Introduction
IQ Credit Union (IQCU) has long been a leader in innovating in the financial services space, striving to enhance both the member and employee experience. This commitment to innovation led to IQCU exploring their options to modernize their contact center operations. With increasing member expectations and growing competition from fintechs and larger financial institutions, the team saw generative AI as a transformational opportunity to improve efficiency, customer service quality, and employee satisfaction.
Why IQCU Invested in Generative AI
For Kim Slorey, Vice President of Member Support, and Ali Migaki, Chief Experience Officer, the decision to explore AI was driven by a core challenge: the limitations of traditional contact center operations.
These limitations manifested in a number of ways across their organization. Kim, who describes her job as “figuring out ways to augment the human experience”, explained how their legacy technology led to inaccurate transcriptions, difficulty coaching agents in effective ways, and time lost across the organization to tedious, time-consuming tasks. They also struggled with adequately onboarding and training new agents, with little visibility into how to coach to what was actually working.
“There’s no way humanly possible to evaluate 100% of member interactions,” Kim told us. “And then – do you really know how your team is performing based off of this infinitesimal amount of calls that you’re able to review to check for quality?”
“How can you really move the needle forward when you’re only able to look at such a small fraction of the calls?” – Kim Slorey, VP of Member Support
The State of AI Adoption in Credit Unions
While larger financial institutions and fintechs have aggressively pursued AI, many credit unions have been slower to adopt due to concerns over cost, complexity, and change management.
Kim, drawing on over 25 years of experience in credit union contact centers, sees this as a crucial inflection point – and an incredible opportunity. “I’m always asking myself – ‘why do we do it this way?’ I’m looking to create efficiencies and make jobs easier,” she explained.
“If you don’t embrace AI, you’ll be left behind – not just in terms of member experience, but also as an employer,” Ali agreed. “The workforce of today expects these technologies to be in place.”
Why IQCU Chose Cresta
IQCU took a meticulous approach to AI adoption, beginning with extensive vendor evaluations. They assessed nine potential providers, carefully considering factors such as technology capabilities, ease of integration, and long-term alignment with their strategic goals. After narrowing the field to three finalists, IQCU ultimately chose Cresta as their preferred AI partner, largely due to Cresta’s unified platform for human augmentation and AI automation. This end-to-end approach consolidates all customer conversations, analyzes these interactions, and continuously improves.
Cresta’s strong product roadmap and commitment to constant innovation also aligned with the credit union’s evolving needs, and was further reinforced by Cresta’s dedication to being a strategic partner, not just another vendor.
“With Cresta, it’s about the relationship and catering the technology to IQ Credit Union. Cresta’s employees got to know our employees, our culture, and our brand and were able to speak on how they could enhance that even more than what it is today. It’s such an alignment in values of Cresta really obsessing about the member experience.” – Ali Migaki
For members, this means:
- Faster, more accurate responses
- Improved self-service options for routine inquiries
- More meaningful, personalized interactions with agents
For employees, this means:
- Reduced cognitive load and more efficient workflows
- Shortened training time for new hires
- A better overall work experience
IQCU’s AI Roadmap
As they deploy Cresta and drive adoption across the organization, IQCU is eagerly anticipating a future where AI acts to augment and enable their agents, driving efficiency, reducing ramp time for new agents, and saving time across the organization. They are kicking off with member services first, focusing on automating QA. Today, they have less than 1% visibility into what’s happening in conversations, making it difficult to identify coaching opportunities efficiently. By automating at least 50% of QA to start, they aim to spend less time searching for the right calls and more time coaching agents on where they need the most attention.
What’s on the roadmap after that? “Being able to use insights from the data – that depth of insight, not just a surface fix. Why are members even calling us?” Ali answered. “Evaluating the policies, the products, the way that things are happening outside of the contact center, but drastically impacting the experience within the contact center.”
The team is already rethinking how they approach QA with the goal of eventually automating 100% of it, enabling managers to be more data-driven and efficient in their coaching efforts.
And ultimately, they want to continue to pursue their most important mission of all: serving their members and ensuring a wonderful experience for them.
“We want agents to focus on the relationship with the member – how in tune can agents be if they’re instead focused on taking notes or trying to find information?” Ali shared. “Cresta helps remove the busywork so employees can concentrate on resolving complex issues and building relationships with our members.”
