Indeed, a survey last year found that the UK's online retailers were struggling on this issue, with 60% failing to provide a contact telephone number on their websites.

Apparently, however, many airlines are unwilling to refund these user errors or learn lessons from them.

Here are a few tips for retailers to make their delivery charges and options more attractive to customers...

New research shows the growing importance of customer care and the role that the internet plays.

But will a new standard help?

Only 5% of returns were due to defective products and etailers spent $13.8m (£7bn) reselling returned products, so how best to deal with what is clearly a major issue? 

When things get tight, a company needs any edge it can get and retaining the customers it has is one way of minimising the impact of any downturn. Here are a few things to try to hang on to those most valuable of assets – your customers.

In its third annual Multi-channel Customer Service Study, released this week, the company tested 100 leading organisations by sending them routine questions by email.

Less than half (46%) answered those questions “adequately” and the average time they took to respond was almost two days (46 hours).

But is that really the case or are too many senior managers just talking the talk and not walking the walk? Is your company one of those that is just paying lip service? 

Read on to see if your company passes this tongue in cheek test.

So we've done our bit and had a look at its website for some suggested improvements...

Yet a recent study by Snow Valley found that many UK web firms provide unclear or hard to find instructions for consumers that want to return purchased products.

Is there any benefit to this approach, when we know that highly visible policies can engender trust, helping to boost conversion rates?

After the jump, let's look at seven ways of improving your returns policy / strategy...

But recent research has suggested that this has had little impact - with only one in four UK consumers professing strong loyalty to their favourite brands. 

More interesting are the regional variations the research uncovers, with strong loyalty at 33% in the Tyne Tees area but only 20% in Scotland. Why is this?

ForeSee Results surveyed visitors to 30 top retail websites in the UK and found they were happiest with Play.com, Amazon and eBay UK.

This is the verdict of FutureNow's 2007 Customer Experience Study, which looked at over 300 US e-commerce sites, and grading them on 69 customer experience factors.

What's more, that's 13 hours more than the average last year.   

Customers want a smooth experience when visiting a website, and if they encounter errors, or are frustrated by usability problems, then many will abandon their purchases and shop elsewhere.

What then, are the common mistakes made by e-commerce companies?

The supermarkets have reacted angrily to the research, claiming that their staff are  told to pick the freshest items available for internet customers.

According to the IMRG’s E-Customer Service Index, confidence in e-commerce security has risen 2% over the past three months to 76%.