The international research and consulting firms has developed a qualitative and quantitative measurement – it's called the Customer Respect Index (CRI) -- of experiences of customers as they interact with a company via the Internet.
For this, the fifth study conducted on the industry, the overall average for all companies is a CRI of 7.0 for the fourth quarter of 2005 as compared to 6.6 for the most recent report in the second quarter of this year. The top ranked companies, with their CRI, are Overnite Transportation 8.7, Canada Post 8.0, Purolator 8.0, UPS 8.0 and the U.S. Postal Service 8.0.
A key finding, according to the Customer Respect Group, was improvement of clarity of policies explained to customers. “Transparency is an important first step to improving customer-oriented policies,” according to the Group. For the most part, leading companies in the study have now migrated to an “opt-in” strategy, which means they will not reuse personal information without the customer’s express consent.
Other observations include the insight that transportation, distribution and logistic firms have improved web customer functionality by including Frequently Asked Questions, site searches and site maps. Nearly two-thirds now include all three on their sites.
