Providing customers with a seamless, consistent service no matter how they contact the organisation is a Holy Grail for banking ð and for many other consumer-facing companies.

For Nationwide Building Society, the UK's fourth-largest mortgage lender with some 10 million customers, unified customer relationship management (CRM) is an ongoing objective.

"Our overall vision is to make the same services available via the internet, our branches and call centres," says Paul Towers, head of electronic channels.

"The aim is that, no matter where customers choose to do business with us, they'll get an integrated Nationwide experience irrespective of channel."

Nationwide began the rollout of its Portrait CRM system from supplier AIT in June 2001, focusing initially on its 680 branches and three call centres.

It completed this phase of the £10m project in September last year, with help from IT services provider Unisys, and is now in the process of integrating its internet banking service, based on Microsoft's .Net web services technology.

"Our eventual aim is that when members do business with the Nationwide, they'll benefit from three core principles," explains Towers.

"First, if they would like to use self service, they will be able to do so at home or in the office using the internet; in one of the building society's branches using a smartcash machine or internet terminal; or via the phone using voice recognition and a touch-tone phone."

Internet terminals are already available in about 300 branches.

"But if they don't want to serve themselves, we'll do it for them. So, unlike some of our rivals, the branches play a huge part in our overall strategy," says Towers.

Nationwide wants to increase the level of self service because of the "great cost benefits". One way is through the introduction of a knowledge base, hosted by RightNow Technologies, to answer frequently asked questions online.

"As the customer base increased, the number of emails and phone calls also increased, so we wanted to contain future growth in costs and provide customers with a better service," recalls Towers.

"The idea was that if people couldn't find what they wanted on the website, they had a question facility that would give them a selection of answers back."

The electronic services team worked closely with staff handling customer phone calls and email to establish the most common queries and came up with an initial set of answers, which has since been built on further.

"We've seen a reduction of between five and 10 per cent in email volumes, which means that we expect not to have to increase the number of staff in our call centres, even though we expect to continue adding members by between 10 and 20 per cent per year," says Towers.

Some 13,500 people use the service each week, and 98 per cent of those "appear to be satisfied that they've had their question answered".

The system has also produced some unexpected benefits. As Towers explains: "We're getting regular information about what people are asking for, which is great knowledge to have.

"There have been some things that we didn't know people would expect to see on the site, but since there's been demand, we've built in that functionality."

One example involves adding content to answer questions about the Nationwide's annual general meeting, due to be held on 22 July.

The building society has also launched its 'One-Minute Mortgage', which allows members and other interested parties to apply for a mortgage online and receive a response on their eligibility within a minute.

This is a model that will be increasingly used in the future, according to Towers.

"Customers will be able to do anything on the website that they can do via other channels, apart from maybe get cash, although that may even be possible in years to come with e-wallets," he claims.

Once the mortgage has been approved in principle, customers have three options to follow the transaction through.

They can continue online up until the signing stage, when they need to go to a branch to complete the process. This, explains Towers, "appeals to the financially savvy who know it's a good idea to move their mortgage when it comes up for renewal," and to those wishing to remortgage their property where the loan value is higher than average.

But because the service is integrated into the Portrait CRM system, customers can also continue the transaction by making a note of the reference number and phoning a call centre, or by going into a branch, where staff can call up their details on screen so they don't have to repeat themselves.

"Our mantra is build for self service first, but we still have the same number of branches as when we started with the internet," says Towers.

"It's not a substitution business and the branches are still very busy, but it's partially a capacity thing. If we can persuade our members to do a simple bill payment online, it unclogs the counter to do more complex things."

As a result, branch staff do not see the web channel as a threat, but are promoting it heavily and have registered more than 50 per cent of all the building society's online customers.

The website will be fully integrated into the CRM system next February. This will allow Nationwide to tailor content, including product and service promotions, to individual customer requirements once they have signed in, and ensure that staff at all customer contact points are aware of any 'service events' that have already taken place.

For example, if a customer indicates online that their credit card has been stolen one day and phones the company the following day, an agent could inform them that a replacement card had already been sent out.

"E-commerce is massively important to the Nationwide and we're now doing more than 10 per cent of our total sales over the internet," states Towers.

"It's a twin approach, really. It's a channel in its own right, which means I have sales targets, but we're also using e-commerce to streamline the other channels. That's how important it is to us."