Talkdesk has embedded several of its core capabilities into Epic Cheers, a popular CRM platform in the healthcare space.
The capabilities include call controls and conversation management tools from the Talkdesk Healthcare Experience Cloud.
Within Epic Cheers, these tools will help streamline the contact center agent experience, so reps don’t have to continually switch between the two platforms.
Instead, they can navigate interactions from Epic, where brands may also develop a single view of the customer.
After all, Cheers already gives agents a unified view of the patient’s current and previous interactions – alongside their relative electronic healthcare record (EHR) in “a single pane of glass”.
By making the announcement, the two vendors build upon an already close relationship, having first integrated their respective platforms in 2021.
Two years later, Talkdesk joined the Epic Workshop co-innovation program, signaling the CCaaS vendor’s intent not just to make sure the technologies inter-operate but that they overlap to benefit mutual customers.
In August 2024, Talkdesk then announced that Epic users could leverage Talkdesk Copilot for real-time agent-assist in Epic.
Now, Sam Seering, Product Manager for Cheers at Epic, is excited to take the relationship to the next level.
“Bringing insights from Talkdesk directly into contact center agents’ workflows in Cheers will enable organizations to serve their patients better and improve agent efficiency,” he said.
Ultimately, this helps health systems transition their contact centers from cost to value centers.
Indeed, contact centers may benefit most from managing omnichannel customer queries without leaving the Epic environment. That supports faster handling times and agent satisfaction.
However, there are several other benefits, as this trend of embedding contact center technologies within CRM systems gains momentum.
When CCaaS and CRM Converge
The Talkdesk-Epic announcement is yet another example of contact center providers embedding their tools natively into CRM platforms to converge the customer service ecosystem.
Another notable example of this is in Five9 making its unified routing and real-time transcription solutions available directly within the ServiceNow Customer Service Management (CSM) platform late last year.
It also augmented CSM with Native Call Controls, empowering agents with a unified environment from which they could handle interactions.
Before that, Genesys started to pack Salesforce Service Cloud with call controls, an orchestration engine, and even workforce engagement management (WEM) tools.
Yet, these are just two of the most prominent examples; more will follow – especially given the wide-ranging benefits of the converging technologies.
The Benefits of Unified CCaaS-CRM Offerings
One obvious benefit is accelerated time to value, as one coordinated system will typically lower the burden of managing two distinct platforms.
Another is simplified agent experiences, as agents aren’t constantly switching between platforms. This simplification also helps unify customer service data.
Noting this benefit – in regard to the Talkdesk-Epic integration, Patty Hayward, VP & GM of Healthcare and Life Sciences at Talkdesk, said:
“Unification of the agent desktop not only improves workflows for agents but also helps them have more personalized and impactful conversations.
“Our partnership with Epic is a game-changer in enabling providers to deliver a more synchronized, efficient, and tailored patient experience,” Hayward concluded.
Additionally, with one single source of truth for the customer, Epic users may better power various AI use cases across the patient experience, ranging from virtual agent deployments to auto-summaries.
Another Noteworthy Solution: Talkdesk Embedded
Talkdesk has been eager to highlight the advantages of CCaaS-CRM unification, since releasing Talkdesk Embedded offering last year.
Talkdesk Embedded allows customer service teams to “embed” key elements from the CCaaS proovider’s portfolio into their central contact center platform.
That platform may be Salesforce Service Cloud, ServiceNow CSM, Dynamics 365 Customer Service, Pega, Oracle, Zendesk, etc.
This offering also appeals to system integrators (SIs), as it allows them to embed Talkdesk into custom-built contact center applications, making it a versatile solution for diverse needs.
In bringing such solutions to the market, Talkdesk demonstrates its vision for a more connected customer experience.
