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Brokerage Research
Digging into the Customer Experience: Brokerage, Online and Off
Brokerage is Corporate Insight’s original areas of expertise, dating back to the introduction of Broker Monitor and e-Monitor in the 1990s. Our value-added brokerage and online services research digs deeply to identify and assess specific aspects of the customer experience.
| Private Site Account Maintenance |
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In this e-Monitor report, we review private site account maintenance, the first time we have covered this topic. We reviewed the accessibility of account maintenance options – where they are located and how easy it is to navigate to them. We outlined which personal and account information clients can update online. We also looked at capabilities, such as which site features and preferences clients can change online. Private site account maintenance options include the ability to change personal information such as email and home addresses, security information such as a user name and password, and website preferences such as a default trade ticket. We assessed whether firms provide a centralized account maintenance section, and how easy it is to access. We also outlined each of the account maintenance options that brokerage firms provide to their clients. We found a few account maintenance features that are common to all e-Monitor firms. Each firm allows clients to update their email address and password online. However, six firms do not allow the client to change their user ID through the website. The other standard option is the ability to nickname accounts. All firms that display an account number throughout the site allow clients to enter a nickname for security purposes. In terms of accessibility, 68% of all firms provide account maintenance resources within a centralized main tab or sub-tab. Two firms – both full service, coincidentally – offer account maintenance options within a main navigational tab. All firms organize information within content-appropriate tabs or sections. Seven firms place at least some of their account management options within a customer service section. The ability to update client contact information is relatively common across all brokerage firms. In addition to email addresses, 74% of firms allow clients to update a mailing address online, and 63% of firms allow clients to update their primary phone number online. Five of the firms that do not offer such options are full-service firms, which require that clients contact their advisors. Additional Key Findings:
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