I’ve written a number of posts on customer service linking it to culture or a certain region. Asia, especially the Philippines, is perceived to be capable of giving a warmer service.

In one of Maria Palma’s (of CustomersAreAlways) customer service carnivals, Bill Belew of Rising Sun of Nihon compared the customer service he had experienced in Japan and in the U.S. He said, in Japan, it was all about establishing a relationship with the customer even after the sale, while in the U.S., customer service is something that every customer seeks and longs for.

Just this month, ebiz published a new market study by eGain Communications Corporation. According to the study, North American enterprises are significantly under-performing in customer service.

In that study, eGain evaluates the “customer service IQ” of companies with “SQ,” that is a service quotient, a new metric that uses a multidimensional framework to measure the customer service competence of companies. The cross-industry findings are:

• SQ for the overall market was 4.1 out of 10.0 with 68 percent of the companies in the “poor” or “below average” performance categories.
• Only 2 percent of the enterprises received “exceptional” SQ scores.
• A stunning 60 percent of the companies received a “poor” or “below average” score in the Multichannel Quotient and 46 percent received a “poor” or “below average” rating in the Multi-agent Quotient.
• 28 percent did not respond to email inquiries. Although 50 percent responded within 24 hours, the quantity of “poor” responses went up from 14 percent to 20 percent, compared to previous research conducted in 2004.

Read more…

If we were to apply this metrics to other countries, I’m sure we’ll find out similar results. I’m even thinking of putting out the survey to Philippine companies. We’ll see how this goes.

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