Press Release
Talkdesk wins gold in 2026 CMSWire IMPACT Awards for AI excellence
PALO ALTO, Calif. — April 8, 2026 — Talkdesk®, Inc. today announced it earned double recognition at the 2026 CMSWire IMPACT Awards. Talkdesk secured Gold in the Best Use of AI in Customer Experience category for its work with Rocky Brands, while Talkdesk customer Quadient was awarded Gold for Customer Journey Innovation. Together, these wins illustrate the success of Talkdesk Customer Experience Automation (CXA) in delivering measurable outcomes for large-scale global enterprises.
CMSWire is the world’s foremost publication covering digital customer experience; the CMSWire IMPACT Awards, judged by an independent panel of industry specialists, honor organizations and vendors for the exemplary nature of their products and the work performed on behalf of clients.
Best Use of AI in Customer Experience
Talkdesk earned the Gold award for Best Use of AI in CX through its partnership with Rocky Brands, a trusted footwear and apparel brand. By implementing Talkdesk CXA, Rocky Brands replaced more than 20 legacy tools with a unified platform that embeds AI agents directly into retail workflows. The initiative addressed critical scalability challenges during peak seasons, transforming a reactive service model into a proactive operation powered by AI-led orchestration.
- Improved automation rates: The company can autonomously resolve 40% of chat interactions, enabling the brand to handle volume surges without increasing headcount.
- Seasonal scalability: The company maintained an abandonment rate of under 10% despite significant holiday demand spikes.
- Faster response times: Strategic reporting and AI-powered workflows helped the team cut email response times by 70%.
- Global talent expansion: AI writing and translation tools enabled the launch of a 24/7 contact center in the Dominican Republic, ensuring brand tone consistency across a cost-effective labor market.
Customer Journey Innovation
Quadient, a global leader in business communication and parcel locker solutions, secured Gold for Customer Journey Innovation — a category honoring the team that has implemented the most novel and impactful journey optimization over the past year. Through Talkdesk CXA, Quadient transitioned to a “digital-first” service model that scales globally without the overhead of traditional staffing cycles.
- Accelerated automation: In eight months, Quadient saw containment rates in France jump from 10% to 44%, while parcel locker support reached 60% containment through AI-driven resolution.
- Operational cost avoidance: By automating routine inquiries about USPS rate updates, Quadient successfully eliminated the need for temporary seasonal hiring during peak periods.
- Strategic talent reallocation: The shift to automation enabled Quadient to move high-performing voice agents to digital channels, where they now manage multiple concurrent conversations with higher efficiency.
Supporting quotes
“Winning Gold for Customer Journey Innovation reflects Quadient’s commitment to AI as an ongoing operational discipline,” said Jack Stephenson, digital experience manager, Quadient. “We’re using Talkdesk solutions to strip away the friction of transactional tasks. By removing the hurdles of routine inquiries, we’ve empowered our global workforce to deliver a seamless customer experience across the 26 countries where we operate.”
“Modern customer journeys are incredibly complex, but that complexity should never be felt by the person on the other end of the line,” said Kush Parikh, senior vice president of customer experience, Talkdesk. “Leaders like Rocky Brands and Quadient are proving that AI orchestration is the key to removing friction and anticipating customer needs before they are even voiced. We are proud to provide the automation foundation that helps our customers stay a step ahead and deliver results at a true enterprise scale.”
Additional resources
- Read more about implementing AI in CX from Quadient’s director of global operations
- Learn more about what can be automated with Talkdesk CXA
About the CMSWIre Impact Awards
The CMSWire IMPACT Awards celebrate exceptional work in the fields of customer experience, digital experience and customer service. Winners were chosen from qualified nominees who were required to be customer experience leaders, departments/teams or vendors that deployed superior customer experience initiatives or programs over the past year. Judging was completed by a panel of practitioners and industry specialists, led by CMSWire Editor-in-Chief Dom Nicastro, with the winner and honorable mentions selected based on information provided through the nomination process. Learn more at https://www.simplermedia.com/impact-awards/cmswire/.
About CMSWire
For over two decades CMSWire, produced by Simpler Media Group, has been the world’s leading community of customer experience professionals. Today the CMSWire community consists of over 5 million influential customer experience, customer service and digital experience leaders, the majority of whom are based in North America and employed by medium to large organizations. To learn more, visit CMSWire.com.
About Talkdesk
Talkdesk® is leading a new era in customer experience with Customer Experience Automation (CXA)—a new category and platform designed to automate the full complexity of modern customer journeys. CXA replaces fragmented, human-coordinated workflows with autonomous, multi-agent AI orchestration that delivers intelligent, scalable, and outcome-focused service across the entire CX lifecycle.
At the core of CXA is the Talkdesk Data Cloud, which turns transcripts, call recordings, case notes, and customer records from across CRMs and systems of record into real-time, actionable knowledge. This enables AI agents to operate with full context, collaborating seamlessly to resolve complex customer problems with speed, precision, and adaptability.
Talkdesk CXA supports both cross-industry workflows and industry-specialized use cases in sectors like healthcare, financial services, retail, utilities, travel, and government. With prebuilt AI agents, a virtuous automation cycle (Discover, Build, Orchestrate, Measure), and rapid time-to-value, Talkdesk helps enterprises modernize customer experience without the need for a full rip-and-replace.
Trusted by global brands and recognized for continuous innovation, Talkdesk empowers organizations to grow revenue, reduce costs, and transform service delivery through coordinated, AI-driven automation. Companies that love their customers use Talkdesk.
Talkdesk is a registered trademark of Talkdesk, Inc. All product and company names are trademarks™ or registered® trademarks of their respective holders. Use of them does not imply any affiliation with or endorsement by them.
Media contact
Talkdesk Public Relations