Giving CU Contact Center AI the Ability to Converse — But with Feeling

By Roy Urrico

To supplement its generative artificial intelligence (AI), language model, and analytics, Talkdesk just officially introduced agentic AI, which is capable of acting autonomously, to improve contact center interactions for financial institutions (FIs). Integrating agentic AI allows automated agents to not only understand and converse in real time (and in multiple languages and dialects), but also comprehend context, express empathy, analyze situations, make informed decisions, and take action to resolve requests. Some credit unions have already implemented this technology.

Agentic AI is incorporated in Talkdesk AI Agents for Financial from Palo Alto, Calif.-based Talkdesk, a provider of AI-powered customer experience (CX) technology. Talkdesk describes its AI Agents for Financial, as an “out-of-the-box solution built on industry-specific AI models with deep integration into core banking, digital banking, and customer relationship management (CRM) platforms.” It is part of the Talkdesk Ascend AI platform — designed for credit unions and banks to deliver personalized service and ensure financial wellness.

Rahul Kumar, vice president and general manager of financial services and insurance at Talkdesk.

“Talkdesk AI Agents for Financial Services differs from anything else on the market, delivering the most natural self-service experience without needing a human agent to be involved,” said Rahul Kumar, vice president and general manager of financial services and insurance at Talkdesk. “Integrating AI to support customers on their financial journey is a pivotal way for financial services institutions to attract, retain, and grow long-term relationships, but most AI solutions fall short because they require technical expertise, are one-size-fits-all, or are point solutions that cannot unify the customer experience.”

Kumar continued, “With AI Agents for Financial Services, we are revolutionizing how banks and credit unions can provide the high-value, personalized, and human-like self-service that customers want, easily, securely with proper guardrails, and at scale.”

Kumar sat down with Finopotamus to provide insight about Talkdesk and what he sees as an evolving member experience at credit unions.

The Quickening Pace of AI Evolution

“The pace at which Talkdesk is evolving has fundamentally transformed in the last 12 months, because of what AI is allowing us to bring to market, we no longer have 12 month or three-year roadmaps,” said Kumar. “We basically have three-month roadmaps. We have incorporated AI not only in our platform, but we’re leveraging AI to bring things to market much faster.”

Kumar explained Talkdesk is leveraging generative AI, agentic AI and large language models to eliminate the traditional touch-tone, “archaic death by IVR (interactive voice response) experience” at most credit unions.

“The evolution of AI has gone from the traditional intent based to agentic artificial intelligence,” Kumar explained. The difference is “intent-based AI was about having to spend a lot of time trying to teach the AI your business, what it needs to learn before it can be of any value. With agentic AI, it is basically a self-learning experience where you do not have to spend months and years to try to get the models to understand your business.”

Agentic AI, can understand the entire context and not base its judgment based on a keyword, described Kumar. “It is completely analyzing the transcript, understanding the context, and then placing a judgment. Tonality is coming next. The technology has gotten better, but it is even going to get better in a very short amount of time.”

Kumar said Talkdesk’s AI can overcome any language barrier. “If you look at traditional contact centers, they will make you pick a language,” pointed out Kumar. “With agentic AI, it can handle a multitude of languages by default, and it can do it in real time.” It can also switch languages in real time. Kumar said Talkdesk not only is fluent in some 45 languages, it can support multiple dialects under each language.

Talkdesk capabilities also include sentiment detection, “We are able to help our customer assess the entire mood and the sentiment across the entire conversation,” noted Kumar.

Shifting Focus Back to Members

“A lot of conversations with credit unions have shifted. What we are seeing is that the (credit union) focus is becoming more a supplier of products and services and less about ensuring the financial wellbeing,” said Kumar.

One reason: “People are no longer walking into your brick-and-mortar branches. So, you have lost that sense of engagement.” However, AI can change the terms of engagement. “The technology, where it is right now, can allow credit unions to reinvigorate that mission of ensuring financial wellbeing,” Kumar said.

He provided an example of a member calling in to question an overdraft fee. “If you flip the script, the technology now allows credit unions to prevent that from happening. Say a credit union is able to notify a member in advance to say, ‘Hey, looking at how your transactions are trending, there's a potential that your account will go into overdraft.’” Kumar described these potential reminders as proactive financial wellness nudges. Talkdesk AI Agents helps the credit union switch strategies to become a provider of this financial wellness and incorporate that into the member journeys.

He described these AI agents as having two flavors. One is “surfacing that insight to your employees in real time based on the intent of the conversation and then guiding them through the conversation itself so that it is advisory, consultative, and ensures the credit union is actually focused on making their lives better.”

The other flavor integrates the technology and the capability to ingest triggers surfacing from events happening within the members' accounts, explained Kumar. “Because fraud is top of mind for everyone these days, think about a fraudulent transaction or suspicious transaction hitting somebody's account. By utilizing artificial intelligence to take that event and deliver it proactively to the member, you are catching fraud before it happens.”

Kumar suggested the relevance for credit union centers on leveraging some of the modern capabilities around generative and agentic AI in real time to ingest large amount of data sets. “That allows these credit unions to utilize those insights in the moment while they're having the interactions with the members,” said Kumar.

Generating Interest from Credit Unions

“In the last 12 to 18 months, we have pretty much onboarded at a minimum one or two credit unions every month,” Kumar said. “We are helping credit unions that are looking to invest in technology to drive better member and employee experiences.” To date, Kumar said Talkdesk has had implementations at close to 50 credit unions.

Talkdesk AI-powered CX tools enable the Cedar Rapids, Iowa-based Collins Community Credit Union (CCCU; $1.6 billion; almost 82,000 members) to maintain its commitment to personalized service while significantly improving operational efficiency. The Talkdesk virtual agent helped CCCU to divert over 50,000 calls annually through self-service options, achieving an 89% containment rate for routine banking tasks on their digital channels. Additionally, the $4.5 billion New York City based Municipal Credit Union (MCU), with almost 618,000 members at 15 branch locations, used Talkdesk Ascend AI to automate 64% of routine tasks for inbound voice calls, allowing MCU agents to focus on delivering personalized financial guidance to their members.

Kumar also cited two credit unions – Newport News, Va.-based BayPort Credit Union ($2.6 billion; 155,000 members) and Irwindale, Calif.-based Rize Credit Union ($1.2 billion; 72,500 members) – already incorporating Talkdesk’s full conversational capabilities. “They are taking conversational AI, humanizing it and making it their concierge experience,” said Kumar.

Talkdesk AI Agents for Financial Services can be deployed on top of any cloud-based or on-premise contact center. A customer, for example, can greenlight the parts of the platform that it wants. “We are modular in the way we allow our customers to take advantage of our platform. we fully support a progressive rollout of the capabilities on the platform,” said Kumar.

After validation and testing, Talkdesk AI Agents for Financial Services can rapidly connect core banking systems such as Fiserv, Jack Henry and FIS; digital banking platforms like Q2, Candescent, and Alkami; and customer relationship management solutions including Salesforce, ServiceNow and SharePoint.