Case Study
Transform Member Service with Conversational AI
The Background: A Call Center Under Pressure
During the height of COVID-19, Desert Financial Credit Union—Arizona’s largest credit union—faced unprecedented call volumes. With branches closed or limited during the pandemic, members turned to the phone for everything – from checking account balances to loan inquiries. The result was longer wait times, overloaded service center staff and growing frustration among members.
Desert Financial recognized that adding headcount alone wasn’t sustainable. Instead, leadership sought a digital-first approach to service, that could scale with membership growth and ease the burden of frontline staff. Their vision: an AI-powered assistant that could answer common questions, complete basic transactions and pass complex issues to human agents – improving both staff efficiency and member experience.
“We knew this was where the industry was headed,” recalled Christina Mijares, AVP, Member Engagement Center at Desert Financial. “We didn’t want to be behind, and we wanted to meet members where they wanted to do business with us.”
The Solution: Meet "Dee" the AI Assistant
After evaluating more than a dozen vendors, Desert Financial selected boost.ai’s conversational platform. To ensure success, they turned to SwitchThink Solutions for integration, customization and long-term product management. SwitchThink partnered with boost.ai to handle the complex development and platform configuration while working hand-in-hand with Desert Financial to build, train and brand the new assistant.
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Defining the scope, business requirements and member journey
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Designing the logic such as intents and conversational flows
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Building the Language Model
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Creating KeyStone and other vendor partner integrations
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Testing, deploying, and ongoing improvements and optimization
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Boost provided the technology, but SwitchThink translated it into something that worked in a credit union environment. They knew our systems, our culture and how to align the technology with our brand.
In September 2023, Desert Financial launched its first conversational AI assistant - Dee. “From day one, our priority wasn’t just standing up new technology—it was understanding Desert’s pain points, their member experience goals and their operational realities,” said Luisanna Granillo, Product Manager for AI Assist at SwitchThink Solutions. “Technology only becomes powerful when it’s shaped around the actual needs of the credit union and the people it serves.”
Knowing the industry’s history of early chatbot pilots that faltered due to employee resistance, Desert Financial and SwitchThink took a different approach from the outset. They positioned Dee as a teammate, not a replacement. “You usually have people on one side or the other, either they love AI, or they’re terrified of it,” Christina Mijares explained. “We decided to make Dee part of the team.” To reinforce that, the Desert Financial implementation plan included giving Dee a persona, a backstory and even a life-size cardboard cutout for the launch event. It was so popular that the cutout showed up at other meetings and at volunteer events. This humanized Dee, built trust, and encouraged staff to champion the technology to members.
Dee at a Glance
Modernized Phone Banking and Beyond:
Dee was trained to do everything a traditional phone banking platform could do and much more. By handling balance inquiries, recent transactions and other standard frequently asked questions, Desert Financial was able to shut down its decades-old touchtone system, saving $100,000 annually.
Seamless Handoffs:
Dee handles hundreds of questions and verifies members before handing them to an agent—saving ~45 seconds per call and allowing agents to jump straight into problem-solving.
The real win for us is giving people more time to focus on meaningful conversations. Dee takes care of the simple stuff, and our agents handle the complex, high-value interactions.
24/7 Availability:
Dee answers questions and “The real win for us is giving people more time to focus on meaningful conversations. Dee takes care of the simple stuff, and our agents handle the complex, high-value interactions.” Christina Mijares AVP, Member Engagement Center Desert Financial completes transactions outside business hours as well as when agents are in high demand, saving nearly $450,000 annually in overflow and after-hours third-party call center costs.
Brand Alignment:
Dee’s personality, complete with hobbies, jokes and event “outfits”, were crafted to reflect Desert Financial’s approachable brand. Members can ask Dee about their account balance or even ask her to tell a joke. One member even proposed marriage to her, Dee politely declined.
Measurable Outcomes
Desert Financial quickly began seeing tangible results:
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45%+ call containment: Nearly half of all calls sent to Dee are now fully handled by her without needing escalation.
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Reduced wait times: Members connect with live agents faster as Dee absorbs high-volume, routine requests.
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Cost savings: Eliminated ~98% of after-hours overflow vendor expense and retired an outdated phone banking platform.
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Improved employee productivity: By authenticating callers and solving easier questions, Dee has freed up staff to better spend their time helping members with the more complex and meaningful conversations.
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Faster scaling: After the successful rollout of the voice launch, SwitchThink leveraged those learnings to roll out Dee’s digital chat channel which took just three months.
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Partnership in Innovation
Although boost.ai provided the underlying technology behind Dee, SwitchThink played a central role in customizing, training and maintaining Dee for Desert Financial. Desert Financial brought member insights and cultural alignment, while SwitchThink provided technical KeyStone & boost.ai platform expertise and development resources, and now provides on-going product management to ensure continuous product enhancements. Together, SwitchThink, boost.ai, and Desert Financial created a working model that now underpins SwitchThink’s AI Assist, a new conversational AI solution for SwitchThink credit union clients nationwide.
Lessons Learned
Desert Financial’s experience highlights several important insights for credit unions considering conversational AI. One of the most critical factors in their success was employee adoption. By introducing Dee as a colleague rather than a replacement, Desert Financial built early trust and created advocates inside the organization who encouraged members to use the assistant. As Christina Mijares, Desert Financial’s AVP, Member Engagement Center, explained: “We didn’t want Dee to be seen as just another piece of technology. She had to feel like a teammate—someone here to help make jobs easier, not take them away.”
Another key takeaway was the importance of defining success metrics early. By focusing on containment rates, call handle times, and vendor cost savings, Desert Financial and SwitchThink could track value and refine the assistant over time to improve those metrics. They also learned that conversational AI is a living system that evolves with member behavior. Dee continues to learn new ways members ask questions—everything from “What’s my balance?” to “Do I have enough money?”— ensuring her usefulness grows alongside member expectations.
Finally, the partnership itself proved essential. The collaboration between Desert Financial, SwitchThink, and boost.ai ensured that the project was not simply a technical deployment, but an initiative grounded in cultural alignment, member experience, and long-term sustainability.