Jaded by too much Email in our Inbox?
Jun 20 2005
The quick summary of the study below made me think of how mainstream email has become. Do you respond to all of your email? You may listen to all of your voicemails, but do you respond to every single one? I find that if I don’t respond to email within a few hours, it gets buried in my inbox. Please add a comment to this entry after reading the blurb below.
Small-to-midsize companies are not responding to customer email as they should – even less so than enterprise-level firms – according to a study cited by Internet Retailer. The study determined that 51 percent of SMBs don’t respond to customer emails at all, versus 41 percent of larger enterprises surveyed last year. Moreover, 70 percent of the smaller companies failed to respond to emails within 24 hours, compared with 61 percent of enterprises.
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June 21st, 2005 at 12:18 am
My most infuiriating experience of e-mail non-response was not from a SMB, but rather, one of the leading online, rent-DVDs-through-the-mail companies.
When will companies, small or large, come to understand they need to respond to customer e-mails just as they would to customer telephone calls? In this particular case, however, the company proved to be just as inept at returning calls — it didn’t respond to either (and I sent / left *very* cordial, professional, warm & fuzzy messages). You’d think a company whose business model revolves around online contact would be dialed into e-communication. But not in this case.
So I quit them. Bastards.
Shrortly thereafter, their stock hit rock bottom (now *that’s* consumer vindication).
As they circle the wagons and renew their strategy, I’m hoping they reconsider their one-to-one customer communication strategy.