"What we found was that more e-mails were being answered than previously -- 95 percent of all e-mails are answered from the travel industry, which is very high compared with other industries, where we typically see 75 percent answered. And last time, only about 91 percent were answered, so they're getting there," said Terry Golesworthy, the group's president. "But the overall quality of e-mail responses has gone down a bit. We deemed about 68 percent of the e-mail responses were very helpful and relevant and addressed the question specifically, but that's gone down to just over 50 percent. Some companies have systems in place so they can answer questions well and they can answer them quickly, but what we've [generally] found is the quicker the response, the better the response."
Only seven companies out of 42 airline and travel companies studied received an "excellent" rating, while five received a poor rating, according to "The First Quarter 2006 Online Customer Respect Study of Airline and Travel Industry." Scores for the study range from a low of 1 to a high of 10.
Overall, airlines and travel companies scored a customer respect index (CRI) rating of 5.9. A CRI rating of 7.0 is considered excellent, and under 5.0 is considered poor.
The top-scoring companies overall were Expedia Inc. and Marriott International, both of which earned scores of 7.4; Travelocity.com LP, 7.2; Cheaptickets.com, 7.1; Enterprise Rent-A-Car Co., 7.0; Northwest Airlines Corp., 7.0; and Orbitz LLC, with a score of 7.0.
Golesworthy said end users are more concerned about privacy and security than they were last year.
"What we found is that the industry in general is doing a lot more cross-marketing internally," he said. "The number of [companies] using a consumer's data internally has gone up. Now, 71 percent of all companies are going to routinely remarket to you whether you say you want them to or not. That's quite a high percentage. [In other industries,] we see that typically in the 40 percent-to-50 percent range."
In addition, the number that share personal data with outside companies including business partners has also gone up to 41 percent from 31 percent, Golesworthy said. "This breaks a trend where we've been seeing this number come down consistently [in other industries] over the past couple of years," he said. "But we've seen the airline and travel industry actually go the other way."
The travel and airline sites rated most trustworthy were those of Expedia, Intercontinental Hotels Group PLC and Southwest Airlines Co., according to the study. The most generally usable sites were those of Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd., Celebrity Cruise Line and Continental Airlines Inc. The best sites for one-on-one communications were Web-based resellers Cheaptickets.com, Travelocity.com and Orbitz, according to the study.
The highest-scoring company in terms of simplicity was Celebrity Cruise Line with a score of 9.2 compared with the industry average of 6.6, and in the area of attitude, Marriott topped the group with a score of 7.8 compared with the industry average of 5.5. In communication, Cheaptickets.com was first with a score of 8.9 versus 5.5 industrywide; in transparency, Expedia scored highest (8.5 versus 6.3); and in privacy, Southwest Airlines topped the list (8.2 versus 6.0).
Golesworthy said even though 46 percent of customers say that they have no patience for Web sites that are hard to use, hard to navigate, slow to load, difficult to read or hard to find what they're looking for, only 23 percent of travel sites limited their home pages to 150K or less; 57 percent have no site-search capability; and 90 percent of sites do not use resizable pages or resizable text.
"Our research shows us that if a customer has a poor Web experience, this will carry over to the company reputation and ongoing loyalty," Golesworthy said in a statement on the company's Web site.
"There are many companies that clearly could do better in respect for the customer and thus protection of their brands, their image and customer loyalty. On the other hand, this has opened the door for forward-thinking companies to stand out and carve increased market penetration by better addressing customer concerns. The travel industry is going through a period of major changes. The Web is -- and will continue to be -- one of the bigger drivers."
According to the Customer Respect Group's Web site, the organization draws its conclusions by "constantly interviewing representative samples of adult Internet users and by benchmarking actual practices of more than 2,500 corporate websites across a spectrum of industries."