Failure to respond to email is lousy way to keep customers

Benchmark Portal and eGain reported in a recent study that 41% of large U.S. and Canadian Companies didn't respond to email messages indicating a high-value intent to purchase.

Amazing.

The study was conducted on 300 U.S. and Canadian Companies with over $250mm in annual revenue. The study went on to point out that the Retail sector demonstrated the best response with 53% answering within 24 hours. Financial services and Telecommunications were the worst with 59% and 40%, respectively, not bothering to respond at all.

Call me crazy, but how hard is it for a business to respond to an email inquiry within 24 hours? At the very least, do what some in this study did and put an auto-responder in place to acknowledge receipt and set expectations for follow-up.

This reminds me of an experience some years back with the original (and now-defunct), eToys. I had ordered an online gift-certificate for a friend, who after 3-weeks hadn't received his notification. I followed eToys email inquiry protocol, and 1 week later received an email response about the benefits of using eToys--nothing at all about my inquiry. It took 4 phone calls to resolve the problem.

What a way to treat customers, huh?

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