U.K. email response times up on 2006

The amount of time taken for companies to respond to email enquiries has risen in the last twelve months, according to new research carried out in the U.K. by Transversal, and consumers are finding it quicker to pick up the telephone.

by Helen Leggatt

Transversal asked ten questions, sent one email and telephoned 100 major UK websites in order to see how long it would take to receive a response. The companies were taken from a variety of companies in the banking, electronics, travel, insurance, telecoms, grocery, utilities, fashion retail and CD/DVD retail sectors.

The survey discovered that it took, on average, 46 hours to answer email enquiries, up from 33 hours in 2006. Not only that, just 50 percent of the websites approached supplied answers to questions asked.

Calls to contact centers were far more efficient with 42 percent answered within 60 seconds and 67 percent within 3 minutes.

"Despite the enormous growth in the online channel, across all sectors, our research shows that consumers are still suffering from substandard online service", said Davin Yap, Transversal’s CEO.

"While we've seen marginal improvements over the three years that we have carried out this analysis, a lack of a cohesive multi-channel strategy means in the majority of cases it is quicker to call than visit a company's website.”