Ink on the Interview
Q: Any highlights from the conference that you want to share yet?
A: So many good examples from the credit unions. I love the stump, the experts. So many good questions. Yeah, it’s been really great. Excited to see the new phone system that they have coming up. That was pretty interesting. So yeah. Yeah, Ali had some emotional sensitive issues there. You had to be here for that one. Lots of fun in there, but lots of great stuff as well. So as you guys, Edwards, are attuned to. And you’re going to be on this next panel about customer success stories. Customer Stories Sprint, as they’re calling it.
Q: Do you want to share what you’re going to talk about? A little sneak peek of what’s to come.
A: So we are going to talk about a lot of success stories. Our members have really leaned into our technology and they kind of got forced into it. So back in August, we went live with our new online and mobile banking platform, Aperture. They had a little error on the morning of our Go Live, and so it flooded our phone systems, flooded our branches, folks were locked out. And so like four months prior, we had gone live with LTP and very low usage. Members were not really sure about the texting feature. And had we not had that, our ship probably would have been sunk. But we, from our CEO down to our tellers, every single person in that credit union was either on text or chat or on a phone call with a member for two weeks straight, getting folks signed in and passwords reset. It was a trauma bond for sure. But it shows you the versatility, the power of texting and the video chat as well, how powerful they are and how practical they are, especially in that. I still have member friends who, you know, my CEO and I drove to a member’s house because she couldn’t get through to someone. So I happened to text her and we delivered her ATM card to her house. Are you kidding me? Yeah, to her house. So, you know, we’re, you know, and she tells me all the time, you know, if we’re not doing things well and she tells us things are going great. So yeah, we’ve come a long way since August. Okay, that’s a story unto itself right there. Driving to a member’s house to give them their ATM card. Are you kidding me? Yes, that’s what happens.
Q: Are you on the unified platform they’re talking about?
A: Yeah, we’re on that unified platform. A lot of stuff going on for us with AI. We have an unauthenticated bot, and they’re already taking 75% of our calls. So I can’t wait until we have the authenticated bot because we’ll be able to repurpose our three contact center reps to start doing outbounding and doing some of that work.
Q: How has this change affected your operations? Share the before-and-after picture of that?
A: 75% that’s a huge number and so we had actually outsourced our contact center to SWBC and then we started to bring it back in-house and with some of the conversational intelligence pieces to be able to you know bring that back in has helped us and then having the AI piece as well and then we have we’re gonna unveil – Emma, our chatbot got a facelift. And she didn’t even have to go out of the country for it. We just clicked a button with Eltropy and voila. We are in California. But we’re just giving members options and they’re definitely telling us that, hey, if we don’t have to talk to you about something and we just want a quick response, we’ve got Emma, we can chat.
Q: Sounds like you’re giving members the freedom to choose their preferred mode of communication.
A: Yeah, it’s just giving them, as Ashish says, anytime, anywhere, so wherever they are in whatever piece or form of technology that they want to use, we’re giving that to them. And that also frees up your folks to handle the more important, more in-depth type of calls that are also membership bonding as well.
Q: Can you share any other strategies you’re using to build member relationships?
A: Yeah, we’re all about building relationships with our members and really trying to have that deep conversation, understand the needs. And we are doing something where folks are actually handwriting thank you notes. So using technology to then be able to go back to an old school form of sending a thank you note. Our contact center reps, our frontline staff, our lenders, after you have a great interaction, you find out something about that member, because they tell us everything, jot it down, put it in the notes, and then send something out to them. Send a follow-up text, a free-form text. You don’t have to have a reason to text your member. Text them and say, hey, I know your son’s getting ready to go off to college. Congratulations. Or you’re going on vacation. Hope you have a great vacation. Send a handwritten thank you note.
Q: So, what’s next for you working with Eltropy or anything else?
A: Yeah, so we’re very interested in the collections. So now that they have Lexop and they brought them in, we are definitely taking a look at that. You’ll hear a little bit about that in our story as well of just the little bit that we’re using, you know, the texting for collections. It’s completely made a change. I mean, we’re able to do with what we did with one collections rep, we now have saved half an FTE and they can do that just because we’re sending texts out, early reminders, payment reminders, you know, a link to be able to make a payment. So what they’re doing with Lexop, we’re really excited to see and see how that even helps again, we can repurpose, you know, some of the folks that work in collections to do other things.
Q: Anything else you’d like to add before I let you go?
A: Yeah, looking forward to the Bollywood tonight. She puts on a great show. If you’ve never been to the conference before, if you’re a first-timer, prepare yourself. It’s pretty phenomenal.
