Umpqua Bank announced yesterday the launch of a new type of customer engagement model, one that appears to be entirely new for the financial services industry. Called Go-To, the service uses human agents to engage with customers digitally and went live on Sept. 13.

Go-To agents have names, faces, and are genuine Umpqua employees. Each customer is assigned his own agent, and each agent can handle multiple numbers of customers — 150 to 200 is the number Umpqua CEO and President Cort O’Haver mentioned to Bank Innovation, though a partner institution in Australia has each associate managing 600 customers, apparently without problems. In other words, Go-To is overcoming what typically limits human-to-human interaction, scale.

Conversations take place through text. Problems or complex queries can be upgraded to live conversations with other bankers with more specialized knowledge.

Humans talking to humans may not seem particularly new, but providing this touch at scale is true innovation. Umpqua, headquartered in Roseburg, Ore., has a lot at stake in the move to digital across the industry — it pioneered the concept of the universal banker and invested heavily in building a strong branch experience. Technology has finally caught up with the bank’s desire to provide human contact to its customers anywhere they are in the world.

Banks can respond to the digital challenge in many ways. One strategy is to launch an ancillary brand, as JPMorgan Chase did with Finn. Umpqua has other options. It can now onboard people digitally in new markets (it’s focusing on serving existing markets, for now, O’Haver said) or license its software to other banks and live off the SaaS revenue. This last notion is not so far-fetched when you consider Go-To’s origins.

The product grew out of Pivotus Ventures, a wholly owned subsidiary of Umpqua that builds software. Pivotus has a number of bank partners outside Umpqua, one of which is CUA, Australia’s largest credit union. Bank Innovation met with Pivotus to discuss the embryonic Go-To, then called Engage, about a year ago. (After Engage the software was also briefly known as BFF.)

“It’s a great blend of technology, to go on mobile and get a real person,” O’Haver told Bank Innovation last week. “And it’s a real person you know. There’s something powerful about having an individual you know — a human digital experience, rather than technology for technology’s sake.”

As for scalability, if you doubt that one associate can manage 600 customer relationships, Umpqua Executive Vice President and Chief Communications Officer Eve Callahan noted, “When you first sign up, you sue it more.” Usage afterward tends to be sporadic, and Umpqua is transparent that routine engagements such as balance inquiries are handled by bots.” Go-To has two dashboards for employees, one for in-person interactions, and one for remote interactions, but they are fairly similar, Callahan said.

Pilots have shown Go-To users increase their engagement or relationship depth with the bank 15%, and dramatically increase digital adoption among formerly offline customers.

For now, Go-To is a separate app. On the roadmap is integrating it into the existing consumer app, as well as launching a business version.

The Go-To app is live in five states of Oregon, Nevada, California, Washington, and Utah.