2012 - Online Brokerage - Customer Email Responsiveness (CER) Review
TD Waterhouse is the top customer service firm in the Canadian online brokerage industry in 2012. TD Waterhouse won for the third straight year in the competitive online brokerage industry segment with a CER score of 85% and an average response time slightly above 2 hours. Surviscor reviews the majority of Canadian Online Discount Brokerage firms.
View the 2012 Online Banking Results
Surviscor's Customer Email Responsiveness (CER) Program determines an online firm’s ability to efficiently respond to customer, or potential customer emails, that are presented to the firms via public email boxes or public customer contact forms.
Surviscor's Response Standards have been developed based upon the total response times. The Surviscor Response Standards are:
- Platinum - Less than 4 hours
- Gold - 4 to 8 hours
- Silver - 8 to 12 hours
- Bronze - 12 to 16 hours
Five firms attained the Platinum Response Standard (TD Waterhouse, Disnat, Credential Direct, Scotia iTRADE and BMO InvestorLine) while an additional six firms attained at least one of the remaining Response Standards. The firms who did not meet any of the Surviscor Response Standards were Virtual Brokers, RBC Direct Investing, Laurentian Bank Discount Brokerage, Questrade ansd Jitney Trade.
THE PROCESS
The CER Program delivers the emails, or contact form requests, to all firms within minutes of each other. Surviscor captures the following information for each email record:
- All text wording transmitted between 'mystery shopper' and industry firm
- Date and Time of the email transmission - Consistent for all firms
- Date and Time of the actual response to the question
- Accuracy of the actual response
- Date and Time of a firm's Auto-Response - If used
- Did the firm meet its Response Guideline - The stated guarantee of time to respond
Next Analysis: 2013 Year In Review - January 2014