Talisma says RBC is installing its CIM Suite, which presents a complete history of interactions across all channels so staff are presented with a "360 degree" view of the customer.

The vendor says RBC will be able to customise its chat, e-mail, and Knowledgebase products to provide the right level of support when clients are online.

"Canadians are using online services for their financial needs more often: doing research, completing applications or conducting transactions, and we want to ensure that when they're online with RBC they receive the right level of support," says James McGuire, VP, online strategy and client experience, RBC. "Talisma's solution will enable a new level of real-time support for our customers, including chatting online with an RBC representative, allowing an RBC representative to co-browse onscreen information in order to provide help, and a more interactive and sophisticated search capability."

Dan Vetras, CEO, Talisma, says the technology "will further enhance RBC's ability to provide its customers with their communication channel of choice, which has been shown to improve customer satisfaction".

A study of 72 US financial institutions released in June this year found that the majority are failing to provide adequate online customer services to clients.

The research - which was commissioned by IBM and CRM vendor Kana Software - found that 95% of bank Web sites did not provide answers to basic questions. Well over half - 67% - of firms did not provide satisfactory answers to basic questions via e-mail and only six per cent offered the ability to escalate inquiries to e-mail or telephone channels.

A later study of UK banks released by Cambridge-based Transversal found that customers still find it quicker to call contact centres for basic information than on the Internet or via e-mail.