The Customer Respect Group: First Quarter 2006 Report

The Customer Respect Group, an international research and consulting firm that focuses on how corporations treat their online customers, today released findings from its First Quarter 2006 Online Customer Respect Study of the High-Technology and Computer Industry.

The study is the only one to bring an objective and consistent measure to the analysis of corporate performance from an online customer’s perspective. It assigns a Customer Respect Index (CRI™) rating for each company. The Customer Respect Index is a qualitative and quantitative in-depth analysis and an independent measure of a customer’s experience when interacting with companies via the Internet.

Overall, the High-Technology industry scored a CRI rating of 6.4, showing no change from the previous report six months ago. The best sector was Internet Services at 7.0, led by eBay with a rating of 8.4. The worst performing sector was Computer and Data Services at 6.1 despite an excellent rating for Electronic Data Services (EDS) with a report-best rating of 8.7. Surprisingly, 37 percent of companies reviewed received a lower rating than six months ago, a concerning trend. Just 23 percent of companies improved their performance. The most improved company was EDS, up 23 percent. NETGEAR, a previously good corporate communicator, saw its rating decrease the most due in part to a degradation in responsiveness.

The top-rated High technology and Computer Industry companies and their CRI rating include the following:

1 Electronic Data Systems www.eds.com

2 eBay www.ebay.com

3 Xerox www.xerox.com

4 Intuit www.intuit.com

Click here for a complete table of the companies evaluated and the resulting ratings