Microsoft tops online customer respect study

Bellevue, Wash.--Microsoft Corp. scored the highest in the third annual "Online Customer Respect Study," to be released Monday by Customer Respect Group. The study looked at how the country’s largest 100 companies treat their customers online.

Microsoft scored a customer respect index of 8.7. Supervalu scored the lowest, with a CRI of 2.7. The average score was 6.2.

For the study, the group interviewed a representative sample of the adult Internet population about various sites’ ease of navigation, responsiveness, privacy, attitude, transparency and other attributes.

"While we've seen many firms make positive improvements to their sites over this time, too many still aren't taking the Web seriously enough from a business perspective or aren't knowledgeable about best practices,” Roger Fairchild, president of Customer Respect Group, said in a statement. “For example, about one-third still aren't responding to all Web site inquiries.”

--Sean Callahan