Statistically Speaking

According to "The 2005 Walker Loyalty Report for Communications Services," 41 percent of enterprise customers are truly loyal to their wireless service providers, and 31 percent are high-risk customers with low commitment and typically do not intend to keep doing business with their current providers. Trapped customers, those who intend to keep buying because they don't see a valid alternative, account for 26 percent of those surveyed.

AMR Research's "Customer Management Spending Report, 2004-2006," found that 40 percent of all companies are planning to purchase hosted CRM app solutions over the next year, including 28 percent of large companies (5,000+ employees), 39 percent of midtier businesses (1,000 to 4,999 employees), and 41 percent of SMBs. Also, 49 percent of all companies will use hosted sales or e-commerce apps within the next 12 months. Additional research by AMR showed 50 percent of companies surveyed plan to increase their CRM budgets in 2006, and total CRM budgets will increase by an average of 8.2 percent from 2005 to 2006.

The Customer Respect Group's "Second Quarter 2005 Online Customer Respect Study" contends that 27 percent of all emails sent to high-tech companies were ignored completely, and only half of all emails were responded to within a day. High-tech firms overall supplied less helpful answers than other industries, with 40 percent of all responses considered less than very helpful.

A study conducted by Lucid Marketing and EmailLabs on mothers and email marketing says that 56 percent of mothers determine which emails to open based on both name and subject line. When asked why they sign up for newsletters 41 percent said "to receive information that is relevant to me." Full-time moms are 43 percent more likely to look to subscribe to newsletters. Working moms are 71 percent more likely to want daily newsletters. Fifty-seven percent of moms check their email more than twice a day and 53 percent of them only check their accounts during the week.

According to the J.D. Power and Associates 2005 Wireless Customer Care Performance Study, the average initial reported hold time on calls to the customer service department is 3.44 minutes, compared to just slightly more than 9 minutes before speaking to a representative at a retail store. Fifty-four percent of wireless users have contacted the customer service department for assistance within the past year, a slight increase from 2004's 52 percent. Among those who contact their carriers, 71 percent do via telephone and 26 percent via the carriers' retail stores. Email/Internet contacts represented 3 percent.

Satisfaction with e-government sites, as well as the specific category of portals and department main sites, increased 1 percent, to 72.6, from the previous quarter. Other segments measured include news and information sites, up 1.4 percent to 72.5; e-commerce and transactions, unchanged at 71.3; and recruitment and careers, down 0.7 percent to 77.2.

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