What happens after you sign

Most vendors onboard you, get the product into maintenance, and go quiet.

"Most vendors onboard you, and once the product is in maintenance, you no longer hear from them," said Sarah Andrews, COO at Freedom First. "Posh has continued regularly scheduled meetings with us adding value every time, allowing us to continue to refine and improve our AI Assistant."

That's the part of AI implementation nobody sells you on. The technology works. The partnership is what decides whether it still works two years in, when your call volume shifts, your core changes, or new guidance lands.

Here's how Posh works after the contract is signed.

Before kickoff: two strategy sessions, not one

Your Client Success Manager and key members of the implementation team meet with you before the project starts. That work splits into two sessions.

The design session starts from your objectives. Why you bought AI in the first place, what you're actually trying to fix, and how the product gets configured to do it.

The communication strategy session covers adoption on both sides. How you drive it with members, and how you drive it internally with employees. Most deployments that underperform don't have a technology problem.

"The biggest struggle during deployment that I see with a lot of financial institutions is they're not aligned," said Kathy Sianis, SVP of Client Success and Partnerships at Posh. "It takes the business unit owner, the IT department, the marketing department, all to be aligned for the greatest success."

For 4Front Credit Union, that consultative posture showed up during vendor selection, before any contract existed.

"The availability, the detail, the offer to share best practices, the support from the CSM team," said Kent Nordin, Vice President of the Communication Center at 4Front. "Our comfort level in making that selection is what led us to Posh."

We ask for your numbers before we deploy

Every Posh client gets an executive sponsor. One of the first things they ask for is your before-state: what your contact center metrics look like today, how many hours go into training, what your current staffing and volume actually are.

That's not a formality. It's the only way ROI is provable later.

"Those that really receive a strong ROI and the success they're looking for understood why they were making the purchase," Kathy said. "They understood their own metrics before they started."

The first 60 days: five specialists, weekly

You don't get a single point of contact and a ticket queue. Posh assembles an implementation team scoped to your project:

• Implementation manager
• AI designer
• Client Success Manager
• Telephony expert
• Core banking expert

That team meets with you weekly to set up, test, and roll out. Your CSM tracks KPIs against the baseline from the first pilot conversations, so you know early whether it's working and what to tune.

Part of that is telling you the truth about the work involved.

"Every vendor says there's no big IT lift, and 80% of them are not accurate," Kent said. "We got a very accurate explanation of the IT lift from Posh. We planned for the worst and hoped for the best."

After 60 days: the meetings keep happening

Every vendor does initial training. Posh sets a standing cadence for the life of the partnership. In those meetings, you and your CSM:

• Review performance against the KPIs you set
• Ship improvements and retrain users on new functionality
• Work through emerging use cases and strategic priorities
• Get industry benchmarks from institutions solving similar problems

Every three to four months, your executive sponsor runs a business review covering milestones, benchmarks, and ROI against the baseline. Those sessions cover your AI roadmap, not your ticket count.

"The strategic sessions have given our executive team a perspective that otherwise we may not have uncovered on our own," said Kevin Starkey, Chief Technology Officer at Red River Credit Union. "Posh has exceeded our expectations in support and the strategic sessions set us on the right path for our AI strategy."

Feedback from these meetings goes straight to product. When enough clients hit the same gap, it gets built.

Why it matters now

AI regulation for financial institutions is moving fast and the guidance is still being written. That makes your vendor's judgment part of your risk posture. You need a partner who tracks what's changing, tells you what it means for your deployment, and adjusts before you have to ask.

The institutions furthest along tend to describe the relationship the same way.

"If we ever walked away from Posh, I don't think we'd find another partner that could compare," said Zach Saunders, Director of Retail Operations and Training at First Heritage FCU. "I don't even know what we'd do without it."

What most institutions get wrong about AI

Kathy Sianis spent years as a credit union CXO before joining Posh. In this series she covers why AI isn't an IT project, what to measure before you deploy, and who needs to be in the room for it to work.

[Watch the series]