INTTRA, the world’s largest multi-carrier e-commerce network for ocean shipping has through an extensive analysis concluded on Safmarine’s and other ocean carriers ability to respond to customer bookings to provide a global benchmark for the time customers need to allocate to book a container shipment online. This could help to understand why phone, fax and email are perceived as more efficient options for placing bookings. “The time it takes for ocean carriers to respond to electronic booking requests is a critical factor in e-shipping adoption,” said Sandra Moran, Chief Marketing Officer, INTTRA. “Too many shippers still rely on manual means, such as phone calls, when booking with a carrier, which does not deliver the same level of savings, shipment data quality or efficiency derived when booking electronically. According to Moran the carriers identified as front runners in the survey clearly outperform the industry in responsiveness for e-bookings. Niels Thomas Agner Hansen, Safmarine Head of Sales Excellence and Customer Experience notes the following. “We constantly look for ways to improve the customer experience. By exploring efficiencies and effectiveness we can offer benefits to our customers. This way they’ll hopefully experience that they maximize on the partnerships we hold”. “Our customers should expect a better service than what competitors offer, so we need to make sure they have a positive experience with Safmarine. Only that way can we keep them coming back for more” he continues. The INTTRA research comes less than two months after Safmarine was identified as being one of the front runners in terms of providing customers with high quality data. At that point in time Mr. Hansen voiced that “Ensuring high data quality improves not only our efficiency, but more importantly it improves our customers’ business productivity. It exemplifies our efforts to improve and to deliver reliable and useful information.”