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The Fasthosts' "Customer Service Email Study" found that the average consumer is only willing to wait up to 24 hours for a reply, with 19% abandoning their request after only 12 hours.

More than 30% of consumers surveyed said they regularly wait three days for a reply, while 9% have waited up to a week, while 2% reported it can regularly take up to a month.

On average, it takes three emails before a satisfactory reply is received, while a third of those surveyed said that they have sent up to 10 emails about a single enquiry.

Such is the poor standard of email support uncovered by the survey, that 89% of consumers

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have defected to another company as a result of their experience. Respondents expressed feelings ranging from irritation and stress (84%), to feeling so angry that they wanted to tell somebody close by (38%); from powerlessness and desperation (27%) to outright anger and a desire to address the situation in person by marching down to a business' headquarters (12%).

Auto-reply emails that fail to answer the question are just as annoying as having to wait for a reply, the survey found, while consumers are also irritated by online forms that have insufficient space to type their question. Three in ten respondents added that even when they do get a reply, it is often "unprofessional".

"British businesses really need to sit up and pay attention to their response rate for customer emails, or risk losing their customer base to competitor brands," said Mark Jeffries, CTO of Fasthosts Internet, which commissioned the survey. "The public suffers real stress from slow or sub-standard email replies so it is no surprise they feel so strongly about the issue. Significantly, our research highlights that it isn't just the speed of the response that matters to consumers - it's how quickly they receive the right information."