RBC Direct Investing named 2011 Service Award Winner, earning #1 spot

TORONTO, Jan. 18, 2012 /CNW/ - Today DALBAR released the 2011 winner of the annual Service Award.  RBC Direct Investing emerged as the leader in customer service in 2011 in the discount brokerage industry.  This also marks the fifth consecutive year that RBC Direct Investing has earned this award.  Key Honours go to HSBC InvestDirect, which finished in the first quartile in DALBAR's year end rankings.

For over a decade, DALBAR has conducted rigorous testing of service delivery and identified the firms that were found to lead their peers in client service after a full year of testing.  In a tough year full of challenges, these award-winning firms maintained a degree of consistency in the level of client engagement, with representatives moving away from basic question and answer exchanges with clients to more in-depth discussions.  DALBAR continues to observe an ever-increasing focus on gathering assets, although agents across the industry struggled at times with delivering product and service information.

"Congratulations go out to the team at RBC Direct Investing and those at RBC who are responsible for ensuring that their clients are being well-served. They have demonstrated time and again that their business model makes superior customer service a very high priority," said Michelle Slute, Director Client Relations & Communications at DALBAR. "DALBAR has observed continuous improvement by all direct brokerages in the telephone service for their clients, and we expect to see higher service levels demonstrated across the industry on a more consistent basis in 2012," she added.

The Service Award is based on systematic testing of customer service throughout the year.  Driven by client preference measurements, DALBAR conducts thousands of rigorous tests each year evaluating a company's quality of performance in product and procedural knowledge, professionalism, ease of doing business and their ability to deepen relationships with clients.  Companies that exceed a variety of industry benchmarks after one year of testing earn the DALBAR Service Award.

Top Discount Brokerage Companies

Rank (of 10)	Company	Score (out of 100)
1	RBC Direct Investing Inc.	75.8
2	HSBC InvestDirect	72.57

For interviews and questions concerning the rankings and trends, or to participate in the 2011 programs please contact Michelle Slute at 416.777.1103 ext 227.

About DALBAR Inc.: As the world's premier financial services strategy and operations research firm, DALBAR, Inc. helps leading enterprises develop, build, and operate strong businesses that deliver sustained shareholder value growth.  DALBAR's proprietary business design techniques, combined with its specialized industry knowledge and behavioural research expertise, enable companies to anticipate changes in customer priorities and the competitive environment, and then design their businesses and improve operations to seize opportunities created by those changes.  The firm serves clients in the Americas and Europe.

 

 

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