AIC wins top honours in client service

For the third year in a row, AIC Group of Funds has been recognized as providing the best customer service for English-speaking clients, earning the Dalbar Mutual Fund Service Award.

“Our congratulations go out to those at AIC responsible for ensuring that their clients are being well-served,” said Mark McDonald, manager of client relations at Dalbar. “They have demonstrated time and again that their business model places superior customer service on a very high pedestal.”

McDonald points out that AIC has managed to maintain exceptional customer service despite long-running net redemptions that have plagued the company’s funds.

“Their clients have been in very good hands for a long time, showing that despite challenges that they have faced over the last few years in a number of areas, they have not lost sight of the importance of placing the customer first,” he said.

Franklin Templeton Investments was recognized as providing the best service for French-speaking clients, the first time the firm has won that award. Franklin Templeton also won honourable mention for its English service, along with BMO Mutual Funds, and Altamira Investment Services.

“Franklin Templeton is another company that has worked very hard to serve its clients, whether they are French-speaking or English-speaking, and they should be proud of this accomplishment,” said McDonald.

Dalbar’s award is based on the firm’s year-end customer service survey, ranking each company on the quality of telephone service representatives, effectiveness of e-mail communication, telephone wait times, and e-mail response times. Dalbar plays the role of the client in making more than 2,000 telephone calls and 400 emails to the various fund companies over the course of the year. Honourable mention is attributed to the firms that rank in the first quartile.

“Overall the industry is doing well, so it’s more a case of what AIC is doing right,” he says. “The product knowledge that their representatives have is the highest we’ve seen in the industry. When we’ve had questions regarding taxation or registered products — questions that don’t necessarily have anything to do with our account — we still see those questions being answered.”

Across the industry, McDonald praises the prompt reply to email inquiries demonstrated by most fund companies. In most cases, he said a reply was received within a few hours, compared to response times in other industries which can stretch into days.

If there is one common deficiency the Dalbar study has found, though, it is in telephone wait times. McDonald says almost all of the companies need to cut the amount of time clients spend on hold.

Filed by Steven Lamb, Advisor.ca, steven.lamb@advisor.rogers.com