An online buyer has come to the site and he has browsed through the categories and products. She is interested in purchase but wants to get clarity on a few items, typically about some features or delivery time or just a check that someone exists and responds on the site. What do you think is the probability that once answered the query she will buy from the site? … Very High , right? … And what do you think is the probability that her mail gets answered …you would have expected “High” as an answer but unfortunately that is not what happens. As per the study conducted by Benchmark Portal; Around 26%, of retailers failed to respond to e-mail inquiries from customers seeking to make a purchase. Nearly half, or 47%, of retailers failed to respond to customer e-mails within 24 hours, Surprisingly, 40% of online-only businesses, a category that includes online recruiters and shopping comparison sites, also failed to reply to customer e-mail inquiries. In a nut shell as high as 73% of the mails will not get answered within 24 hrs and the meanwhile the interested buyer will buy the product from some other site or at a retail outlet. Why does such an important communication either gets delayed or completely ignored. There may be multiple reasons behind such failure but the main responses that you can hear are” I am too stressed under work and there are zillion things that I have to do I just don’t have time: This excuse is mainly of pure online retailer who is small to medium size and has grown very quickly. He has been doing excellent sales and Marketing, Resourcing but trying to do everything himself has made him a bottleneck. The owner needs to invest quickly on the customer care and response. A good help on processes and peole can be very useful for business. We have people to look after that but I don’t know why the response is not sent : A reasonably big online retailer who still have to set up right processes to monitor the process flow of every email which comes in. A right checks and balances to trace the inefficiencies regarding the processes and sometimes people. Is that So? : A big e-retailer or possibly a multi channel shop owner. Probably he does not have write technology to aggregate the customer interaction. A good technology coupled with right processes and partner nay be of great help Some quick points: Segregate the mails. You may like to have different Ids or just in case you have a form filled up then different subjects. Thus you can allot right time to each category. Look into the process of answering to customer mails. A small tweaking may give excellent results How about some automation? If you can afford. It may be a great idea to outsource the work to experts who know the online retailing as well as how to transition the work