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Web site e-mail can be a black hole
Don't hold your breath waiting for a snappy reply from most U.S. corporate giants.
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February 11, 1999 by Paul McNamara |
From...
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NOVATO, CALIF. (IDG) -- Texaco may answer your e-mail inquiry faster than it takes to fill your tank, but don't hold your breath waiting for a snappy reply from most other U.S. corporate giants.
As a matter of fact, a surprising number won't answer your missive at all, presuming they deign to provide an e-mail address in the first place.
That's the gist of test results showing the time it took the nation's 100 largest corporations to respond to a simple e-mail question sent to their Web sites. The test was conducted by Brightware, a software vendor that helps companies manage the volumes of e-mail their sites generate.
A Brightware researcher visited 100 sites, found the most obvious generic e-mail address and sent a message asking for the location of the corporate headquarters. Among the results:
- 15 answered within three hours. Texaco led the pack at four minutes.
- 22 managed to reply within a day.
- Four took more than a week, including Hewlett-Packard, which pulled up the rear at 23 days.
- 10 flat-out failed to respond, including MCI WorldCom, United Technologies and Home Depot.
- 26 companies provided no e-mail address or kept it well hidden. These include General Motors, Exxon and United Technologies. Another 12 required visitors to provide personal information before they could send e-mail.
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"I was surprised that a few companies did as well as they did," says Brightware CEO Chuck Williams. "I was also surprised there were 10 companies that actively invite e-mail questions on their Web site and just don't bother to answer them."
One of the latter insists that its failure was an aberration.
"This was an unfortunate circumstance, and we definitely try to get back to our customers as quickly as possible," says Charlie Sutlive, a spokesman for MCI WorldCom. "Our goal is to respond within 24 to 48 hours, [and] in December our response times averaged under 24 hours."
Mark Levitt, an analyst with Inter-national Data Corp. in Framingham, Mass., says, "Assuming the survey results are accurate, this indicates that many companies do not yet recognize e-mail as an important mode of communication. Responding to an e-mail within one to five days is reasonable. Anything longer should be considered excessive and a sign that the company is not truly open for business on the Web."