporate performance from an online customer’s perspective. It assigns a Customer Respect Index (CRI™) rating to each company on a scale of 0 to 10, with 10 being the highest achievable score. The CRI is a qualitative and quantitative in-depth analysis and independent measure of a customer’s online experience when interacting with companies via the Internet.
Of the companies audited for this report, 28 per cent do not provide an online privacy policy. Unbelievably, 37 per cent of companies contacted did not reply to any enquiries. Of equal concern, perhaps, is that of the companies that sent an autoresponse promising a reply, 40 per cent followed up only half of the time. By failing to follow up, these companies send out a clear message that they do not value their customers’ communication.
A total of 72 per cent have privacy policies on their sites explaining how customers’ personal data are being used. Of those that do, 11 per cent need to be more explicit about how they use personal data, 67 per cent do not collect data or use collected data only for internal purposes, 11 per cent share data with affiliates or subsidiaries and 11 per cent share data without permission from users.
A total of 64 per cent use cookie technology. Of these, 19 per cent provide a full explanation of how cookies can be disabled, 38 per cent say that they can be disabled, 25 per cent explain how cookies work, and 19 per cent don’t mention cookies at all.
The sector’s average CRI at 5.9 is the lowest among those studied to date in 2004 by The Customer Respect Group.