It Would Be Funny If It Wasn't Sad...

I ran across this item on Tekrati the other day entitled "CRM Vendors Ignore 27 Percent of Customer Email Questions, Says The Customer Respect Group". It's worth looking at since the purpose of the Customer Respect Group is to identify the online experience's success (or failure) for companies in multiple areas. Their criteria for the index includes looking at the online experience for:

• simplicity (well designed for easy navigation, visuals, and search)
• responsiveness (speed of response to customer inquiries)
• transparency (policy that clearly states how personal data is being used including easy to read)
• principles (personal data protection and flexibility on the use for the customer
• attitude (how the customer feels about the company after visiting its site, how the company treats the customer, tone etc.)
• privacy (how is personal data used?)

The ratings are from something to something - hard to tell - but below 5.0 needs improvement; from 6.25 - 6.99 is good; and above 7.0 is superior. Not one CRM company came out above 7.0 but salesforce.com led the pack with a 6.7 with RightNow and SAP following close behind. There were a few surprises in the ratings. First that SAP ranked so highly. I've been a fan of theirs for years, but public perception hasn't been one of a responsive company - though I've never seen nor found that they weren't. Theyve been good to me and the customers and the industry analysts and their partners for the last several years after a serious revamp of their structures to overcome some of the bad relationships of the past. I'm glad to see that they are doing as well as they are. Second, that SugarCRM, the company determined to commercialize open source CRM and doing a pretty good job of it, though I STILL have questions about their pricing and their business model, came in dead last with 4.5. That means they are least customer responsive - a cultural paradigm that doesn't square with the open source world which is theoretically built on the idea that user community builds innovation. Another surprise Oracle On-Premise scored 6.1 in the good range - entirely antithetical to the experience that Oracle has provided to the industry and its customers forever. Who'da thunk that one?

All that said, I don't know the people who did this survey - the Customer Respect Group. Here's a link to their version of this report at their site. Tool around the site awhile and see what you think. Are they valid? I don't know. They could be another Nucleus Research or Aberdeen for all I know - two analyst firms I don't trust as far as I can throw them. And they are VERY heavy. They could also be totally trustworthy. You tell me.