How Sunbit Contained 50% of Interactions and Cut Routing Time from 90 Seconds to 5 with Cresta
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50%
of interactions contained
10%
lower average handle time
About Sunbit
Sunbit is a financial technology company that helps people pay for the things they need and get more out of their money. Through merchant partners in categories like auto repair, dental care, optical and veterinary services, Sunbit offers pay-over-time financing at the point of sale, which means that for many customers, the first real conversation they ever have with the Sunbit brand happens in the contact center.
"One of the key things that Sunbit was founded to do is to bring that level of VIP service to everybody," said Bill Walsh, Chief Customer Officer. Delivering on that promise at scale is what led Sunbit to Cresta.
The challenge: delivering VIP service at hypergrowth speed
Sunbit has been a technology-first company since it was founded, and its growth has been fast. The contact center had to keep pace, and keep the experience personal, while volume climbed across Customer Care and Collections.
"When you're growing that quickly, rising to meet the challenge of that scale was not easy," Bill said.
Several things stood in the way:
- The IVR was slowing customers down. A tree-based phone menu forced callers through layers of options before they reached the right place, a process that could take up to 90 seconds, and it contained only a small share of calls.
- Quality management was a sampling exercise. "In a traditional environment with sampling and monitoring, you can, at best, get 5%, maybe if you're really dedicated, 10% of your interactions QA'd," Bill said. That left most conversations unreviewed and made it hard to connect coaching to behavior and outcomes.
- Agents were splitting their attention. Searching for answers and writing up calls after the fact took time away from the customer on the line.
- Visibility into what drove performance was limited. Without a view across every interaction, it was difficult to tie agent behaviors to CSAT, handle time or resolution.
Sunbit needed a partner that could automate the routine, support agents in the moment and turn every conversation into something the team could learn from.
The solution
Sunbit rolled out Cresta's unified platform across the contact center:
- Cresta AI Agent replaced the tree-based IVR with a conversational voice agent that greets callers with "How can I help you?", handles authentication, payments and common questions on its own, and routes to a human only when one is needed.
- Cresta Agent Assist gives agents real-time guidance, Knowledge Assist for instant answers and auto summaries that eliminate after-call write-ups.
- Automated Quality Management scores essentially 100% of calls across compliance and performance, replacing the manual sample.
- Cresta Conversation Intelligence sits across every interaction and translates them into insights that feed coaching and workflow decisions.
Sunbit chose to start with the hardest problem first.
"One of the first things that we worked on with the AI agent was helping customers make payments. Payments are a very sensitive part of the business. You've got to get it right 100% of the time," Bill said. "We sort of tackled the hard stuff first, and if we could do it there, you can do it anywhere."
Why Cresta
For Bill, the deciding factor was a platform that could see every conversation and make sense of it.
"Cresta sits across all of our interactions, and then the ability to translate those into meaningful insights really impressed us," he said.
He is also clear that this was never a one-time implementation.
"An AI transformation is not a project. An AI transformation is a fundamental reprogramming of how you do things."
What's next: AI across the whole customer journey
Sunbit started with payments, the most sensitive part of its business, and proved that AI could handle it. That has set the bar for everything that follows.
"Sunbit is a technology-first company and has been since it was founded. We're going to be very ambitious in bringing AI-powered and AI-supported experiences throughout the whole journey," Bill said.
The first wave of AI at Sunbit changed how customers reach the company, how agents spend their time and how leadership sees the operation. The next wave is already underway.
Results
Cresta Agentic Assist
With answers surfaced in real time and summaries written automatically, agents no longer divide their attention between the customer and their screen.
"With Knowledge Agent and with auto summaries, the focus is now almost entirely on the customer, and our agents are spending their time doing what they do best, which is connecting with our customers and delivering a great experience."
Cresta AI Agent
Replacing the IVR changed the first moment of every call. Instead of navigating a menu, customers say what they need and are taken straight to it. Half of all interactions are now resolved by the AI Agent without a human, and customers get answers at any hour, including when the contact center is closed.
"When we replaced the tree-based IVR with the AI voice agent, the conversation starts with, 'How can I help you?' We get the caller into the right spot with the right service immediately. What used to take sometimes 90 seconds happens in 5. Now about 50% of our interactions are contained, and customers are able to get an answer to their question faster and around the clock, even when the contact center may not be open."
Automated Quality Management on 100% of calls
Quality at Sunbit is no longer a sample. Every call is scored, and coaching is grounded in the full picture of how agents perform rather than a handful of reviewed conversations.
"In a traditional environment with sampling and monitoring, you can, at best, get 5%, maybe if you're really dedicated, 10% of your interactions QA'd. When we started working with Cresta, we were able to build out QA for basically 100% of calls, which has been a game changer for us."
Lower handle times, higher quality and satisfaction
Efficiency gains in a contact center often come at the expense of the customer experience. At Sunbit, both moved in the right direction at once.
"Since we started using Cresta, our average handle times have gone down by about 10%, and most importantly, our quality and our customer satisfaction have actually both gone up."