Talkdesk has announced an “industry-first” customer experience application suite for third-party, on-premise contact centers, powered by generative AI (GenAI).
Unveiled at Enterprise Connect 2024, the “Ascend Connect” suite gives on-premise contact centers – not yet ready for CCaaS – access to the following four CX applications:
- Talkdesk Autopilot – A conversational AI offering that automates answers to customer queries, leveraging GenAI to automatically build new bot flows and tailor responses to context, tone, and audience.
- Talkdesk Copilot – A virtual assistant that listens to customer conversations, suggesting contextual answers, next best actions, and relevant knowledge to guide and support agents. It also summarizes the interaction, post-contact, to automate after call work (ACW).
- Talkdesk Interaction Analytics – A conversational intelligence solution that tracks sentiment, intent, and various customer behaviors to increase operational insight. GenAI supports these use cases and detects emerging topics, including the unexpected.
- Talkdesk AI Trainer – A human-in-the-loop tool that allows customers to “observe, simulate, and put guardrails” on AI. That extends to GenAI, where the tech prevents mishaps and ensures responsible AI use.
On-premise contact centers can leverage these solutions without a complete infrastructure overhaul, thanks to the suite’s “flexible adoption model”.
In doing so, Ascend Connect meets an emerging market need, according to Tiago Paiva, Founder & CEO of Talkdesk.
“Generative AI is revolutionizing customer experience by enabling personalized, data-driven interactions while dramatically enhancing contact center productivity,” he said.
For many contact centers, however, adopting this game-changing technology has been difficult due to the complexities of integrating AI with on-premises infrastructure. Talkdesk Ascend Connect solves that challenge.
“Whether you want to fuel business expansion, elevate customer experiences, empower agents, or streamline operations, Talkdesk Ascend Connect’s flexible AI suite allows these enterprises to transform their CX strategy for the GenAI era.”
Alongside its flexibility in deployment, the suite also differentiates via its “no-code intuitive interface”, as per Talkdesk.
The drag-and-drop interface leverages Talkdesk AI Trainer and pre-built AI components to aid IT teams in deploying, customizing, and maintaining GenAI models.
As a result, businesses don’t need to hire in-house data scientists or AI/ML specialists to drive maximum value from the offering.
Talkdesk Aims to Build Relationships with On-Premise Enterprises
With its Ascend Connect platform, Talkdesk targets an often underserved segment of the market: on-premise contact centers.
Interestingly, that segment still accounts for the lion’s share of the space. Indeed, Gartner estimates that – as of the beginning of 2024 – only 33 percent of on-premise contact centers have migrated to the cloud.
Moreover, its research suggests that CCaaS migrations are slowing amid an uncertain macro-environment and widespread reluctance to relinquish heavily customized on-premise environments.
Yet, few doubt that CCaaS is the future, and Simon Harrison, Founder & CEO of Actionary, believes the Ascend Connect announcement will help Talkdesk meet on-premise contact centers where they are and cautiously kickstart their SaaS journey. He told CX Today:
Given the speed of cloud-based innovation, augmenting experiences with “low risk” GenAI will help achieve value-based and personalized engagement ambitions.
Moreover, by building relationships with on-premise contact centers and giving them confidence in the cloud, Talkdesk can make its case to be the lead tech partner when these enterprises eventually embrace CCaaS.
That’s critical as these businesses have more options than ever for CCaaS partners – including big-name market entrants like Google, Microsoft, Sprinklr, and Zoom.
Moreover, traditional on-premise vendors Avaya and Cisco are starting to build more complete CCaaS platforms after undergoing bankruptcy and a slow SaaS transition, respectively.
As such, Talkdesk recognizes the need to do more to stand out. While it already does a good job of this via its pre-packaged, sector-specific offerings and client experience (as G2 recently noted) – the Ascend Connect suite will put it inside more contact center operations.
Therefore, the vendor may gain much greater mindshare and – in the future – reaffirm its place as a leading candidate on more CCaaS shortlists.
Eager to learn more about Talkdesk Autopilot? If so, check out our story: Talkdesk Launches a GenAI-Powered Autopilot, Targets Banking and Retail
