Canadian Discount Brokerages – Phone Call Time Comparison

I’ve been spending some time recently updating the Canadian discount brokerage comparison which contains lots of information about all the Canadian discount brokerages.

I decided to re-test the average wait time (when phoning) to make sure the shortcuts were up to date as well as the wait times. I thought it would be interesting to share the results here as well as look at the biggest improvements and declines.

My method is fairly unscientific (described in the last paragraph of this post) and doesn’t cover all aspects of customer service, but I think for people who are concerned with wait times when calling their broker – it might give them some idea of how the brokers compare.

Brokerages ranked by wait time

Not surprisingly, the smaller independent brokerages that scored well on wait times last year also did well this year. The main reason for this is that the bank owned brokerages have a lot more messages and more extensive phone trees.

Qtrade and Options Express which have the shortest wait times, only make you listen to a short message and no phone tree. CIBC on the other hand wins the “worst wait time” award, mainly because of the ads, messages, and lengthy phone tree which took me one minute and 46 seconds to get through. When I used the phone short cuts (available on the brokerage comparison), it took a more reasonable 25 seconds to get through.

Brokerage wait time comparison:

Broker	Avg Wait Time (sec)
Qtrade	12
Options Express	14
Virtual Brokers	21
Credential Direct	26
Jitney Trade	38
HSBC	43
ShareOwner	43
Questrade	51
BMO	53
TDW	58
RBC	63
Scotia	68
National Bank	84
IB	85
Disnat	95
CIBC IE	107

Biggest changes from last year

None of the brokers did appreciably worse than last year, but on the improvement side – there were a number of brokers that answered the phone much faster.

Questrade was the big winner in this category. Last year they had one of the longest wait times of 168 seconds. This time they were a more respectable 51 seconds. Interactive Brokers, ShareOwner and Disnat also made some significant improvements.

Wait time improvements from last year:

Broker	Avg Wait Time (sec)	Last year	Improvement
Questrade	51	219	168
IB	85	224	139
ShareOwner	43	151	108
Disnat	95	182	87
HSBC	43	86	43
CIBC IE	107	147	40
Qtrade	12	19	7
Options Express	14	19	5
TDW	58	63	5
Jitney Trade	38	39	1
Credential Direct	26	27	1
RBC	63	63	0
Virtual Brokers	21	20	-1
BMO	53	44	-9
National Bank	84	64	-20
Scotia	68	47	-21

Phone call wait time methodology

The wait time was measured from after I finished dialing to when a customer service rep started talking. The automated message system was quite time consuming in some cases, which is why if you use the key prompt shortcuts, your actual wait times should be much less. The wait time averages were based on a minimum of five phone calls made on business days between the hours of 9:30 am and 4:00 pm.

It should be noted that I did not use any of the automated message system shortcuts to save time – I wanted to replicate the experience of someone who wasn’t familiar with the automated message system.