(March 24 – 10:50 ET) – In what it called an aggressive move designed to improve service standards for Canadian retail investors, TD Waterhouse InvestorServices today announced plans to increase its call centre capacity by more than 100%.
The firm will open two large new call centres in Markham, Ont., and Edmonton. It will also expand its existing call centre operations, which include facilities in Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, Calgary and Vancouver. Combined, the technologically sophisticated new facilities will house 500 investment representative workstations.
The Markham centre is scheduled to be fully operational by July 2000. Edmonton will come on line in September 2000.
“Surging volumes dictate this major investment in call centre facilities and infrastructure,” said John See, vice-chair at TD Waterhouse Group, Inc. “Canadians are embracing our business model and are increasingly looking to self-direct their investments. This, combined with dynamic market conditions, has resulted in a dramatic rise in business volumes. In fact, trading volumes have increased 300% since last February.”
In addition to boosting call centre capacity, TD Waterhouse has introduced a series of steps designed to improve service. These include:
– introducing a “spike team,” which enlists every licensed securities employee, including senior management, to be “on call” for client inquiries during the busiest parts of the day;
– extending service hours for its electronic brokerage services help desk to 24 hours a day, seven days a week;
– extending trading hours for certain securities, giving clients the opportunity to place trades after the markets close, when earnings reports, major news and financial stories are often released;
– hiring and training more than 350 new investment representatives since the beginning of November, a move that will double the number of investment representatives by the end of March;
– doubling the current capacity of the WebBroker online brokerage and of the TalkBroker proprietary speech recognition system for quotes, account inquiries and trading.
-IE Staff