In 2018, CreditUnions.com launched a one-of-a kind contest that showcases the ways in which inventive suppliers are transforming the credit union industry.
Read about the finalists by clicking on the links below.
MICHAEL DUNCAN, BANKJOY GEORGE NOGA, IGNITE SALES KARAN KASHYAP, POSH AL ROSENBAUM, SILVERCLOUD
Presented by CreditUnions.com and sponsored by Callahan & Associates, the Innovation Series gives four suppliers 10 minutes to impress a captive audience of credit union decision-makers. Suppliers pitch their cutting-edge solutions. Attendees vote on their favorite.
And it continues to grow. The 2018 Innovation Series spotlighted solutions of the Mobile and Lending variety while the 2019 Innovation Series included Mobile, Lending, and Member Experience. This year is no different. The 2020 Innovation Series includes Mobile/Digital, Payments, Member Experience, and Business Services & Lending. From vendors large and small, products and services featured in this year’s Member Experience category are advancing targeted recommendations, artificial intelligence, automation, and more.
Read their stories and target=”_blank”>watch the webinar.
MEMBER EXPERIENCE: BANKJOY
Michael Duncan, CEO and Founder, Bankjoy
Describe your innovation.
Michael Duncan: Joy, Bankjoy’s Conversational AI, is a digital banking assistant powered by state-of-the-art AI. Members can talk to Joy using natural language by phone, text, Amazon Alexa, and Google Home. Unlike, most voice-based banking products, Joy is powered by advanced natural language understanding that makes conversations more human-like.
What opportunity or challenge does it address?
MD: The voice banking market today is like mobile banking a decade ago. Vendors are entering the market focusing solely on the voice banking product. The challenge with this mirrors the challenges mobile banking vendors faced a decade ago; their products lacked a consistent experience and feature set with online banking, resulting in siloed digital experiences. Bankjoy addressed this challenge by carefully designing a voice banking product that provides the same features as its mobile and online banking products.
Powered by Bankjoy API, Joy has features unavailable in other voice banking products, including advanced alerts, scheduled transfers, card management, real-time account information, and many more.
How does it increase member value?
MD: Joy makes digital banking available across multiple new channels that members use. Members can talk to Joy using either Amazon Alexa, Google Home, by phone, or by text message. In the near future, Joy will be available in all of Bankjoy’s digital banking channels. The conversational AI product is also an upgrade to traditional SMS banking and IVR solutions. It is an all-in-one conversational AI solution for financial institutions of any size.
What differentiates this innovation from competitors?
MD: Because Joy is powered by Bankjoy API and fully integrated into core systems, it has many features including real-time account information, transactions, alerts, scheduled transfers, card management, and many more.
Bankjoy developed Joy using advanced natural language understanding, not rigid rule-based approaches like other solutions, so the user experience is more human-like and intuitive.
Watch the Member Experience finalists pitch their leading-edge solutions.
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MEMBER EXPERIENCE: IGNITE SALES
George Noga, CEO, Ignite Sales
Describe your innovation.
George Noga: We enable credit unions to more effectively improve the financial lives of members through our highly innovative member engagement technology. Our AI-supported, customer-facing technology can be used in the branches, online, on a mobile device, or on a kiosk to discover the financial circumstances and needs of members and then make 100% accurate recommendations to meet those needs.
What opportunity or challenge does it address?
GN: The challenges that all credit unions have is to make every interaction with a member, regardless of channel, a consistently rewarding and engaging conversation that leads to a much better understanding of member needs.
The next challenge is to effectively address those member needs. If those member needs are not understood and addressed by the credit union, those needs will indeed be met by another organization whether it be a local bank or a national bank or a non-bank. This represents a huge opportunity, as it is vital to the long-term viability of credit unions to more fully capture the business of members, so the credit union does not just become a place to get a great car loan or a free checking account.
How does it increase member value?
GN: Most credit union members, like virtually all financial consumers, are not normally experts in financial service offerings. Many of them don’t know what they don’t know. Using Ignite to quickly facilitate a financial needs assessment for members and then guiding them to well-informed, wise financial choices can have a very real and significant positive impact on members, saving them money or optimizing savings and investments. Because members are guided through a dynamic, engaging conversation designed to discover and meet their needs, member satisfaction rates are improved by about 40%.
What differentiates this innovation from competitors?
GN: The combination of AI, behavioral science, and compelling and intuitive customer-facing design is unmatched in the industry. In addition, Ignite provides clients with Ignite Performance Care and the award-winning IQ Analytics portal which helps ensure that the credit union has actionable insights to optimize credit union performance and provide a consistently amazing member experience.
Watch the Member Experience finalists pitch their leading-edge solutions.
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MEMBER EXPERIENCE: POSH
Karan Kashyap, Co-Founder and CEO, Posh
Describe your innovation.
Karan Kashyap: Posh is a conversational artificial intelligence-focused, multi-owned CUSO based in Boston and founded out of MIT’s research lab. We power humanlike member services chatbots across voice (e.g., IVR and telephone banking) and digital channels (e.g., website, online banking, mobile). Our technology enables 24/7 service to credit union members on digital channels for more than 350 routine tasks, ranging from checking branch hours and product rates to paying a credit card bill and setting a travel notice all via natural conversation.
What opportunity or challenge does it address?
KK: Today’s credit union members expect the quality, streamlined service of brands like Uber and Amazon. Serving members 24/7 on digital channels is a common challenge for our owners and customers. We understand that it can be challenging to continually hire and train new reps, as contact centers are high-churn environments. Not to mention that the premium cost for outsourced after-hours service often comes with a reduction in quality. Posh helps credit unions leverage the cost savings of AI while providing members answers and information in an efficient and personalized manner via natural conversation.
How does it increase member value?
KK: Posh’s technology enables credit unions to automate routine inquiries and better utilize their agents’ time. We use AI not only to reduce costs, but also to improve the human experience: for both agents and members, by offering fast and tailored information via natural conversation. For example, today we’re helping Chartway FCU handle approximately 90% of its banking IVR conversations without human assistance, totaling over 75,000 calls per month.
What differentiates this innovation from competitors?
KK: First, Posh has patent-pending conversational AI technology enabling our AI to better track conversations. In other words, our bots persist conversational memory to respond to user inputs in a more humanlike way even if conversations change topics or the bot needs to clarify things. Our team includes several top researchers (master’s and PhD level) from MIT and Harvard.
Second, as a CUSO we are focused on a very specific domain: credit union member-focused conversations. Unlike other AI engines that are one-size-fits-all (meaning a credit union, healthcare company, and retailer may all share the same underlying engine), at Posh we believe in the power of domain focus and building AI models from the ground up.
Watch the Member Experience finalists pitch their leading-edge solutions.
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MEMBER EXPERIENCE: SILVERCLOUD
Al Rosenbaum, Executive Vice President of Customer Success, SilverCloud
Describe your innovation.
Al Rosenbaum: SilverCloud delivers 24/7 automated support for credit unions’ digital channels (website, mobile, and online banking). We do this through different interfaces chatbots, search, and contextual widgets that are easily added to your online and mobile banking as well as your website so they’re omnipresent. But the big value we provide is our insights and content services. SilverCloud answered more than 14 million member questions last year, so we know what your members are asking and more importantly, we develop the support content for credit unions.
We follow our 3As methodology: Answer the Question, Provide Additional Information, and Provide an Actionable Next Step. The support content is centrally stored in a knowledge management tool that was built exclusively for credit unions and provides the workflow approvals, audit history, and analytics that credit unions need. This ensures that any answer your member gets across your digital channels is the same and that the content and member journeys are constantly improving over time.
Best part since we do all of the work, we can get you live in 30 days with minimal involvement (approximately eight hours spread out over the course of 30 days). We frequently hear this was the easiest project we’ve ever done.
What opportunity or challenge does it address?
AR: The top four opportunities the SilverCloud consumer support solution offers are:
- Improved member experience
- Members are now able to self-serve in the channels they are using 70% of the time (online and mobile) and when they want (nights and weekends account for more than 54% of support requests).
- Reduced support costs
- Members no longer have to call, email, or chat with you to get answers for basic support and technology questions (routing number, reset password). This frees up your call center by removing 15% to 25% of incoming calls instantly. The more you leverage SilverCloud and our best practices and partners, the higher that percentage grows.
- We have integrations into live chat providers so we’re able to put our chatbot in front of live chat to deflect the majority of the live chats by allowing members to self-serve. If and when they need support from a live agent, the entire history is transferred to the agent and the member never leaves the chatbot, removing these two major barriers:
- Your member doesn’t have to start over in a new channel.
- Your employee doesn’t have to learn a new tool as they remain in their current live chat tool and the conversation simply comes into the interface with the entire search history so they can see what the member is looking for.
- Increased product engagement
- On average, we see approximately 20% of member questions are around products and services. Credit unions are now able to capture those inquiries from mobile and online banking and drive them to the right page and next step.
- Increased product and technology adoption. As credit unions continue to invest in new digital technology, the top challenges are adoption as well abandonment rates. With SilverCloud, credit unions are able to boost adoption by providing members the support content to find and learn how to utilize the technology. We also are able to embed our content into third-party applications like account opening and loan origination to lower abandonment rates by providing contextual support and connect to live chat (via our chatbot) for omnipresent support.
How does it increase member value?
AR: It’s essentially all of the above a better member experience by providing support and service in the digital channels.
What differentiates this innovation from competitors?
AR: While there are plenty of alternative support tools in the market, there is no other vendor that works exclusively with banks and credit unions and delivers not just the technology, but the content and ongoing services needed.
Watch the Member Experience finalists pitch their leading-edge solutions.
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All interviews have been edited and condensed.
Read more about other Innovation Series finalists by clicking on the links below.
2020 INNOVATION SERIES: MOBILE/DIGITAL2020 INNOVATION SERIES: PAYMENTS 2020 INNOVATION SERIES: MEMBER EXPERIENCE 2020 INNOVATION SERIES: BUSINESS SERVICES