Northern Credit Union partners with interface.ai to significantly enhance member experiences & operational efficiencies by offering an intelligent virtual assistant
WATERTOWN , NY (July 28, 2021) — Northern Credit Union, based in Watertown, New York, and serving over 36,000 members, has announced it’s embarking on a mission to enable the most seamless banking experience for its members, powered by interface.ai’s award-winning Intelligent Virtual Assistant (IVA).
The IVA will be available through Northern’s call center. After the launch of this solution, members who call Northern’s contact center will get answers to their questions by interacting with the IVA, enabling Northern to provide full service to members 24/7. With this increased capability and efficiency, Northern’s staff will also be able to provide personalized support to members in need, enhancing the overall member experience.
“The IVA will enable us to create a seamless experience for our members where they can get answers to their questions instantly – 24/7. This technology will help to enhance Northern’s self-serve capabilities and free up our teams to deliver additional personalized assistance to other members in need,” said Tabitha Cook, Special Operations Professional.
Dan St. Hilaire, CEO, added, “There are various shortcomings with how call center servicing works today. Long wait times and inability to easily connect with the right person have frustrated our members, and the general public, over the years; causing high abandonment rates, tarnished reputation, and loss of business. interface.ai’s IVA technology will help us circumvent all these problems & enable us to provide our members the exceptional service they deserve along with an essential competitive advantage for Northern. Additionally, it will free up our employees from working on transactional activities and enhance the quality of work, thus improving employee morale.”
On the technology & the timing of the project, Brittany McGrath, Member Relationship Manager, said, “With the onset of the pandemic, our call volumes tripled. This impacted our ability to maintain a high service level consistently. We were on the lookout for a solution that would help us eliminate abandonment rates and call wait times and enable us to provide a great member experience. With interface.ai’s IVA, we would be able to serve our members around-the-clock and maintain high service levels consistently.”
On the partnership with interface.ai, Tabitha said “We have evaluated over 20 vendors for this engagement and finalized interface.ai as our partner based on their product vision, member-first attitude, deep domain expertise, and wide range of out-of-the-box solutions specific to the financial institutions.”
Srinivas Njay, Founder and CEO of interface.ai, adds, “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 Northern Credit Union and enable them to improve their service levels, engage better with their members, and enhance efficiencies.”
About Northern Credit Union
Northern Credit Union
is a growing, federally insured financial institution and a leading provider of a full range of financial services to anyone who lives, works, worships or regularly conducts business in Jefferson, Lewis, St. Lawrence, Oswego, Clinton, Franklin, Onondaga and Madison Counties. Serving the financial needs of more than 40,000 members through world-class technology, Northern Credit Union strives to create mutual value by providing personalized service and innovative banking solutions.
About interface.ai:
interface.ai provides an out-of-the-box Intelligent Virtual Assistant that acts as a “personal banking teller” to help members 24×7 through every step of their journey from being a prospect to achieving financial wellness. interface.ai’s Intelligent Virtual Assistants currently power several Banks and Credit Unions across the world. For more information, please visit www.interface.ai.
