Evergreen Credit Union is planning to upgrade its call center’s digital communications to include SMS texting and chat capabilities through digital banking provider Access Softek.

The Portland, Maine-based, $469 million credit union first selected Access Softek for mobile banking more than five years ago and added its online banking capability in 2020 to resolve its “disjointed” client experience, Tim Verreault, executive vice president and chief operating officer at Evergreen, told Bank Automation News. “We needed our members to have the same experience, or similar experiences online [as] they had on mobile.”

Now, the credit union plans to take the relationship a step further, Verreault said, noting, “We recently made a commitment to centralize a lot of our digital capabilities as an omnichannel experience under our Member Experience Center [formerly call center].”

“Our call center receives so many communications via phone and email, and we’re going to be advancing that to look at SMS texting, chat capabilities, incoming loan applications and bot features,” he said.

While Evergreen has not disclosed the launch date of the new features, Verreault said there are a few things that must be determined prior to rollout. For example, compiling the most common types of call center inquiries and building out the technology to answer those questions is a priority, he noted.

“It takes time to build that out, and we just have to have it right for our members because it’s hard to unwind those things once you engage with them,” Verreault added.

Much like past launches, the new features are expected to reduce friction for clients, reduce time in the call center and lessen frustration when transferred through different verticals, for both clients and call center employees, he said.

Time savings

Biometric solutions have provided additional time savings for the credit union, Verreault said, noting that Access Softek’s biometric solution allows the credit union to send a verification code to a client’s mobile device for nearly instant authentication.

“If you quantify that, it takes five seconds or less [to authenticate], versus taking a minute or two to go through the barrage of questions that we might ask them,” he said.

Looking ahead to next year, Verreault said Evergreen will roll out its “next generation of online and mobile banking experience” in the second or third quarter.

Access Softek added four credit unions to its platform in November: Fall River, Mass.-based, $259 million Fall River Municipal Credit Union; Ogdensburg, N.Y.-based, $206 million St. Lawrence Federal Credit Union; Newport, Maine-based, $155 million Sebasticook Valley Federal Credit Union; and Hamburg, N.Y.-based, $123 million Meridia Community Credit Union.

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