Reports like this emphasise that a website is never a finished article – it doesn’t matter how sophisticated, there will always been room for improvement, bugs to fix etc. Interesting to see error messages still #1 issue – I wonder how many companies still have unfriendly 404 error pages? Online is unforgiving – we all expect it to just work, even though we all know that tech is prone to glitches.

The influence of social media on customer service is growing. I think the statement “direct communication with a company declined, with 25% of online adults who experience problems conducting online transactions then posting a complaint on a company website (down from 29% in 2008)” could be misleading – yes communication between people is rising exponentially but we are also still talking direct to companies, just through new channels like Twitter, Facebook, blogs etc.

I personally think communication with companies has increased – the nature and location has changed significantly but social media is giving people a greater opportunity to alert brands to their views/opinions. Brand monitoring is on the rise and real time search tools via tools like Hootsuite enable brands/customers to interact more effectively than via traditional online customer service channels like email.

I think what we are seeing now is more effective dialogue and real communication.

thanks
james

This post was mentioned on Twitter by veedesk: 77% of online consumers say they have experienced ecommerce website issues this year http://tinyurl.com/ykmkd93...