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

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

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

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

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

Auto insurers now are providing better and more concise information about policies and practices. Additionally, auto insurers continue to show a strong commitment to their customers by making sites accessible and usable to many different types of users, the report said.

The study found a higher number of e-mails were responded to, an area in which the industry was especially poor in the last report.

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

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

The study found that most auto insurers are quick to reply to e-mails and tend not to ignore queries but don't always fully answer questions. According to Customer Respect Group, this may be because insurers prefer to channel queries through agents--a theory supported by the continued high proportion of auto insurers that continue not to offer a means for visitors to communicate online.

Replies to e-mails, the report said, were generally quick but not always helpful. Some 74 percent of e-mails were found to be answered within 24 hours (30 percent more than the comparable all-industry figure), but only 43 percent of replies fully answered the questions (35 percent below the all-industry figure).

Twice the average proportion (14 percent versus 7 percent) of auto insurers did not offer a means to communicate online. The top-scoring companies in responsiveness were Progressive, American Family and Geico.

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

Of the companies that did explain their policies clearly, only 36 percent of insurers stated they did not share personal data. However, only 42 percent of those that re-use personal data allow visitors to opt out from marketing programs versus the all-industry figure of 79 percent.

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

Leading the rankings for clarity and openness were Allstate and Nationwide, whereas best policies for customers were from Liberty Mutual and AIG Direct.

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

The top carriers and their scores among 22 ranked in the latest study 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.

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Auto Insurers' Web Sites Improving: Study

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