InformationWeek

I look at it this way: If the stress of day trading didn't kill me, trying to connect to an online broker's call center before the market closes might do the trick. My life would be in particular danger when the market is volatile, which is pretty much all the time, and the Web broker's customer-service center offers a response within a mere 24 hours. As if that's even close to adequate.

Can you picture one of those mythical Generation X, Type-A day traders spending a half-day in frustration, unable to get through to an online brokerage's call center? The first time it happened, the trader would rationalize it away: "This is how the broker can charge a low transaction fee." The second time it happened, the trader might have to admit, "You get what you pay for." The charm would definitely wear off by the third time around.

Perhaps the biggest problem with several of the leading online brokers is that they create an expectation that the digital world delivers the same quality of service as the analog world. And in my experience, that's generally untrue--especially under pressure.

Still, it's not as if the online brokerages I've dealt with have cornered the market on poor electronic customer service (or understaffed call centers). I do a fair amount of online banking with one of the nation's largest clicks-and-bricks outfits. It's great for checking balances or paying bills due in about a week. Anything more complex, of course, requires a branch visit. That doesn't bother me because the bank has lots of branches and--call me old-fashioned--I prefer not to mail checks.

Some vendors do take E-mail transactions seriously and don't respond to customers or prospects with auto-bots or canned nonanswers. During the Christmas holidays, I had several fairly quick exchanges with a leading online toy store. The store had botched my order but made up for it by notifying me electronically of a solution, including a discount on my next purchase. All in all, I was pleased by this. Other E-commerce vendors I use regularly, including Amazon.com, Barnesandnoble.com, and CDnow, have generally responded within a day, often much quicker.

What, if anything, can be done about unresponsive E-commerce vendors? Clearly, taking your business elsewhere doesn't solve anything. For one thing, the vendors almost certainly won't notice you've left. In fact, they aren't really sure that you've stopped doing business with them, even if they realize that your account is inactive. I'd like to see a public Web site where customers rate the electronic customer service of leading online sites.

What typically passes for online customer service is a weekly E-mail reminder that you can still order groceries online or buy CDs at a 15% discount. CDnow, famous for its barrage of marketing E-mail, still doesn't have a clue about what music I like, so the recommendations it sends are off-base--though maybe my taste doesn't fit into a box. I'd prefer to see more content-oriented missives, such as the ones Schwab sends that purport to give you useful investment advice. That would be a step in the right direction.

The downside of being an average E-commerce customer is that you often feel like you're part of a grand actuarial table that says: We can afford to lose this person. Had this customer invested $1 million with us, we would call him or her back right away, or at least offered a phone number that someone in a call center would pick up in a couple of minutes.

My experience this year with a couple of major online brokerage firms has convinced me that just throwing technology--no matter how innovative--at a problem isn't a solution, it's a problem transference. Why? Because service is largely cultural. Companies that are steeped in E-business have an enormous opportunity to study their customers and interact with them directly. But it's amazing how many sites blow this opportunity.

I dare one of those supposedly creative online brokerage firms to run this billboard campaign: Online trading: Everything is good for you, if it doesn't kill you.