TruStone Financial Reduces Call Volume with Eltropy

TruStone Financial Credit Union was recognized last year as one of America’s best credit unions by Newsweek and Plant-A Insights Group and was ranked in the top 1 percent of credit unions nationwide by Rising Above Enterprises.

The full-service credit union, which is headquartered in Minneapolis, attributes that kind of success to a commitment to excellence and innovation that has led to above-average growth.

Founded as a teachers’ credit union in 1939, today it has 23 branches across Minnesota and Wisconsin and is Minnesota’s second-largest credit union, with assets of more than $5 billion and a mortgage servicing portfolio of more than $2 billion. The company has 650 employees and more than 200,000 members.

To improve service to all those members, TruStone Financial last year rolled out an artificial intelligence-powered chatbot using Eltropy’s Unified Communications platform. The chatbot is named “Ruth” after the credit union’s first bookkeeper.

The credit union took a strategic approach to implementation, beginning with an employee contest to name the chatbot and creating a backstory that connected Ruth to TruStone’s history.

“We heavily focused on member experience. The technology comes second to us,” says Kate Alter, associate vice president of enterprise applications at TruStone Financial. “We asked ourselves, ‘What are the other things that we can do to make it a success?’”

TruStone launched Ruth first on its website in July, followed by digital banking integration in November. Within the first week of digital banking integration, conversation volume doubled, indicating strong member acceptance of the new communication channel.

Ruth now handles nearly half of all member conversations independently and has reduced contact center call volume by 20 percent.

Eltropy’s conversations platform is designed specifically for community financial institutions, so it seemed like a natural fit for TruStone.

Before implementing the Eltropy solution, TruStone staff faced an overwhelming number of messages, with approximately 5,500 conversations weekly and backlogs of up to 1,000 messages each Monday morning. The credit union needed a way to better manage inquiry flow and gain insights into member communications.

“We were running at about 5,500 conversations a week. We’d get caught up on Saturday and then come into a thousand more Monday morning, because we couldn’t turn off the service,” recalls Jill Shaffler, senior vice president of enterprise applications at TruStone Financial.

Since the implementation, Ruth has led to increases in member satisfaction scores, reduced call waiting times, lower call volume, and more timely and responsive member communications.

“TruStone’s results demonstrate the clear value of combining AI technology with a thoughtful, member-centered approach,” said Ashish Garg, co-founder and CEO of Eltropy, in a statement. “Instead of just dropping in an AI chatbot, they took the time to give Ruth a real connection to their credit union’s history. The results speak for themselves; their teams are more efficient, and members are getting the quick, personal service they want.”

Looking ahead, TruStone Financial plans to enhance Ruth’s capabilities by exploring generative AI integration through Eltropy’s platform to further improve member service.

The Payoff

Since implementing its Ruth chatbot, TruStone Financial has seen the following results:

• member satisfaction scores reached 9.4 out of 10;
• average call wait times dropped to just 34 seconds;
• contact center call volume decreased by 20 percent;
• member conversations handled via chatbot grew to 46 percent;
• missed member inquiries plunged from 1,300 to just 72; and
• overflow contact center support is only needed for after-hours fraud reporting.