Finn AI, a Vancouver-based banking chatbot platform, is expanding its reach. In a move to put its product into the hands of more bank and credit union clients, the company this week announced a partnership with Glia, a New York-based customer service platform.

“There is a huge, latent demand for better self-servicing,” said Jake Tyler, CEO and co-founder of Finn AI.  The company has raised almost $14 million according to Crunchbase. “We integrate seamlessly into existing live-agent workflows. We can make sure we understand what the customer is asking about and pass off to the right agent.”

Glia, which has more than 100 clients in financial services and insurance, and Finn AI offer complementary products. Whereas Glia focuses on improving in-person customer service interactions, Finn AI handles the more routine customer queries, allowing employees to focus on more meaningful interactions. By bundling its chatbot product with Glia, Finn AI is making it easier and cheaper for clients to onboard its conversational AI technology.

Unlike chatbots built in-house, Finn AI offers a pre-trained chatbot that needs minimal additional learning. According to Tyler, Finn AI’s chatbot understands more than 500 tasks out of the box and can handle 80% of customer queries. The 6-year-old startup handles all the chatbot’s learning, which is done through anonymized, cleaned-up logs of customer service conversations. Learnings are shared throughout Finn AI’s network of clients, so when the chatbot learns a new function through a client, all other Finn AI client chatbots become more sophisticated as well.

Finn AI’s target market is mid-size institutions that want to offer a chatbot but don’t have the resources to build and train one from scratch. Its clients include ATB Financial, United Federal Credit Union and the Canadian challenger bank KOHO. According to Tyler, about 25% of customer queries are complex enough to require a human agent; by handling the remaining 75%, Finn AI is trying to make it easier for human agents to handle more meaningful customer interactions. Tyler added that 80% of bank customers try to self-serve before calling the bank. 

Last year, Finn AI partnered with Fidor Solutions, a digital banking technology vendor, to provide a chatbot with Fidor’s banking solutions. Glia, meanwhile, helps customer service agents switch between mediums like phone, text and video, and allows agents to co-browse with customers. 

“We’re pre-integrated into [Glia’s] product; there’s no technical risk associated with that,” Tyler said. “Most banks and credit unions are buying automated servicing and a product like Glia together.”