'Customers, schmustomers!' E-tailers don't give a monkey's

UK e-tailers are neglecting their customers by failing to respond to online queries.

By Kate Hanaghan, 19 April 2001 16:46

NEWS Not only do online businesses set themselves generous deadlines of up to two days response time but they don't even know whether they are meeting their targets. Atmyside, a company which provides customer interaction management software, analysed 400 UK-based e-tailers over a 12 month period and found that only a measly five per cent set and then monitored the level of service their customers receive. But it gets worse. As an indication of just how out of touch marketing directors really are with customers, 90 per cent of those questioned admitted they didn't even know how long their company took to respond to customers. Their attitude is to just assume they are keeping within the agreed timeframe, according to Atmyside. Joe Murray, joint-CEO of Atmyside, explained that the greatest mistake e-tailers have made is to concentrate on content rather than the ability to interact. He claimed that, unlike the US, when it came to cost cutting the UK gives the least priority to customer service. Murray said: "We were gobsmacked when we discovered that 90 per cent of companies think waiting for 48 hours is acceptable."

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