Four hundred top financial institutions, as ranked by tier capital, were approached by Unisys/GFF researchers to validate online customer service levels. Researchers visited the banks' Web sites and, where the facility existed, requested product information via email or an online application form.

Results of the study found that 64 of the top 400 banks do not have a Web site (or the Web site could not be found). Only 41% of banks were contactable via their Web site and 43% of those failed to reply to email enquiries.

The survey shows the Emea region is leading the field with the greatest number of financial institutions on the Web (90%), closely followed by the Americas (88%) and then Asia Pacific (75%). All regions experienced a decrease in the number of Web sites since the 2000 survey.

Research shows 43% of the banks surveyed failed to respond to simple email enquiries, 6% took longer than a week to respond, 27% took between one and 24 hours and only 3% responded in less than one hour. The results show a slight improvement on last year however, which recorded 2% responding in less than one hour and 24% taking between one and four hours.

According to the survey, 29% of responses received were deemed unacceptable because they did not offer a satisfactory answer to the query, compared to 5% of unacceptable responses in the 2000 survey. A personal response was received from 55% of organisations showing no improvement on last year when the figure was 56%.

The Americas hold the fastest email response times out of all the regions, averaging 39 hours. Asia Pacific has experienced a disappointing increase in response times since last year's survey, averaging three days and two hours in 2001 compared to 40 hours in 2000.

Jim Moore, founder member of the GFF and vice president, Talson Associates, says: "The findings show a surprising complacency in banks worldwide, they simply are not concentrating their efforts on servicing customers to the best of their ability...The Internet is a device that should give added convenience to the consumer and organisations should be encouraging its use by improving response times and the quality of responses."

Further findings of the research include:
* out of the top 10 ranked institutions only 3 could be contacted electronically and only 2 of those responded - both responses were classed as unacceptable;
* 6% of the visited Web sites failed at some point;
* 10% of Web sites offered links to complimentary services from other suppliers; and
* only 10 out of the 336 Web sites offered a call back facility.