Web service: still no cigar

2000-07-06

Oh dear, oh dear. Some of the largest corporations in the world have had a year to make improvements, but cannot yet claim to deliver the level of service that is expected of them. At the end of last week, \link{http://www.theregister.co.uk,The Register} reported a Rainer UK study into web responsiveness of the UK FTSE 100 and the US Fortune 100. By “Web responsiveness” read “how long it takes for a company to respond to an email sent via its Web site.” The conclusion of the study was that “40 per cent of the leading UK and US public companies are failing to take the Web seriously as a communications channel.” The results included the following:

·       Of the 200 companies, 148 provided a reasonable Web-based contact mechanism. Of these, 113 responded to the contact email within 30 days

·       The most responsive companies sent a reply in an order of minutes, with pole position being taken by the UK’s National Power

·       The three companies that took over 20 days to respond were all technology providers – Colt Telecom won the wooden spoon, followed closely by SBC Communications and Dell Computer.

Stephen Waddington, managing director of Rainer in London, was reported to be appalled by the findings of the study. “Two in every five of the Fortune 100 and FTSE 100 Web sites are little more than corporate wallpaper,” he claimed.

Waddington was right to be appalled. The Internet has been taking some stick in recent months, with some major casualties of eCommerce proving that clicks-and-mortar ain’t necessarily going to win over bricks-and-mortar. It is becoming abundantly clear that the success stories of the future will be those companies that can run successful businesses in both the physical and virtual domains.

It is fair to say that email is not the be-all and end-all of eCommerce. The cliché “the competition is only a click away” refers to difficulties purchasing goods and services, rather than getting a response to a electronic enquiry. However, this survey is a good indicator of the integration between clicks and bricks. A year ago, eCommerce was seen as a mechanism for reaching out to the global marketplace. Six months ago, it was driving the need for back-end application integration. Today, eCommerce is recognising what many businesses have always known - that customer service is the major differentiator. Companies achieving sub-hour response times on queries have clearly had the wherewithal to acknowledge this and to do something about it. The other companies have a stark choice: to learn the easy way, from surveys such as this, or the hard way as customers vote with their mice.

(First published 6 July 2000)