RBC Royal Bank and TD Waterhouse Top for Customer Service

RBC Royal Bank and TD Waterhouse are Canada's best banking and brokerage email responsiveness firms according to the latest Surviscor 2010 results.

In addition, TD Waterhouse was the quickest firm in Canada with an average response time of 4.33 hours per email.

RBC Royal Bank’s email banking diviision took the Canadian banking sector award for a third straight year while TD Waterhouse won for the first time, dethroning Qtrade, in the Canadian discount brokerage sector.

The review was conducted between January 1st, 2010 and December 31st, 2010 and included 180 ‘mystery shopper’ emails in the 12-month period.

The winners clearly outperformed their bank-family counterparts. RBC Royal Bank (5 hours) responded on average 19 hours less than RBC Direct Investing (23.97 hours), who finished in 11th place in brokerage. On the flip side, TD Bank Financial Group’s brokerage firm, TD Waterhouse (4.33 hours), responded in 43 hours less than TD Canada Trust (48.50 hours) who finished 13th in banking.

“It is amazing the inconsistencies that exist in the Canadian financial services industry within the same family of firms,” said Glenn LaCoste, President of Surviscor. “We cannot begin to understand how one division of an institution can outperform another division by 18 to 48 hours. In a world of electronic messaging, it is inexcusable for any firm to not respond within 18 hours,” added LaCoste. Only 12 of the 43 firms in the combined study respond in less than 18 hours. BMO Bank of Montreal leads the group with a 57 hour discrepancy while HSBC has a 34 hour difference. CIBC, National Bank and Scotiabank have the smallest discrepancies due to the poor response times of both divisions.

Surviscor has been collecting email data since 2006. The CER rating is a peer-based measurement that measures the firm’s responsiveness to a 12-month series of emails as compared to other online firms in the industry. Surviscor tracks all correspondence with the firm, including the time to respond, the availability of auto-responses, the details of the email dialogue and the validity of the answer provided.

The top five banking CER ratings are RBC Royal Bank; Steinbach Credit Union; Meridian Credit Union; Assiniboine Credit Union and PC Financial. The top five brokerage CER Ratings are TD Waterhouse, BMO InvestorLine, Disnat, Scotia iTrade and Qtrade. The average response time for the online banking industry improved 25% to 2.91 days, from 3.91 days in 2009. Online brokerage firms fared better with an average of 1.10 days, down 33% from 1.63 days in 2009.

About Surviscor

Surviscor Inc. is a Canadian leader in the analysis and ranking of Canadian online services offered to retail consumers. Surviscor produces seasonal feature and functionality scorCards and email responsiveness studies, including its prominent ‘Online Discount Brokerage’ and ‘Online Banking’ scorCards. All studies and analyses serve as industry benchmarks for consumers and firms by identifying firms considered to be leading-edge solution providers and those whose online offerings are well below industry standards. Info: http://www.surviscor.com.
 

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