How Talkdesk Delivers for Vertical IndustriesHow Talkdesk Delivers for Vertical Industries

Fellow No Jitter contributor Zeus Kerravala recently touched on Talkdesk’s focus on vertical industry differentiation in “Six Thoughts On the Talkdesk Analyst Summit,” writing, “During his presentation to analysts, [CMO Neville] Letzerich outlined how Talkdesk is executing on the verticals targeting: the company hires people from the industries to run the practice areas, partners with the leading vendors in those verticals, and attends trade shows to showcase innovative solutions.”

Here I will dive deeper into Talkdesk’s approach to industry verticals, giving both historical context and the views of a healthcare customer who was part of the recent Talkdesk Analyst Summit held in Charleston, South Carolina, from November 18-20, 2024.

Targeting Verticals as a Path to Differentiation 

In the spring of 2022, I had dinner with the then-CMO of Talkdesk, Kathie Johnson, and Christie Blake, VP of Corporate Communications. It had been two-and-a-half years since the last analyst meeting – the world was still coming out of the pandemic – and I asked Johnson what the latest and greatest product news was at Talkdesk.

Johnson first mentioned Talkdesk Voice, announced in September 2021. In the years since, Talkdesk Voice has not been center stage at the company. In fact, at the 2024 analyst meeting , it was not mentioned at all by Talkdesk – one of the analysts had to bring it up. For CCaaS vendors in general, having voice capabilities is table stakes for any customer looking for joint UCaaS/CCaaS solutions.

Then, at our 2022 dinner, Johnson went on to discuss Talkdesk's first vertical offerings. The company had begun rolling these out in 2021: The Talkdesk Financial Services Experience Cloud and the Talkdesk Healthcare Experience Cloud, introduced in June 2021, were part of a major new initiative by Talkdesk to provide purpose-built contact center solutions for specific industries, and in 2022, two more vertical offerings were announced, Financial Services Experience Cloud for Insurance and Retail Experience Cloud. As seen in the graphic below, Talkdesk continues to expand its industry experience clouds, most recently with CX Cloud, Government Edition.

Elements of Vertical Targeting

What does it mean to target specific industries? Often it starts as a sales strategy. Vertical selling involves hiring people that have worked in the target industry as salespeople and leaders. This ensures the company is talking the “language” of the potential customer, using the specific terms that are used in that market. Talkdesk has followed this strategy since its first foray into verticals.

A notable example of a Talkdesk vertical executive is Patty Hayward, general manager of healthcare and life services, hired in January 2021 to build the healthcare vertical business. Prior to Talkdesk, Hayward spent over twenty years working for healthcare companies, including McKesson, Aetna, and Corning Life Sciences.

The next step is to create marketing content that appeals to an industry. These could be brochures or webinars that use the language and address the issues specific to a given industry. Great examples are the terms “patient experience” for healthcare companies or “citizen experience” when marketing CX applications to government organizations. Talkdesk has done this in spades, as a look at the company’s healthcare landing page will attest.

The final step used to target verticals is to build products or product variations that address the unique requirements of a specific industry. The platform’s integration with various components of Epic – a healthcare records system – is illustrative of this final level of targeting an industry vertical.

Talkdesk has developed several out-of-the box integrations between Talkdesk Healthcare Experience Cloud and Epic. For example, Talkdesk Copilot is embedded within Epic Cheers (Epic's customer relationship management suite), giving agents access to AI tools for personalizing patient conversations. Talkdesk also has pre-built virtual agents for common patient inquiries like appointment management and MyChart (patient portal) password resets. Talkdesk does similar integration with other healthcare software platforms, as well as key systems in their other target verticals such as ecommerce and insurance claims platforms.

Talkdesk Vertical Customer Story: Memorial Healthcare System

A customer speaker at the Talkdesk Analyst Summit brought the value of vertical solutions to life. Talkdesk’s Letzerich and Jeffrey Sturman, senior vice president and chief digital information officer, Memorial Healthcare System, discussed Memorial’s history as a Talkdesk customer.

Memorial Healthcare System is a healthcare system located in South Broward County, FL. They serve a growing footprint in the US southeast with six hospitals and approximately 17,000 employees.

As chief digital information officer, Sturman oversees Memorial’s technology infrastructure, technology applications, and consumer experience functions – including the contact centers. Sturman explained that he was involved in the early days of the Talkdesk implementation and owns the contact center operation today. He also owns Memorial’s data operations – which includes business intelligence, clinical engineering, biomedical engineering, and all the clinical devices that attach to patients. He reports having a staff of about 1,000, about two hundred people in the contact center as agents and leaders.

Responding to a question from Letzerich, Sturman said Memorial selected Talkdesk because it needed to modernize the existing call center, which was thought of as telecom infrastructure, versus a CX platform. He explained that Memorial did not have the data and metrics it needed to operate effectively.

“We knew we had high call abandonment rate. We knew our service levels were not being met. We knew that we were not delivering the best experience for our patients as they navigated interactions with Memorial,” admitted Sturman. To remain competitive, Memorial wanted to make sure their patient experience was better from the very first interaction someone had with Memorial.

At the time Memorial made the decision to modernize its contact center operations, it had twenty different contact centers that Sturman explained operated very independently of each other. Talkdesk was implemented for all of the contact centers, and, at the same time, Memorial reorganized the centers to bring a level of centralization. This now allows Memorial to see combined metrics across all its centers.

A key goal of the contact center modernization was to transform Memorial’s engagement with its patients – to be more proactive, innovative, and flexible in the approach to patient experience. Memorial wanted to evolve the organization around not just technology, but also around workflow and change management.

How does Memorial measure success of the new customer experience approach enabled with the Talkdesk implementation? Sturman said Memorial now sees a greater volume of patients staying within its healthcare system for repeat visits, e.g., for referrals to specialists beyond primary care. Memorial has also seen a dramatic increase in its Google star ratings.

With Talkdesk integration to Epic, Memorial is able to generate campaigns to proactively reach out to patients. With Memorial’s access to electronic medical records, campaigns can be created and executed for those who might need their annual mammography, wellness visit or colonoscopy. All of this can be done in an automated fashion, for example, by sending text messages to the population through the integration with the electronic health record system and Talkdesk.

Sturman reports the ability to easily execute these campaigns is powerful in terms of helping patients to be proactive about their health care while also generating revenue. “I'm creating more volume and capability to bring those patients into our organization, and that only happens because of the integration between Talkdesk and the EHR (electronic health record),” said Sturman.

“Talkdesk has been a great partner,” Sturman said as he closed his remarks. “I hate the word vendor, and I intentionally pick those organizations that are going to help us move the needle, help us think bigger, help us be predictive and innovative and thoughtful about where our industry is going.” From Sturman’s perspective, Talkdesk does this successfully by combining healthcare industry experts with technology industry experts.