24+, KBC’s customer care center, opens its doors to CEOs and partners for the tenth edition of the Customer Contact Employee Day. Has humanity in the job become scarce due to AI, or does the technology actually provide support?
Those who still think of ‘call centers’ as gloomy offices with scripts are mistaken. A tour through the 24+ building proves otherwise. Here, helpdesk employees work for every KBC department, from inheritance to Bolero support.
Generative AI is an important support for employees. The major bank’s investment in AI ten years ago has clearly paid off, although 24+ is still using its own AI tools for now. At the same time, there’s a warm and human atmosphere, even though being a helpdesk employee isn’t always the most rewarding job.
More than answering phones
Carl Buelens, CEO of 24+, offers a glimpse into the daily work. “We support customers with all possible questions, from technical issues to advice on banking products,” he says proudly. “Importantly: we are fully complementary to KBC’s other channels or the colleagues at KBC Live. We don’t provide financial advice, but we do work according to KBC’s strategy with a Digital First with a Human Touch approach.”
The numbers speak for themselves: 24+ achieves a Net Promoter Score of 78 based on more than 200,000 customer surveys, and scores 9.5 out of 10 on helpfulness. “This means that every customer gives either a nine or a ten. Otherwise, you obviously wouldn’t reach an average of 9.5,” clarifies Digital Transformation and Quality Manager Bart Ghesquière.
“We try to surround and support our employees as best as possible.”
CEO 24+ Carl Buelens
This warm atmosphere is no coincidence. 24+ invests heavily in the well-being of its employees. The modern office building has massage rooms, Delhaize Shop&Go stands, and even arcade game cabinets here and there. Outside on the terrace, a ping-pong table invites players, and inside, all office spaces are completely open and divided by department.
These departments are decorated with self-designed signs and quotes from employees to maintain silence. “That’s a bit cooler than putting up standard signs,” an employee explains. On a desk, a trophy for ‘best dressed team of Halloween 2024’ shines. “Today, for Customer Contact Employee Day, we’re providing a breakfast buffet, makeup artists, barbers, fries, and mocktails.” In short: the atmosphere is clearly good. “This, in turn, translates into customer satisfaction,” Buelens knows.
Chatbots actively thinking along
Besides well-being, technology plays a major role. A notable component of this are the self-developed chatbots. “Our chatbots support customers and employees worldwide. We built the first bots on WhatsApp back in 2017,” says Ghesquière. “Now we have three types: customer-oriented bots, internal helpdesk bots, and ‘augmented human bots’ that support employees during conversations.”
The latter draws attention: while an employee is talking to a customer, the bot follows along on the screen and provides step-by-step instructions. This is necessary when the KBC app offers more than eighty services, from NMBS to cinema tickets. “You can’t know or be familiar with all of that yourself,” says Buelens. “The bot shows the same screens that the customer sees, and gives tips and warnings when needed.”
From IBM Watson to LLMs
The chatbots are trained on anonymized chat logs, and built by former helpdesk employees, not just by IT professionals. “We find this important: they know how customers really communicate. The humanity that our content managers bring when optimizing the bot is necessary,” says Ghesquière.
The first generation of chatbots was still developed on IBM Watson, but now they are gradually switching to KBC’s virtual assistant Kate and LLMs. “These bots answer 87 percent of questions completely autonomously,” says Buelens. Yet they can always be connected to a person. Sometimes customers even forget they’re talking to a bot. “We had a customer who thanked a bot at three in the morning because we were still ‘working’,” he smiles.
Everything can be improved
To involve employees in the AI transition, 24+ organizes hackathons. “Over the past five years, we’ve received more than 550 improvement proposals from the teams themselves,” Buelens said.
Additionally, 24+ is rolling out an internal tool based on Copilot to support different personas. Managers use it to summarize meetings, helpdesk employees to summarize emails. Communities have been set up where colleagues can share experiences about new features. This ensures a continuous learning process. “Generative AI is an industrial revolution,” Ghesquière concluded, “but as long as you keep learning, both you and your job remain relevant.”
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Human factor remains crucial
Johan Lema, CEO of KBC Asset Management, states in his presentation that KBC is starting to experiment with AI agents. The shift from a passive chatbot to an autonomous digital assistant requires more trust and responsibility. Technology is never an end in itself. If you want to use it, you must ask yourself if it makes sense to do so. That’s why Johan calls for always asking the same question: “What do you want to achieve for the customer, and how does that technology help with that?”
He also emphasizes customers’ need for human contact. “Customers continue to need a real contact person, a voice that listens and thinks along. Or a place where a brick can be thrown through the window,” he jokes. “We’ve reduced bank branches over the years, but we now notice that customers really do appreciate that human contact.”
Although AI and other technologies are becoming better and more advanced, the human factor is not forgotten. One thing remains clear after the Customer Contact Employee Day: customers still prefer to be able to talk; and if they are helped faster and smarter by someone with AI support, everyone remains satisfied. So be a bit more grateful the next time you call customer service. Behind the smart technology, there’s still a human helping you.