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Quote:For some online retailers, ‘e-mail customer service’ is an oxymoron

Terry Golesworthy recalls with dismay one online retailer’s explanation for poor e-mail customer service: all e-mails were still going to a member of the web site development team—which had set up the site but wasn’t responsible for customer interaction—who was deleting them.

What’s more, the retailer didn’t even know that customers’ e-mail inquiries weren’t getting through until Golesworthy mentioned the problem in a quarterly report published by his consultancy, The Customer Respect Group. “Nobody spotted it because there was no one managing or expecting e-mails to come in,” he says.

In another case, Golesworthy called a company which failed to respond to an e-mail inquiry. “They said they never check e-mail,” he says. “Well, why put it on your web site then?”...