The survey is the fourth in an ongoing series into online customer service commissioned by California-based software vendor eGain and conducted by the Hewson Consulting Group. 214 major UK organisations across 12 major UK industries, including, finance, retail, automotive, adult entertainment and travel were included to assess whether the quality of service had significantly improved over the past six months.

Results show a 14 per cent improvement in response to customer email enquires from the financial services sector since the previous survey six months ago. A total of 36 personal finance, investment and stock dealing companies were contacted online under the guise of either an existing or prospective high value customer. Each organisation was asked a number of time-critical questions specifically targeted to their respective business, for example, "Could you please forward an information pack in respect of the maximum investment amount of £7,000 into the UK Growth Fund." Or "Could you please advise what would happen to my investment in an ISA in the event of my death."

The financial services sector delivered the highest response rates - the fastest response rate with 62 per cent answering enquires in 24 hours, and offered the most complete answers - 74 per cent offering a full or part answer. Fifty-four per cent of requested corporate literature were received within five working days, averaging 3.6 days to arrive.

Vice president international marketing at eGain, Ryan Rosenberg, comments: "Although the results indicate an improvement in the quality of online customer service, the level of service is still unacceptable...even for financial services one out of three customer emails are not responded to."