Study: Customers still looking for respect at company Web sites

Computerworld - A new study from The Customer Respect Group shows that many Fortune 100 companies still have work to do on improving their treatment of customers online.
The report, called the 2003 Online Customer Respect Study, will be released June 27 by the Cork, Ireland-based international research and consulting firm. The 330-page study ranks the largest 100 companies in the U.S. by their responses to online inquiries from customers and in terms of their privacy policies and ease of use of Web sites. Also considered were open and honest online customer policies, respect of customer data and navigational simplicity.
The top-rated site in the latest report belongs to hardware and software vendor Hewlett-Packard Co., which scored 9.7 on a scale of 10. Some 25 attributes were used to determine the scores, according to the firm.
Rounding out the top five finishers were drugstore chain Walgreen Co., with a score of 9.4, and retailer Costco Wholesale Corp., chip maker Intel Corp. and Dell Computer Corp., all with scores of 9.3.
The bottom five finishers on the list were Marathon Oil Corp., with a 4.1 score; aerospace vendor Northrup Grumman Corp., with 4.0; food service company Sysco Corp., with 4.0; holding company Berkshire Hathaway Inc., with 3.5; and IT vendor Ingram Micro Inc., with 2.8.
The overall average score for the Fortune 100 was 7.0, according to the firm.
The results, said Thorsten Ganz, vice president of research at The Customer Respect Group, show that "in general, companies still don't treat their online customers as well" as their brick-and-mortar store customers.
But that's a dangerous mistake, he said. "The competition is only a click away" if a customer has a bad experience on a Web site, Ganz said. "Online customers should not be treated like second-class citizens."
The problems turn up in many ways, from taking too long to answer online inquiries from customers to never answering at all, he said.
The firm sells its reports for $12,000 a year, or $4,750 for a single report, so companies can use the information to make beneficial changes, he said. Some companies have purchased the data, but Ganz said he wasn't sure if they have made changes based on the information.
Carol Baroudi, an analyst at Baroudi Bloor in Arlington, Mass., said the study's finding is correct that some companies still need to do more to treat online customers better. But, she said, Consumer Respect erred in using the Fortune 100 companies rather than the top 100 online retailers for its analysis.
Some companies that