A Massachusetts consulting firm said their ongoing study ofbusinesses' treatment of online customers has found perceptibleimprovement among auto insurers compared to other industries.

Customer Respect Group, Ipswich, Mass., said the findings weremade in its second-quarter Online Customer Respect Study of theAutomobile Insurance Industry.

The firm said the study evaluated the Web sites of arepresentative sample of auto insurance companies and found thesector made progress in a number of areas.

Its report said on the 10-point CRI scale the average rating forthe auto insurers was 5.4. The score moves auto insurers up to themidrange of all industries from the bottom quartile in the lastreport.

Improvement was found, the company said, primarily in the areaof privacy policy transparency and responsiveness to e-mails.

Auto insurers now are providing better and more conciseinformation about policies and practices. Additionally, autoinsurers continue to show a strong commitment to their customers bymaking sites accessible and usable to many different types ofusers, the report said.

The study found a higher number of e-mails were responded to, anarea in which the industry was especially poor in the lastreport.

In its rankings of auto insurers, GEICO and Progressive tied tolead the table, marking the fourth study in a row in whichProgressive came out on top. GEICO showed improvement from itsfourth-place spot in the previous evaluation.

American Family was said to have shown the most improvementoverall from the previous study.

The study found that most auto insurers are quick to reply toe-mails and tend not to ignore queries but don't always fullyanswer questions. According to Customer Respect Group, this may bebecause insurers prefer to channel queries through agents--a theorysupported by the continued high proportion of auto insurers thatcontinue not to offer a means for visitors to communicateonline.

Replies to e-mails, the report said, were generally quick butnot always helpful. Some 74 percent of e-mails were found to beanswered within 24 hours (30 percent more than the comparableall-industry figure), but only 43 percent of replies fully answeredthe questions (35 percent below the all-industry figure).

Twice the average proportion (14 percent versus 7 percent) ofauto insurers did not offer a means to communicate online. Thetop-scoring companies in responsiveness were Progressive, AmericanFamily and Geico.

According to Customer Respect Group, auto insurance companies,while improving, still need to explain more clearly their use ofpersonal data supplied online. More than twice the all-industryaverage of auto insurers were unclear about data sharing, while 27percent did not clarify their e-mail marketing practices (threetimes the all-industry figure).

Of the companies that did explain their policies clearly, only36 percent of insurers stated they did not share personal data.However, only 42 percent of those that re-use personal data allowvisitors to opt out from marketing programs versus the all-industryfigure of 79 percent.

According to the research firm, "These privacy issues are ofparticular concern given that auto insurers gather above averageamounts of personal data from site visitors."

Leading the rankings for clarity and openness were Allstate andNationwide, whereas best policies for customers were from LibertyMutual and AIG Direct.

Overall site usability lags behind most industries, and agreater degree of variation was recorded between the best and worstsites. The most usable sites were Erie and Progressive, while thebest support for accessibility was USAA, the report found.

The top carriers and their scores among 22 ranked in the lateststudy were:

o GEICO--7.2

o Progressive Casualty--7.2

o Liberty Mutual--6.6

o Farmers--6.1

o American Family--5.9

o Cincinnati--5.9

o Industry Average--5.4

The bottom five were:

o 21st Century--4.6

o GMAC--4.6

o The Hartford--4.2

o Chubb--4.1

o Mercury Casualty--3.0

A full Scorecard is available from The Customer Respect Group at(978) 834-6700 or online at http://www.customerrespect.com.