A contrasting picture of the general quality of customer service on the internet has emerged over the past few weeks. While new research suggests online firms are increasingly aware of the need to constantly improve customer engagement, evidence persists that many e-merchants are still failing to monitor the usability of their sites.

The latest annual Customer Engagement Report from web consultancies cScape and E-consultancy found that over three-quarters of organisations said the importance of online customer engagement had increased in the past 12 months. Ninety per cent said it was “essential” or “important” to their organisations, while 86 per cent recognised the importance of a consistent online and offline customer experience.

Linus Gregoriadis, head of research at E-consultancy, said that companies are now realising that it is important to not only engage with customers on their own sites by allowing user-generated content, but also by “going where the customers are going to be”, such as social networking sites. “We seemed to have tapped into something with this report ­ the concept of customer engagement is more widely talked about now and has captured a lot of interest,” he said.

He added that there is a great deal of interest in the mobile channel as a means of engaging better with customers, with nearly two-thirds of respondents believing that this will be important for them in the next three years.

But Gregoriadis cautioned that it is important when talking about customer engagement for organisations to have in place some means of assessing their success, such as monitoring the number of downloads or comments posted.

However, many e-commerce firms are still struggling to retain customers because they are failing to track the consumer experience of their sites and act on any shortcomings, according to experts. Geoff Galat of customer experience management firm Tealeaf said that according to his firm’s latest figures, around 90 per cent of UK customers experienced problems completing transactions online last year.

In addition, 88 per cent of users said they were not willing to accept lower levels of customer service online than they would in person. “These figures highlight a significant disconnect between customer expectations and what sites are able to deliver,” argued Galat. “A lot of firms are being naive because they think online is growing so fast that nothing can be going wrong.”

However, customer expectations are increasing so that many retailers may find themselves shunned for good if they deliver a bad experience. Tealeaf found that 37 per cent of those who experienced problems when trying to complete an online transaction said they tend to give up on a sale entirely if they run into difficulties rather than try again.

Galat added that many firms crucially fail to provide customers with a suitable contact point if they run into trouble on the web site. According to the research, nearly half of respondents said their issues were not resolved by call centre staff, while three-quarters complained that agents lacked key knowledge.

“These firms are encouraging people to contact them but not equipping their [call centre] staff to be of help,” said Galat. “There’s a disconnect between the customer and call centre, and the call centre and the business because the call centre staff aren’t able to offer feedback to the business about what works and what doesn’t.”

But although IT often struggles to cope with the complexity of supporting a modern e-commerce shopping environment, the responsibility should ultimately lie with the business, he added.

“The business needs to pay attention to the feedback from IT and IT needs to be strong enough to say no or yes [to suggestions], and find better ways to measure their sites,” said Galat.

Malcolm Duckett of customer experience firm Speed Trap argued that monitoring tools are important because “what can seem blindingly obvious to the web developer may be a mystery to the user”.

“Today it’s about using your understanding of the customer to do intelligent things like real-time personalisation, customer engagement and building customer profiles,” Duckett added.

In addition, research from customer service software vendor Transversal has found that many firms are ill-equipped to answer customer questions sent via their web site. “When this [mode of contact] fails, the customer often calls an overstretched call centre,” said Transversal’s Dee Roche. “This is not ideal when firms want more people to transact online.”

A dynamic source of information for the customer and call centre agent could alleviate some of these problems, because static FAQs are of little value to customers, Roche argued. “If the site has an interactive mechanism, you’re starting to let the customer have some control over their experience,” she added.