By W.B. King
To ensure its 34,000-plus members are up to date with its products, services and the latest technology offerings, Eastman Credit Union (ECU) recently teamed with WaveCX, a provider of personalized, digital product engagement solutions for financial institutions (FIs).
“We enjoy a fantastic partnership with Candescent, which Eastman Credit Union uses for digital banking,” Jonathan Tvrdik, founder and CEO of the Omaha-based WaveCX, told Finopotamus. The Atlanta-based Candescent offers an application programming interface (API)-first architecture and developer tools designed to enable FIs to optimize and expand existing capabilities through the seamless connection of custom-built or third-party solutions. “When we started working with Candescent, they ran a pilot program for interested FIs,” Tvrdik said.
“ECU was eager to improve both member and employee training, so they jumped at the chance to be part of the initial launch. After seeing a demo, they signed up immediately. Since then, it's been a truly wonderful partnership,” Tvrdik continued. “We helped ECU get set up quickly, and they’re primarily using the Illuminate part of our platform. Illuminate lets FIs create and share interactive product demos, marketing content, and documentation. It makes digital engagement easy with click-through demos, video walkthroughs, and personalized content. Soon, they’ll also be using WaveCX Connect.”
Exceeding member expectations has long been the mission of the $8.4 billion Kingsport, Tenn.-based ECU. Whitley Starnes, eLearning designer at the credit union, explained that to meet its members’ financial needs, the organization is constantly adding new products and services, along with the latest technology, to meet its members’ financial needs. The approach includes teaching members how to use these digital banking tools but also informing members of what offerings are available to them.
Connect and Learn
Since launching its first demo in June 2024, ECU reported that the demo has achieved more than 60,000 total views, peaking in the third quarter with an average of 11,000-plus monthly views. Overall, ECU reports an average of 8,400 views per month across all their WaveCX demos.
After recently launching a new external loan payment system, Starnes explained that ECU’s staff created a demo in under two days to promote and share the new product with its members. The demo received 4,600-plus views in its first week and a total of 10,000 views during the first month.
“WaveCX’s platform makes it incredibly easy for us to create and deliver informative and engaging demos at scale, resulting in thousands of views each month and a positive impact on our member experience,” said Starnes.
The partnership has also given rise to a dedicated resource library, “Connect & Learn,” which houses “a variety of demos and tutorials that teach members how to use different digital products and services,” said Randel Taylor, director of digital banking at ECU. The resource library, Taylor added, is available across multiple channels, including the credit union’s website and mobile banking, as well as 55-inch interactive kiosks used by staff in ECU’s branch locations and during events to equip members with a hands-on environment to explore ECU’s complete library of demos.
“We’ve been incredibly impressed with WaveCX’s responsiveness to our needs, they are true partners and always willing to go the extra mile to help us leverage the platform to its full potential,” said Taylor.
Enthusiastically Engaged
In most cases, Tvrdik said that FIs reach out due to a need to “better showcase their digital offerings.” This includes educating consumers and members, training employees, or improving internal product knowledge. “Traditional methods like PDFs, webinars, and static training materials don’t engage users, and generic demo platforms don’t meet the unique needs of financial institutions,” he said, noting the company currently has five credit union clients and 14 FIs.
Tvrdik further explained that FIs are utilizing “WaveCX Connect,” for in-app messaging and embedded experiences, and Curator, its artificial intelligence (AI)-driven generative search tool.
“What usually starts with one or two team members evaluating a single use case often leads to a second meeting with 10 to 20 attendees. A top 10 credit union we signed this month brought 40 people to their follow-up demo, and the excitement in that room was incredible,” he continued. “Once FIs see the depth of what we offer, the conversation shifts from ‘we need a demo tool’ to ‘we need WaveCX across multiple teams.’”
Implementation of Illuminate and Curator are “incredibly easy,” he shared, adding that both are no-code, which allows credit unions to get up and running in quickly. He did note that depending on the digital banking platform, Connect could require integration work. “If an FI is already on a platform we’ve integrated with, it’s essentially a flip-the-switch activation. If not, we just need to integrate via our software development kit (SDK), and from there, it’s available to them and any other FIs on that platform.
From contract signing to going live generally takes about two weeks, with one to three sessions of “hands-on” training. “After that, everything is documented and available in our own WaveCX training hub, built using our own tools,” Tvrdik noted. “Most FIs are surprised at how lightweight the implementation is.”
The success of the partnership with ECU, he noted, was due, in large part, to the credit union being enthusiastic and engaged. “They even brought their WaveCX content to training expos for peer review and feedback,” he said. “They also gave us some fantastic feature suggestions, many of which we’ve either added to the backlog or rolled out immediately.”