Customer Service Firm Glia Buys Chatbot Platform Finn AI

Digital customer service firm Glia has acquired Finn AI, a chatbot platform for banks and credit unions, the company announced Thursday (June 23).

This will help to mainstream virtual assistants to financial services, making the artificial intelligence (AI) solutions integral to Glia’s digital customer service platform, per the press release.

The release noted it will also allow financial institutions to offer customers a better, quicker experience for both virtual and human assistants.

“This marks a new chapter for Virtual Assistants: Verticalization with Scale,” said Dan Michaeli, co-founder and CEO of Glia. “Generic ‘one-size-fits-all’ bot providers have largely failed to meet the full potential of conversational AI, leading to the emergence of vendors focusing on specific industry verticals.

“Until now, none of the financial services bot vendors have been able to achieve widespread adoption on their own.”

Michaeli said there would be benefits gleaned from the big customer base from Glia, along with financial backing to make innovation possible.

Jake Tyler, co-founder and CEO of Finn AI, said the approach would help financial institutions cut down on costs, training and the development time usually needed for AI platforms.

In 2020, Glia also teamed up with Alacriti, a payments FinTech, in order to add new customer service options for payments needs. This let financial institutions use Alacriti’s payments AI chatbot, Ella, in Glia’s customer service program.

See also: Alacriti, Glia Team To Offer Financial Institutions Digital Customer Service On Payments

The intent was to allow more nuance for digital payments, letting the chatbot answer questions on bill paying and ensuring security for digital payments.

At the time, Eric Kugle, senior director of strategic partnerships with Alacriti, said a shift had made customer and member service more dependent on good innovative bill pay experiences.

He added that the company wants to help “deliver a seamless, modern digital experience that allows account holders to receive valuable, timely customer support and pay in the channels they prefer, using the payment methods most convenient for them.”