Reliability
The reliability dimension is dependent on the availability of the web site or, in other
words, how easy it is to connect to the web site as a user. Many companies fail to achieve
100% availability and potential customers may be lost for ever, if they attempt to use the
site when it is unavailable.
Reliability of e-mail response is also a key issue, Chaffey and Edgar (2000) reported on
a survey of 361 UK web sites across different sectors. Of those in the sample, 331 (or 92
per cent) were accessible at the time of the survey and, of these, 299 provided an e-mail
contact point. E-mail enquiries were sent to all of these 299 web sites; of these, 9 unde-
liverable mail messages were received. It can be seen that at the time of the survey,
service availability was certainly not universal. Surprisingly, more recent surveys suggest
some improvement, but still indicate a poor quality of service overall. Transversal
(2005), the provider of the MetaFAQ software to answer customers’ responses online
found the following reliability of response:
Average number of questions answered:- Travel 1.2 out of 10
- Telecoms 1 out of 10
- Average all companies 2.1 out of 10
Percentage of companies that responded to e-mail: - Travel 40 per cent
- Telecoms 70 per cent
- Average 56 per cent
Average e-mail response time: - Travel 42 hours
- Telecoms 32 hours
- Average 33 hours.
Responsiveness
The same survey showed that responsiveness was poor overall: of the 290 successfully
delivered e-mails, a 62 per cent response rate occurred within a 28-day period. For over a
third of companies there was zero response!
Of the companies that did respond, there was a difference in responsiveness (exclud-
ing immediately delivered automated responses) from 8 minutes to over 19 working
days! Whilst the mean overall was 2 working days, 5 hours and 11 minutes, the median
across all sectors (on the basis of the fastest 50 per cent of responses received) was 1
working day and 34 minutes. The median result suggests that response within one work-
ing day represents best practice and could form the basis for consumer expectations.
Responsiveness is also indicated by the performance of the web site: the time it takes
for a page request to be delivered to the user’s browser as a page impression. Data from
monitoring services such as Keynote (www.keynote.com) indicate that there is a wide
variability in the delivery of information and hence service quality from web servers
hosted at ISPs, and companies should be careful to monitor this and specify levels of
quality with suppliers in service-level agreements (SLAs). Table 7.2 shows the standard
set by the best-performing sites and the difference from the worst-performing sites.SERVICE QUALITYINMA_C07.QXD 17/5/06 4:23 pm Page 337