According to a study conducted by The Customer Respect Group, transport and logistics companies score lowest among sectors studied this year, with a third failing to respond to online queries, and an alarming number admitting to sharing customers’ data without permission.

The Customer Respect Group, an international research and consulting firm that focuses on how corporations treat their customers online, has released the results of its Spring 2004 Online Customer Respect Study of 25 transportation and logistics firms that rank among the country’s largest 1,000 companies.

The study is the only one to bring objective measure to the analysis of corporate performance from an online customer's perspective. It assigns a Customer Respect Index (CRI™) rating to each company on a scale of 0 to 10, with 10 being the highest achievable score. The CRI is a qualitative and quantitative in-depth analysis and independent measure of a customer's online experience when interacting with companies via the Internet.

Of the companies audited for this report, 28% do not provide an online privacy policy. A shocking 37% of companies contacted did not reply to any enquiries. Of equal concern, perhaps, is that of the companies that sent an Autoresponse promising a reply, 40% followed up only half of the time. By failing to follow up, these companies send out a clear message that they do not value their customers' communication.

72% have privacy policies on their sites explaining how customers' personal data is being used. Of those that do, 11% need to be more explicit about how they use personal data, 67% do not collect data or use collected data only for internal purposes, 11% share data with affiliates or subsidiaries and 11% share data without permission from users.

64% use cookie technology. Of these, 19% provide a full explanation of how cookies can be disabled, 38% say that they can be disabled, 25% explain how cookies work, and 19% don't mention cookies at all.

Overall, Yellow Corporation scored highest with 9.8 out of 10, while Werner Enterprises scored lowest with 1.6. The sector's average at 5.9 is the lowest among those studied to date in 2004 by The Customer Respect Group.

This is how the companies scored out of 10:

Yellow Corporation (9.8), UPS (8.7), Amerco (8.4), JB Hunt Transport Services (8.2), Polaris Industries (7.7), Roadway (7.3), C H Robinson Worldwide and Con-Way (7.2 each), US Postal Service and EGL (7.1 each), DHL (7.0), USFreightways Corp and FedEx Corp (6.6 each), Ryder System and Harley-Davidson (6.0 each), Matson Navigation Co (5.9), ABF Freight System (5.7), Brunswick Corp (4.9), Landstar System (4.6), Swift Transportation Co (4.3), Expeditors International of Washington (3.1), Hub Group and Pacer International (2.7 each), BAX Global (2.3), and Werner Enterprises (1.6).

"Transportation and logistics firms have some work to do with their online presence," said Roger Fairchild, president of The Customer Respect Group. "Most have figured out how to create sites that are fairly simple to navigate, but haven't paid attention to other important areas such as responsiveness, privacy and principles. Frankly, the fact that more than one-third don't respond to any inquiries and more than half don't respond to all inquiries displays an unacceptable attitude toward online customers. And when visitors to Web sites leave because of an unsatisfactory experience, two out of every three go to a competitor's site."