THE Cumberland Building Society has launched a computer booking system to help its customers and improve staff efficiency.

The system allows people to make appointments using their smartphone, tablet or PC at any of the mutual's branches and is linked in real time to the schedules of advisers.

It has been introduced following a year of development work, which has also seen the building society upgrade its online banking operation.

Chris McDonald, the Cumberland's operations and HR director, explained that this is a market-leading system and more thorough than any other on offer in the UK.

He said: "It is a system which allows customers to book appointments with the building society on a real time basis 24 hours a day and seven days a week.

"It was developed as party of our grand strategy."

The new system allows the user to book appointments for all of the society's services at all of its branches through a five step process.

It informs them of all sessions which are available in each branch and, once they have made their decisions, confirms this with emails - which also detail any documents they need to bring with them - and text messages.

The system is designed to be flexible and its features include a variety of different ways to find the nearest branches - including through a phone's GPS signal and postcode search - and makes suggestions if a preferred date, time or location is unavailable.

It is linked to staff's diaries and can also be used for the society's property valuation service.

Mr McDonald said that the real time aspect of the system has proved extremely popular. Previously, people would have needed to book appointments and then waited for confirmation phone calls.

"We are getting people booking at 10pm at night, they should be able to click through and make an appointment," he added.

He was keen to point out that the society is keen to develop its digital operations but also remains committed to branch-based operations and that its plan is to make the most of both in the future.

"For us it is not about branch or digital, it is about how you offer both branch and digital," he said.

This system also allows people to cancel their appointments electronically and means staff's diaries are kept fully occupied, increasing their productivity.

"The key thing for me is to make these developments as easy to use as possible because it is all about improving the customer's experience, making it easier and more convenient for the customer to do business with us," Mr McDonald added.

The system will adapt to whatever device it is used on - phone, tablet or PC - and this is also the case with the improved online banking system. This also features account balances and most recent transactions upon logging in, the most requested pieces of information by customers.