Poor Web Response from Transport Sector

Online customer experience specialist The Customer Respect Group has released the results of its Fall 2004 study of the largest Transportation & Logistics firms. There are some notable exceptions, but overall ratings are low and the sector fares particularly badly on the issue of responsiveness.

UPS scored highest among Mail, Package & Freight Delivery companies, Greyhound in Transportation & Logistics, Polaris Industries in Transportation Equipment firms and Yellow Corporation among Trucking & Truck Leasing firms.

The study assigns a Customer Respect Index (CRI(tm)) rating to each company on a scale of 0 to 10 - this combines qualitative and quantitative in-depth analysis and provides an independent measure of a customer's experience interacting with companies on the 'Net. The complete online customer experience is divided into attributes in six main groups: Simplicity (ease of navigation), Responsiveness (quick and thorough responses to inquiries), Privacy (respects customer privacy), Attitude (customer-focus of site), Transparency (open and honest policies) and Principles (values and respects customer data). The overall Index score for each site combines these six. Recent refinements include measuring respect for individuals with disabilities.

The CRI average for the Transportation & Logistics sector is 5.6 compared to 6.2 for all companies in the Fortune 100 - a direct comparison is difficult because of the inclusion of industry-specific questions, but this seems a significant shortfall. Notably, more than one-third of surveyed firms share personal data with external parties without permission, while one half do not respond to all inquiries.

Better responsiveness and an improved privacy policy helped UPS edge out Yellow for overall first place in the study. Overnite Transportation marked its first inclusion in this report by a very good performance, doing well in most indices. Other big gainers and losers were Landstar, rising into the top 10; C.H. Robinson, down from seventh place to 19th following a decline in Responsiveness; and J.B. Hunt Transport Systems which dropped from fourth to 14th in the overall table partly due to more stringent standards applied this time round.

Six companies, including four of the bottom six in the overall table (see below), fail to provide a privacy policy, despite the Online Privacy Protection Act of 2003, which was made law in California on July 1, 2004, which may have serious implications for them. All six scored poorly in Responsiveness.

Company President Terry Golesworthy says that building trust among customers 'is equally important for companies that do not transact commercial business online, as more and more consumers are turning to the Internet to research products and services before buying them offline. Based on our findings, Transportation & Logistics firms that use best practices to improve their Web sites will see a dramatic return on their investments'.

Surveyed firms receive the best overall rating (CRI: 6.7) for Simplicity and the worst (CRI: 3.8) for Responsiveness. Some 18% of firms did not respond to any online inquiries, 32% responded to c. half and the remainder to all - in the middle group, a third of responses happened more than four days later. Only eighteen percent of all sector firms use Autoresponder technology, in which emails are automatically sent to users to confirm the receipt of their inquiry and let them know when they should expect a response. Some 55% of companies provide email forms for online inquiries, 41% provide email addresses and 4% provide no online contacts.

The group's web site is at www.customerrespect.com

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.

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