If customer care and the old-fashioned virtue of common courtesy become the key battleground between retailers and e-tailers, then many web companies may lack the necessary weapons, according to a survey published yesterday.

Ovum consultancy said that when its researchers went undercover as eager, high spending e-shoppers and contacted some 114 retailers, the results were disappointing and at times depressing.

The survey, conducted in September, found:

•Only one third of companies which invited customers to submit inquiries by email or by completing a form on the website responded at all;

•Of those which did respond, a third took more than 24 hours to do so;

•More than a quarter of high street companies had no phone number listed at their website;

•Of the 97 companies inviting emails or providing a web form, only eight were able to find the initial inquiry when the researcher phoned to follow it up.

Forty four of the companies were dot.com start-ups and the rest were "bricks and clicks" retailers - high street names with a web presence. "In most areas, performance was universally poor, across the dot.com and 'bricks and clicks' categories," the report said.

It warned that this was damaging to the reputation of a trusted brand and pointed to a bleak future for those which did not change their ways.

"Moving online but giving customers slow or non-existent service which is completely inconsistent with their experiences offline will seriously damage the customers' view of the company," the consultancy warned.

Computing experts say a big part of the problem lies in the software available for customer support online - an industry that is still in its infancy and where glitches are common.
Reuters