AI-driven customer engagement service provider Glia has launched an AI-powered outbound calling and texting system called AI Outreach that is designed to help community banks and credit unions proactively contact customers for renewals, collections and cross-selling opportunities. 

AI can place calls, speak to customers and even “go through the whole process of that CD renewal,” Justin DiPietro, co-founder and chief strategy officer at Glia, told FinAi News,

The system is designed to balance outbound activity with available staff to avoid longer wait times if a customer wants to interact with a human, he said.  

“It only places calls at the rate you have humans available,” he said. 

When a customer asks mid-conversation to speak with a human, the call is transferred along with an AI-generated summary of the interaction to that point, DiPietro said. 

Bank clients told him that nearly 80% of outbound calls are not answered by customers, DiPietro said, adding that letting AI make the calls and route them to a human if needed can boost outreach. 

To improve answer rates, Glia partnered with telecom service provider First Orion for branded calling, allowing an institution’s logo and name to appear on a customer’s phone screen, he said.  

If a call goes unanswered, the system automatically falls back to a text message, DiPietro said. 

The company also plans to add a voice identification layer to verify banking clients, he said. 

Building blocks for cross-selling 

AI-driven outreach campaigns are triggered through manually uploaded customer lists or by connecting to an institution’s existing core systems on a schedule, DiPietro said. 

Institutions can review draft campaigns — such as CD renewals due that week — before launching them. 

Several of Outreach’s features run on AI models Glia built, prioritizing latency, DiPietro said, declining to say how much Glia spent on development.

“I think 20 millisecond response times is just not possible unless you’re really running your own,” he said.  

Glia also uses AWS Bedrock and Anthropic’s Claude to summarize calls for customer representatives. 

The solution can be deployed with Glia’s existing hallucination guarantee and is available to any community bank or credit union regardless of relationship with the company, DiPietro said. Deployment can take “a couple days,” he said.

The company provides a contractual commitment guarantees that its AI will not produce unauthorized or inaccurate responses and if it does, the company refunds the clients funds, according to FinAi News’ prior reporting.

Glia tested the solution with four or five financial institutions, covering loan and collections use cases, DiPietro said, adding that Glia also will build in the capability for the AI to autonomously track all accounts and reach out to customers on its own when it sees cross-selling possibilities. 

“Right now, we’re more leaning on the banks and credit union to determine … which customers to target,” he said. 

The company did not disclose what FIs tested Glia. 

FIs that use Glia include: 

• $17 billion First Technology Federal Credit Union; 

• $1.2 billion Silver State Schools Credit Union; and 

• $4.8 billion BCU. 

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