The Vision
Pasadena Service Federal Credit Union (PSFCU) aims to consistently meet the needs of its members and enhance its member engagement capabilities. With the onset of the pandemic, there was a significant rise in call traffic and usage of electronic channels among members; PSFCU was looking for a solution that would provide its members with remote access to banking while saving costs and freeing up staff bandwidth to solve complex member problems.
“With the emergence of COVID – 19, we did not want to lose the personalized support we provide our members. We needed a technology that can free up the staff for personal assistance and also ensure lower costs of operations. This is where we pivoted, from ‘how can we help our members?’, to ‘Have them help themselves.”
James Chang
Chief Executive Officer, PSFCU
Bottlenecks & The Next Step
PSFCU has been facing challenges due to the rising call volumes amidst the pandemic. With the member interaction volumes predicted to rise in the coming months, PSFCU was on the lookout for a feasible solution that would help them improve their service levels and continue to provide quality support to members.
“Due to the pandemic, our member support staff spent significant time answering basic questions and could not spend time with members providing individual assistance. We didn’t want to just increase our number of staff. So, we were exploring a solution that would help us resolve member support bottlenecks, manage the increasing call volumes and enable us to enhance the overall member experience.”
James Chang
Chief Executive Officer, PSFCU
Technology Selection
The Road to Artificial Intelligence & Intelligent Virtual Assistants
Extensive research of the technology & case studies of several Credit Unions incorporating Artificial Intelligence (AI) convinced the executives at PSFCU that Artificial Intelligence, specifically, AI-powered Intelligent Virtual Assistant (IVA) was the technology that would help them overcome their challenges and enable them to support their members better.
“With AI, we wanted to improve our self-service offering so members would be able to find answers to basic questions easily. This would free up the staff bandwidth to provide members with personal assistance when needed.”
James Chang
Chief Executive Officer, PSFCU
Creating a significant competitive advantage for PSFCU
Pasadena Service Federal Credit Union expects to
- Improve operational efficiency across the organization
- Provide 24×7 member support
- Provide quick access to the members across the channels to respond to member inquiries with easy access to up to date knowledge resources & responses
“Our members will be able to use the interface.ai’s IVA, to instantly get answers to their queries. This will be a huge competitive advantage for us as we will be able to ensure 24/7 support and enhance the member experience.”
James Chang
Chief Executive Officer, PSFCU
Vendor Selection & Evaluation
Vendor Identification
PFFCU identified vendors by
- Seeking referrals from other Credit Unions
- Researching AI & Intelligent Virtual Assistant Implementation case studies in the Credit Union space
- Hands-on evaluation of Credit Union Intelligent Virtual Assistant implementations which acted as a proof of concept
“Referrals from peers were really important. We spoke to several vendors but the roadmap and the solution were not robust and they did not have turnkey capabilities. With numerous out-of-the- box solutions and omnichannel capability, interface.ai was a clear winner.”
Courtney Higuchi
Executive Vice President, PSFCU
Vendor Shortlisting & Evaluation Criteria
PSFCU evaluated vendors based on the following criteria
- Functionality- A solution having a wide range of functionality that can add value to all aspects of the organization and to all members
- Experience & Expertise – Having deep domain knowledge and having several successful live implementations delivering impact
- Managed Services – Having a structured end to end implementation approach and providing hands-on support to all the launch, run & maintain activities
“We evaluated various vendors and none had greater accuracy of responses than interface.ai. Also, The option to add the IVA on the call center as part of the transformation roadmap was also important for us.”
Rachel Wiger
Member Services, PSFCU
PFFCU & interface.ai
After an extensive vendor selection process, PSFCU chose interface.ai as its partner for Intelligent Virtual Assistant Technology
“The experience that interface.ai was offering was far superior than the other AI platforms. Interface.ai’s robust offerings will help us to focus on what we do best, which is to service our members. And we discovered, with interface.ai’s AI-powered Intelligent Virtual Assistant can provide both, operational and cost efficiencies.”
James Chang
Chief Executive O!icer, PSFCU
The significant reasons for UCU choosing interface.ai are
- Several years of experience serving Credit Unions & the most mature Artificial Intelligence o!ering for the industry
- A well defined long term vision and product roadmap
- Having the most successful Intelligent Virtual assistant implementations across Financial Institutions in North America
- Credit Union background with a deep understanding of the credit union space
- An offering that is affordable by all financial institutions
“The pandemic has made member behavior on call centers permanent. There is a sustained increase in call center traffic, in the order of 30 – 40% on average, across financial institutions. This increased traffic has resulted in increased wait times & abandonment rates leading to poor member experience. We believe implementing Intelligent Virtual Assistants is the only way for most financial institutions to offer timely support, provide personalized service to members at scale and manage operations efficiently. We are excited to partner with PSFCU and enable them to improve their service levels, engage better with their members, and also seamlessly onboard new members.”
Srinivas Njay
Founder & CEO of interface.ai
Scope of the project
After the launch of this solution, when members interact with PSFCU’s IVA on their website and mobile app, they will instantly get responses to their questions. The IVA will enable PSFCU to provide full service to members 24×7, ensure support teams have the bandwidth to assist members with complex needs and enable PSFCU to be operationally e!icient.
Through this partnership, PSFCU will be enhancing their member experience from digital to AI-first and enable highly personalized & instantaneous engagement with members.
Other Case Studies
Dr. David Tuyo,
President & CEO
University Credit Union’s Intelligent Virtual Assistant.
“From our evaluation, it is clear that interface.ai is far ahead of even the second best vendor operating in the Intelligent...
Jay Tkachuk,
Senior VP, Digital Services
Security Service Credit Union’s Intelligent Virtual Assistant
“interface.ai is one of the very few platforms that can achieve 90%+ accuracy within just a few weeks”
Carolyn Jordan,
Chief Growth Officer
Intelligent Virtual Assistant for Neighborhood Credit Union
“Our call handling rates increased from 50% to 90% within 2 days of Nick's deployment, which has allowed our agents to focus more on...
Howard Meller,
President & CEO
Intelligent Virtual Assistant for Neighborhood Credit Union
“Our call handling rates increased from 50% to 90% within 2 days of Nick's deployment, which has allowed our agents to focus more on...
Troy Kyle,
Chief Information Officer
Intelligent Virtual Assistant for America's Credit Union
“The possibilities with interface.ai on the automation we could achieve, the customizations possible with the solution, the impact enabled for...
Travis Frey,
Chief Technology & Security Officer
Intelligent Virtual Assistant for Dover Federal Credit Union
“We have achieved 40% call automation on day 1 of launch of ‘Beau’, our Intelligent Virtual Assistant, powered by interface.ai”
Josh Herzog,
Vice President of Operations Experience & Payments
Intelligent Virtual Assistant for KeyPoint Credit Union
“The team at Keypoint was greatly impressed by what interface.ai was able to offer currently and had laid out a detailed roadmap for the future...
Todd Rothenberger,
SVP/Chief Member Experience Officer
Intelligent Virtual Assistant for Diamond Credit Union
“We believe that this technology will allow us to get answers to our member’s questions quickly with 24/7 availability. Currently...
Matthew Herrick,
Senior Vice President Marketing & Financial Services
Southland Credit Union’s Intelligent Virtual Assistant
“We have been very impressed with the solution provided by interfacai.ai. The committee was blown away by the demo and what we can...
Dan St. Hilaire,
Chief Executive Officer
Northern Credit Union’s Intelligent Virtual Assistant
“The IVA will free up our employees from working on transactional activities and enhance the quality of work, thus improving employee morale...
