The 43,000+ members of Dover Federal Credit Union (DFCU) are the latest beneficiaries of the marriage between AI and customer care that has been a growing feature of the customer experience in financial services. The Delaware-based institution, with more than $600 million in assets, has teamed up with interface.ai to leverage the company’s Intelligent Virtual Assistant (IVA) in its call center operations initially, before expanding the technology to DFCU’s website, online, and banking services.
“The IVA will enable us to create a seamless experience for members across all of our contact channels,” DFCU VP of Marketing & Digital Experience Tyler Kuhn said. “It will also help to continue to create efficiencies across the organization. With the ability of the technology to continuously learn and improve, we will be able to adapt to new member needs and evolve. Working with interface.ai also allows us to retain our personal touch in every conversation through their neutral voice-enabled system that makes every voice-interaction with the IVA, human-like.”
In the partnership announcement, Kuhn recalled pandemic-era call center volumes that were twice as large as usual and had a major impact on DFCU’s ability to serve its members at a time of crisis. Finding no traditional solution to the challenge, Kuhn said that interface.ai’s IVA had a number of key features that DFCU needed in order to effectively respond to its members. Focusing on these critical issues – eliminating support bottlenecks, improving operational efficiencies, and enhancing the overall member experience – according to Kuhn, is what led DFCU to interface.ai.
“In our search, we discovered that interface.ai’s IVA would enable us to instantly respond to member inquiries around the clock, while maintaining high service levels – ultimately leading to enhanced member experiences and further optimizing our operational costs by creating efficiencies across the organization,” Kuhn explained.
Interface.ai won Best of Show in its Finovate debut last year, demonstrating its out-of-the-box, “personal teller” that uses human-level, natural language to enable call centers to automate 60% of their calls in 60 days. Since then, interface.ai has forged a number of partnerships with banks and credit unions including collaborations with Pasadena Service Federal Credit Union in May, with America’s Credit Union based in Washington State in April and, in December, with Dallas, Texas-based Neighborhood Credit Union.
Founded in 2018, interface.ai is headquartered in San Mateo, California. Srinivas Njay is founder and CEO.