Talkdesk, a provider of contact center as a service (CCaaS) solutions, announced a partnership with Cognizant, a consulting and technology services specialist, to enhance its artificial intelligence-powered customer experience (CX) offerings.
The collaboration will leverage Talkdesk’s AI solutions and industry-specific clouds alongside Cognizant’s CX consulting and transformation expertise, bringing together Talkdesk’s AI-driven CCaaS technology with Cognizant’s global consulting reach.
Talkdesk’s AI capabilities will enhance Cognizant’s CX offerings in key vertical markets such as health care and insurance.
Al Caravelli, senior vice president of partnerships and alliances at Talkdesk, explained Talkdesk offers a series of vertical industry clouds and AI-powered contact center solutions to expand enterprise customer adoption of AI-led CX solutions.
“The partnership offers both companies’ customer bases access to enhanced CX solutions, improved services and innovative AI offerings,” he said.
Talkdesk has a suite of integrated CX applications and products tailored to specific use cases in industries such as health care, financial services and retail.
Recently, the company introduced several generative AI (GenAI) productors in CX, including Talkdesk Ascend Connect, Autopilot for Banking, Autopilot for Retail and Autopilot for Healthcare.
Al Caravelli, senior vice president of partnerships and alliances at Talkdesk, explained the company is focused on revolutionizing CX through AI technologies.
“We’re a product company, a technology company, and so we can continue to drive innovation,” Caravelli said.
This focus on innovation is complemented by strategic partnerships, particularly with Cognizant, which Caravelli described as “a perfect partnership” that brings Talkdesk closer to customers.
“Along with their industry expertise and their consultative nature, it helps us better service larger enterprise accounts,” Caravelli said.
He added the collaboration is strengthened by Cognizant’s recent announcement that it would invest $1 billion over the next three years to augment its GenAI capabilities.
He noted AI is central to Talkdesk’s strategy, transforming the way businesses handle customer interactions.
“We view it as an opportunity to enhance capabilities rather than eliminate jobs,” Caravelli said.
He explained Talkdesk is essentially “an AI company disguised as call center as a service technology.”
This long-standing focus on AI enables Talkdesk to help clients modernize and expedite the adoption of advanced client experience solutions through their AI engines and industry-specific experience clouds.
Talkdesk’s experience clouds, such as those for health care, banking, insurance, retail and CPG, are key differentiators.
“Instead of just competing in the call center world, we’re building use cases with partners like Cognizant who are truly solving business problems,” Caravelli said.
For example, in health care, Talkdesk’s deep integrations with systems like Epic’s Workbench feature enable sophisticated solutions such as personalized patient appointment scheduling based on AI insights.
“AI can analyze patient data to suggest necessary checkups, transforming routine appointment scheduling into a proactive health care service,” he said. “This not only improves patient outcomes but also enhances the overall customer experience.”
Caravelli underscored the importance of enabling partners like Cognizant to implement AI-powered CX solutions effectively.
“We’re giving Cognizant the tools to start from the organization and the consulting side, and we help enable that from a technology standpoint,” he said.
This approach helps clients modernize their call center operations without the fear of disrupting existing systems, thanks to solutions like Talkdesk Ascend Connect, which bridges on-premises solutions with modern, AI-powered capabilities.
Looking ahead, Talkdesk plans to continue its focus on innovation, with regular major releases aimed at advancing AI-powered CX solutions.
Caravelli noted that the rapid adoption of AI technologies is transforming the CX industry, making it crucial to leverage data effectively.
“Without data, AI is pretty powerless,” Caravelli said. “You need comprehensive data integration to enhance AI applications.”
Talkdesk’s vision includes a seamless customer experience where queries are resolved through AI before reaching a human agent.
This not only improves efficiency but also ensures a secure and personalized customer journey.
“When the client calls, their questions should be answered before it ever gets to an agent,” Caravelli said.
