Chartered 70 years ago to serve Wyoming Highway Department employees and their families, WyHy Federal Credit Union has remained true to its founding philosophy of ‘people helping people.’ To better serve members, the credit union had adopted a number of digital solutions over time, including online chat, SMS, and an automated chatbot to provide assistance. Those solutions—from multiple vendors—created a disparate system, however, that became costly and challenging to manage.
As the WyHy team was exploring yet another point solution to add video during the pandemic, it began to consider a more efficient way to manage its member interaction channels. While evaluating Glia’s video capabilities, the WyHy team saw an opportunity to consolidate all interactions onto a single platform to reduce both costs and complexity.
In addition to its own disparate systems, WyHy has completed three mergers over the past two years, creating new challenges for delivering consistent service to both existing and new WyHy members. A unified platform to bring the three new credit unions into the WyHy fold became a top priority from both an operational and efficiency perspective.
WyHy selected Glia to consolidate its four disparate member support systems onto a single platform. The Glia Interaction Platform brings WyHy’s call center, digital service options and automated self-service together to both simplify and streamline member support. As part of that platform, WyHy now uses Glia Call Center for call-in phone support, Digital Customer Service (DCS) for chat, on-screen audio and video, and the Glia Virtual Assistant (GVA) chatbot for automation. Additionally, WyHy is using Glia’s SMS solution.
“The consolidation of vendors and reducing the number of platforms and software tools that our support team uses adds tremendous efficiency, which leads to better service and member experiences. With Glia, the support team is able to interact quicker, through one platform instead of jumping from one window to another,” noted Valla.
Bringing the call center and digital channels together has greatly simplified how WyHy provides member service, consolidating all interactions into a single queue. Where the credit union had separate team members dedicated to phone, chat, and SMS support before, it now has a single team that is highly capable of handling all interactions regardless of how members engage. In addition to staffing efficiencies, training has been quick and easy, with most agents ready to provide service within an hour.
“The reaction was very positive from our service staff. Agents have more than 25 systems that they might have to look at for any given interaction to help a member. Between the core banking system, another that runs credit cards, yet another for debit cards and for bill pay, providing support can get complex quickly. Now add in the complexity of separate phone and digital systems across multiple platforms this becomes very challenging. For the agents to be able to manage all interactions on one platform, in one window has dramatically increased efficiency in terms of service and training,” said Tim Walters, Member Experience Manager for WyHy Federal Credit Union.
WyHy has been able to handle an increase in call volume, especially from new members resulting from the multiple mergers, without increasing its staff. Service levels have increased 10% since the implementation of Glia, and members have really taken to using the call back feature—which has helped cut abandonment rates by 5%. On-screen collaboration has been especially effective in accelerating resolution and lowering wait times. Glia’s dual-cursor CoBrowsing feature allows agents to share a member’s screen and digitally guide them online to quickly find resources and answers.
Strong performance combined with the benefits of the unified interaction platform led the WyHy team to look for ways to improve its automated self-service option. The previous chatbot had tapped out at support for fewer than 60 responses for general banking scenarios, with no ability to provide member specific details such as helping members check their balance. The Glia Virtual Assistant (GVA) offers more than 800 pre-trained instances, allowing WyHy to greatly expand the areas and depth of support it could provide members, to handle loan origination or credit card inquiries, for example.
Further, the GVA is pre-integrated as a part of the Glia Interaction Platform, making the switch an easy, straightforward process. GVAs tie seamlessly into both digital chat and the Glia Call Center solution, providing agents with full interaction context during a transfer from the chatbot to a live human agent. The Glia chatbot delivers an easy, highly effective self-service option and support for after hours.
WyHy wanted a solution that made the phone authentication process easier. It turned to Glia and partner Illuma Labs for a voice-based solution that could recognize callers and verify their identity quickly. Fitting in with its overall efficiency theme, WyHy has been able to accelerate authentication for members calling in, getting them support faster.
Glia’s SMS feature has been another solution that builds on WyHy’s single-platform, streamlined service approach. While the credit union supported text messages before, the Glia solution makes SMS part of WyHy’s seamless member experience by positioning texts within the same queues as calls and messaging. Now members can send the credit union an SMS text and securely transition to richer, more secure channels for live support, as needed.
By consolidating all interactions onto Glia’s single platform, WyHy has driven significant new efficiencies while continuously enhancing the member and employee experiences. It has also set the credit union up for future improvements with the ability to align to member expectations as they evolve. Whether that’s a big increase in digital-first interactions or a boost in chatbot use, WyHy is ready and able to provide the best experience possible.
