Three institutions. One clear pattern. Heartland Credit Union, Service 1st FCU, and Heritage FCU didn’t just add new channels. They restructured how service works.
Each started with a familiar challenge: rising volume, staffing constraints, legacy systems, and tech sprawl. Instead of hiring their way out, they expanded intentionally across Glia’s Digital, Voice, and AI capabilities inside the Alkami platform.
These financial institutions realized many transformative outcomes such as greater efficiency, more capacity, stronger user engagement, and measurable loan growth – all without adding headcount.
Why Intentional Expansion is the Multiplier
Most financial institutions don’t struggle because they lack channels. They struggle because those channels don’t work together. Separate queues. Disconnected data. No shared context. Service teams operating in silos.
When institutions expand from a single digital queue to a unified interaction model including chat, voice, video, AI, CoBrowsing, and reporting, they stop managing “lanes” and start managing capacity holistically. Service shifts from reactive support to operational leverage.
Heartland Credit Union experienced this firsthand following its core conversion to Alkami. The team selected Glia specifically because the integration and operational alignment would allow them to scale service intentionally, not bolt on another tool.
Expansion mindset
Start where adoption is easiest (chat), then expand to voice + video + AI + CoBrowsing + reporting to remove friction end-to-end–member experience and staff workflows.
What Expansion Actually Delivers: Three Measurable Outcomes
1. Operational Control and Efficiency
Heartland Credit Union began with chat, then expanded into digital tools and ultimately Glia Voice–bringing reporting, visibility, and cross-channel context into one unified operation.
That shift didn’t just modernize the contact center. It made it measurable and manageable.
Measured impact:
- 97% service level (improving by 30%)
- 62% decrease in abandonment rate
- 40% reduction in average handle time
- 42% increase in monthly service capacity
"We’re on a quest to become a data-based organization, so our contact center had to become data-based as well."
— Daniel Mijal, VP of Digital Strategy, Heartland Credit Union
2. Engagement Without Dead Ends
Across all three institutions, expansion meant giving users choice, while ensuring employees had shared context regardless of channel.
Heartland followed a clear arc: Chat → expanded digital toolkit → digital voice/video → full voice unification. Each step reduced friction and improved resolution speed.
When users can move seamlessly between digital and voice (and employees don’t have to restart conversations) service becomes fluid instead of fragmented.
3. Turning Service Capacity Into Loan Growth
Two stories show the same playbook: use AI + channel unification to remove service drag, then redeploy people to high-value growth work.
Service 1st FCU: From Call Volume to Conversion Focus
Service 1st deployed Glia Banker to deflect calls using voice AI. At the same time, it unified voice + digital to stop its digital team from being consumed by overflow service volume, freeing them to focus on loan and deposit conversions and relationship-building.
Measured impact:
- 21% increase in loan dollars (digital center, first half of 2025)
- 100% of calls answered by AI; 37% fully handled by voice AI
- 96% reduction in abandonment rate; 91% reduction in wait time
- 69 hours/week saved in agent time
"Before Glia, we would see a waterfall of calls… Thanks to voice AI, that waterfall… is now a trickle, and our agents can focus on high-value work, building relationships and driving growth."
— Chris Court, Chief Innovation and Strategy Officer, Service 1st Federal Credit Union
Heritage FCU: Scaling Loans With Fewer Staff
Heritage paired voice AI + Glia Digital embedded in Alkami to automate routine work, raise capacity without hiring, and redirect effort toward revenue-generating conversations.
Measured impact:
- 2.5x YoY loans, reaching 151%+ of annual target (with 25% less staff)
- 2x more volume handled with no extra headcount
- 18% decrease in AHT and 16% increase in service levels
- Notably, Heritage cites a pre-built integration with its Alkami platform and CRM and also implementing Glia Digital tools “right into the Alkami platform.”
Heritage credits the pre-built integration with Alkami, Glia, and CRM systems as a key enabler, allowing digital and AI capabilities to operate inside existing workflows rather than alongside them.
"It’s about using AI to give your people more time to do what’s best for the business."
— Tim Coudret, Director of Member Experience, Heritage Federal Credit Union
The Expansion Advantage in Action
For Heartland, Service 1st, and Heritage, success came from intentional expansion across Digital, Voice, and AI, restructuring service operations so they generate capacity, which in turn powers measurable growth.
The Expansion Advantage is a proven, repeatable pattern:
- Start with a clear service constraint.
- Expand across Glia’s portfolio inside the Alkami experience.
- Remove fragmentation and automate low-value work.
- Reallocate people toward high-value conversations.
The outcomes follow: Higher service levels. Lower abandonment. More capacity without hiring. Measurable loan growth.
When financial institutions approach expansion as the design of a unified interaction model rather than a series of feature additions, service evolves from reactive support into strategic infrastructure. That is the Expansion Advantage: leveraging Alkami and the powerful offerings within Glia to unify systems, create operational capacity, and drive sustained growth.
