With the constantly increasing competition in the market; it has become imperative to deliver the right thing and within the said timeline. And, with the introduction of Artificial Intelligence, it is easy to do. AI is nothing but a simulation of human processes by a machine. These processes encompass learning, reasoning, and self-correction. So, automating day-to-day work that requires a quick response with accuracy could be the right decision. This will surely result in saving manpower and increase productivity. So, for better understanding, Kevin L.E. Landel talked about the same at the 5th Annual CULytics Summit.

Kevin L.E. Landel, with 15 years of industry experience, has been serving Patelco Credit Union for years as SVP, Chief Information Officer and his new role at the organization is - SVP, Innovation, and Payments Strategy.

Patelco Credit Union is $7.8 Billion in Assets with 36 Branches and 380,000 Members. The organization is operating with an aim to fuel hope and create opportunities to empower the members to build lifelong financial health and well-being. It has been proudly serving the Northern CA market for over 80 years.

James – a digital worker – has been with the Patelco Credit Union since 2016. It is an AI-powered Virtual People designed to Talk-Think-Act and currently serving as the primary knowledge base for the organization. 

Kevin L.E. Landel explained how James was created to ease the work of the team members at the Transformation Challenge Summit organized by The CUytics. Here is the information:

Problem Statement

Patelco Credit Union rolled out a new online banking and bill payment platform. And, whenever an organization introduces a new online platform, there is a need for a lot of resources for communication for information sharing with the members and answer the queries they might have. The “team member readiness” program ensures that in-house people can help the members whenever they approach. However, despite the best preparations, questions came in that the organization never anticipated, and issues it didn’t catch in QA.

So, there was a need to generate answers quickly and keep the team up to date on the latest fixes and information.

Efforts were made to collect questions that members might have. So, there was a fast-paced environment but there was a need to update it quickly and get it to the team member quickly. An internet page was there to dedicated the issues that members are facing and how to deal with them. That was still challenging to navigate for the team members. So, a better solution was required.

Solution: Ask James

James is a perfect combination of Knowledge Base and Digital Assistant. It has a Chat-based interface. So, instead of searching for information or putting keywords to get the right thing, it is easy to ask James to bring it to you. It provides information in Bite-sized nuggets and answers procedures & documents in the interface. James is based on a dynamic and powerful knowledge base that is easy to update and make it responsive to the needs of the team members. As the new information comes in, it is easy to come up and add that information to the content management system, and best of all, no need to spend much time to build James to bring this information out.

And because it is AI-based, James can access the website and then crawl the intranet site and gather the relevant info and tag that information with potential keywords and categories. This eliminates the efforts required to categorize. Team members can provide feedback to James on whether the information is useful or not and we can turn around to fine-tune the content based on the same. 

Results

The team gets answers quickly, easily, asking natural language questions rather than keyword search terms. Responses are precise rather than a list of results. James has become a primary knowledge base. It has been observed that over 3500 questions were answered in the first two weeks, 50% decrease in 2nd level support calls, 15% decrease in handle time, 2.82 pts NPS increase, 91% Team approval means the team loved it.

Lesson Learned

Success is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. And, here are some points that are worth to learn:

• Be willing to be Rogue – Be bold and ready to transform when and where it is required. Great things will happen automatically. 
• Leverage Enthusiasm - Find team members, managers, and peers who are excited about the prospects
• Responsive Partner – Important to grow together
• Content is King – Ensure that the information in the system is as per the requirements 

Artificial Intelligence is important as it enables us to complete a task with increased efficiency, effectiveness, and at a low cost. So, work on the needs of the organization, create a layout, and implement a strategy to adopt artificial intelligence to meet the set targets of the organization to best serve the members.