The Customer Service Representative Score for retailers was ahealthy 81, above the overall score of 77, reports CFI Group, whichcreated the Index. But the retailer number is down from the 85posted last year. In addition, 77% of retailer call center usersreport that their issues are resolved by call centers, placingretail second only to hotels among call center sectors (which alsoinclude banking, cable and satellite TV, cell phone service,government, insurance, and personal computers). However, thatfigure is a 10-percentage point decline from last year, the firstin which the study was conducted. Perhaps the major reason: asshoppers perform the more mundane tasks of ordering products overthe Internet, they turn to call centers for more complexinformation.

"To some degree, they may be a victim of their own success,"Sheri Teodoru, CEO of Ann Arbor, Mich.-based CFI Group, toldGlobeSt.com. "A lot of the simpler inquiries decreaseddramatically. People now call with product support questions [suchas lengths and sizes]."

CFI Group conducted an online survey of 2,200 qualifiedrespondents who had called a contact center within the previousmonth and interacted with a customer representative. The Universityof Michigan's American Customer Satisfaction Index methodology wasused to evaluate the respondents' satisfaction.