ING is rolling out a unified contact centre platform fit for the omni-channel era across 12 countries.
Hosted in the cloud, the platform will give retail customers in all countries in which ING operates access to the same call centre services.
The bank says that while its philosophy is that customers "should be able to do everything themselves digitally" it wants to provide a range of options: in branch, over chat, phone and via video.
The new system is designed to make the process of interacting with bank staffers seamless. Says programme co-lead Theo Frieswijk: "Say you’re chatting to a call centre agent on your computer and have to leave for an appointment. It’s only one click for the call centre agent to switch to phone to continue the conversation there.
"Similarly, if you visit a branch later on you wouldn’t have to tell your story again to staff there. You can seamlessly switch channels whenever it suits."
The platform has already been rolled out in the Netherlands, with Belgium and the Czech Republic coming onboard later this year and a total of 12 countries using the system by the end of 2020. ING is also piloting the technology with its wholesale banking unit.