Chartered more than 76 years ago to help local telephone company workers improve the quality of their financial lives, Signal Financial Federal Credit Union today serves more than 24,000 members in the Washington, D.C. metro area. That includes a growing number of small-to-medium sized companies, as well as individuals who live, work, worship or attend school in Washington D.C.
Community involvement is important for the credit union, which participates in a wide variety of local activities from the annual Washington Area Bicyclist Association’s 50 States Ride and local fun runs, to book signings, festivals, and even Signal’s own Art in the City series. Signal Financial regularly reaches out to a younger demographic to promote its special programs that help members under 26 achieve financial fitness. Younger members are increasingly gravitating to digital-first solutions, prompting the Signal Financial team to explore options.
“At Signal Financial, we pride ourselves in meeting our members where they are in the community, taking part in local events. Following that philosophy, we realized that we needed to meet our members where they are in the digital realm, leading us to embrace a new approach to member service,” said Dustin Gray, Digital Services Manager for Signal Financial Federal Credit Union.
Rather than just dipping a toe in the digital-first pool, Signal Financial realized it needed a single platform to manage both its call center and digital interactions. The service team began exploring options that would accommodate members who favor digital-first options, such as chat, while still supporting those who prefer calling into the credit union. After evaluating several options, Signal Financial selected Glia.
The Glia Interaction Platform provides both Glia Call Center for traditional dial-in callers and Digital Customer Service (DCS) for online support, all on a single platform. Better yet, Glia’s on-screen collaboration tools enables Signal Financial to help members build their digital confidence, which has accelerated a member shift to preferring digital-first options.
Dual-cursor CoBrowsing, for example, means a Signal Financial team member can not only view the member’s screen, but proactively guide them online. This has been useful with complex tasks, such as filling out a loan application. By showing members where to find an online resource, or how to start a credit card application, Signal Financial is teaching them how to self-serve and quickly find what they need in the future.
CoBrowsing’s popularity among members has even extended to those calling in on the phone. With Glia’s Call Visualizer solution, Signal Financial can offer online guidance to callers who are near or on a screen, such as their mobile phone. By entering a simple authorization code into the Signal Financial website, members can CoBrowse online with the credit union team member they are speaking to on the phone.
According to Sheila Limontas, Digital Member Support Manager at Signal Financial, the credit union is seeing approximately 50% of callers shift to digital channels after a Call Visualizer experience.
In addition to improving member service, the Glia platform has simplified how the Signal Financial member support team operates. Training is now quick and easy. Rather than learning multiple systems, team members can rapidly learn the Glia platform and get online to provide member service.
Supporting all interactions from a single platform rather than toggling between different phone and digital systems has been a great benefit for the Signal team too, increasing the team’s efficiency. Rather than staffing separate teams for calls and digital interactions, the support team is able to handle all interaction types.
Reporting has improved with Glia as well. Signal Financial can access data across all interactions from a single source with flexible dashboards and reporting features. This also helps with quality control—a top priority for the credit union. The in-depth visibility across all phone and digital channels allows the member support team to understand strengths and see areas for improvement, which through on-going training, helps the entire team continuously grow and get even better. This, in turn, improves first-call resolution, helping Signal to handle the entire gamut of member requests.
After going all-in with a digital platform, Signal Financial continues to explore new digital-first opportunities and features to further improve the member experience and better enable support staff for the future.
“Glia has given us a solid platform to manage our calls and digital interactions, plus tools to help transition members to online channels. Going forward, we continue to listen to our members and gauge which tools will benefit how we support them. This approach has helped us expand our service options and meet our members where they are, which is increasingly online. In turn, this has helped maintain a high member satisfaction rate and is driving growth for Signal Financial,” said Gray.
