Customer Background:

Interra Credit Union ($1.8 billion assets) has been serving members for over 90 years. Today, Interra Credit Union serves more than 92,000 members at 16 branches in North Central Indiana with a goal to help the community build a strong financial foundation for years to come. 

Empowering Staff with Conversational AI

Interra Credit Union places a strong emphasis on employee fulfillment and engagement, particularly in their interactions with members to help them achieve their financial goals. However, the high call volume and staffing challenges at Interra's service center led to shortened member engagements and the need for an overflow provider. Unfortunately, this provider relied on scripts rather than a deep understanding of Interra's culture and processes, leading to a significant portion of calls being redirected back to the member success team. As a result, callers endured lengthy wait times of up to 24 hours and often needed to make multiple follow-up calls for assistance. This experience not only strained employee morale but also impacted member satisfaction.

These experiences did not match Interra’s values. They decided to partner with Posh to implement Digital Assistant on the website, online banking and mobile banking platform, and Terra, the Voice Assistant conversational AI, to reduce overflow call volume and set staff up for success. Since the implementation of Terra, Interra has experienced:

• 90% decrease in calls to overflow
• 20% decrease to calls in the call center due to Digital Assistant responding to more questions
• 50% decrease in abandoned calls

“Agents know that members are waiting in the queue, and they want to give members the best service, but can only help one member at a time,” explains Dan Coons, Member Relations Center Manager. “That’s a lot of pressure, and they feel rushed. The member feels that too, and we want the member to feel like they’re getting our undivided attention.” 

Laying the Groundwork with Digital Assistant

Interra knew the successes and opportunities that Posh could provide since they had been using the Digital Assistant on online and mobile banking platforms. The chatbot was able to answer frequently asked questions and provided members with self-service options. With Digital Assistant, member engagement is three times more within the mobile platform than the website. This success laid the groundwork for a close partnership between Interra and Posh that would lead to an extension into implementing Terra.

“We're in a limitless era of possibilities when it comes to AI and we wanted a partner, not just a vendor,” says Todd Woods, Interra’s SVP of Technology. “The technology changes so fast and we prioritized quality. That's why we needed a partner that truly understands the technical capabilities and understands us as a financial institution.” 

Implementing Voice Assistant with Telephony Migration

Before implementing the Voice Assistant, Woods’s team was moving its telephony to the cloud. Along with this transition, the team wanted to integrate a robust IVR with full banking-by-phone functionality. They rolled out Terra to provide a conversational AI agent that eliminated a phone menu, provided 24/7 service for banking and general questions, and intelligent call routing.  

“We did the Voice Assistant rollout during our telephony migration,” explains Woods. “This led to project resource savings, savings on technology spend, maximizing customer change, providing an enhanced experience at launch, 24/7 service, and efficiency gains sooner. With the right partner and right processes you can gain so much out of it. We needed to do it together, not separately. Our team was right to chomp at the bit at this, it had a major impact on us.”

Containing 60% of Calls

Within two weeks of implementation, Interra already saw a reduction in call volume as well as changes in member behavior. Hundreds of unique new users interact with Terra each month for complete self-service. Today, Interra is able to contain 60 percent of calls and 92 percent of callers engage with Terra, alleviating simple calls from staff who can then work on more engaging activities.

“By taking those bank-by-phone activities off the staff’s plate, they’re feeling more engaged with in-depth, more complicated activities,” says Coons. “They’re thinking, ‘This is something they really need me for. I can help them.’”

Interra has seen a reduction in overflow calls and doesn't need any full-time employees to manage the AI system. Additionally, a call center staff member was recently promoted to the fraud department and Interra didn’t need to backfill the position thanks to Terra. “The staff at Posh has helped us so much,” says Woods and Coons. “We have a wonderful partnership that is extremely fruitful, not just for what we have today but for what’s to come in the future.”

Whats Next?

Looking ahead, Woods and his team are interested in Knowledge Assistant, Posh’s internal AI assistant to continue supporting frontline staff. “For all the reasons we were excited about external AI, we need them internally,” explains Woods. “Knowledge Assistant is pretty magical. It’s the next natural step for us.”