The online customer treatment consulting firm, Customer Respect Group (CRG), has published its 'Fall 2003 Online Customer Respect Study of Canadian Telecom Firms', in which the company reveals that Rogers Communications ranked highest for its treatment of online customers, while Aliant ranked lowest of the firms evaluated.
The study showed that 36% of Canadian telco's do not respond to all online enquiries, and that 37% have shared personal data with other companies without asking permission first. On average, according to CRG's report, the Canadian telecommunications firms rank behind their US counterparts in how they treat their online customers.
The study aims to bring objective measurement to the analysis of corporate performance from an online customer's perspective by assigning a Customer Respect Index (CRI) rating to each company on a scale of one to 10, with 10 being the highest achievable score. The CRI independently measures customers' online experience when interacting with companies via the Internet.
CRG studied US telco's in the summer of 2003, and Canadian firms in autumn 2003. While the Canadian firms averaged a CRI rating of 6.0, their US counterparts averaged 7.0. The CRI measure of 'simplicity' ranked highest for both US (8.0) and Canadian (6.9) firms, while both also scored lowest for 'principles' with the US achieving 6.0 and Canada achieving only 5.1.