Talkdesk launches proactive AI agents, urges leaders to stop reacting to the market. New outbound AI agents aim to automate proactive engagement, customer retention, onboarding, and revenue growth at scale Published: May 28, 2026 Talkdesk has announced the launch of its brand new outbound AI agents within its CXA platform, driving revenue and proactive engagement for retail and financial services. This expansion of AI's role in the customer lifecycle reflects a move beyond traditional service automation toward proactive engagement, sales support, and customer retention. By shifting customer service away from reactive, this marks a broader shift toward independent AI systems, enabling them to take actions and coordinate workflows. Tiago Paiva, CEO and Founder of Talkdesk, argues that AI in CX is no longer being positioned as a way to reduce support costs or replace manual work. "The industry is at a turning point where AI is shifting from a cost-reduction tool to an engine for business growth," she said. "We are empowering retail and financial services leaders to stop reacting to the market and start shaping it. "By automating complex, proactive journeys at scale, we are helping our customers unlock massive revenue opportunities and capture growth that was previously impossible to reach." The push for proactivity. Enterprises are under pressure to deliver faster responses in line with changing customer expectations, competitive threats, and shifts in demand. When responding to these changes immediately, a reactive operating model can limit growth and reduce customer loyalty, with these workflows often creating slower, more expensive, and dependency on manual intervention. As a result, this can make it difficult to scale personalized engagement across large customer bases and lead to missed revenue opportunities, inconsistent service experiences, delayed resolutions, and reduced visibility into customer intent. For retail and financial services, particularly, reacting in an ill-timed manner can increase abandonment rates, weaken retention, and reduce the effectiveness of onboarding or collections processes. Therefore, many companies are looking to invest in AI-driven systems that operate proactively, able to identify patterns early, initiate outreach automatically, and coordinate actions across channels before issues escalate. The rise of outbound AI. Talkdesk's latest announcement positions outbound AI agents as a proactive solution for both engagement and revenue-generation, designed to influence customer behavior before opportunities are lost. As part of its Customer Experience Automation (CXA) platform, the AI agents can independently initiate interactions across voice and digital channels for retail and financial services organizations. As a result, Talkdesk is promoting AI as a tool that can increase conversions, improve retention, and automate personalized engagement at scale across the customer lifecycle. Outbound agents for retail services. These agents are designed to automate proactive customer engagement throughout the shopping and post-purchase journey. This includes contacting customers automatically via voice or digital channels to notify them of recalls or delivery updates, assist with returns, repairs, or exchanges, and offer personalized recommendations on products. By increasing conversion rates, improving customer retention, and reducing manual workload, responding to customer activity in real time will enable retailers to engage with customers before they disengage or abandon a purchase. Outbound agents for financial services. For financial services, these AI agents focus on customer acquisition, onboarding, account growth, and collections processes, able to proactively reach customers about loan eligibility, recommend deposit or financial products. This also includes guiding customers through onboarding workflows, and support early-stage collections outreach, designed to happen automatically and at scale, while integrating with banking systems and customer data platforms. From here, the goal is to improve response times, increase engagement with financial products, reduce operational costs, and maintain more consistent communication throughout the customer lifecycle. In regulated industries, the CXA platform also offers structured workflows and industry-specific automation to support compliance and operational control. Redefining customer engagement. For customer-facing teams, this shift toward proactive engagement supports agents by using AI to identify customer needs, intent, or risk signals earlier and initiate outreach before opportunities are lost or problems escalate. For the customers, this can translate to faster support, more personalized interactions, and smoother onboarding or purchasing experiences. For CX leaders, this shift signals a growing pressure to connect service, sales, and retention strategies through automation and data-driven engagement, reflecting a change in how success is measured in an organization, moving beyond cost reduction and containment toward revenue growth, customer retention, and lifecycle value.

Unfold named Intercom A/NZ distributor to drive AI-first customer service adoption. 8 Apr 2026 3 mins The two companies will focus on helping partners package, sell and deploy AI-first customer service. Start-up distributor Unfold has been appointed as Intercom's authorised distributor in Australia and New Zealand, expanding local partner access to its AI-first customer service platform and Fin AI agent. The appointment comes at a pivotal time for Intercom's local partner ecosystem as it looks to focus on Australian and New Zealand partners to meet demand for practical, governed AI deployments - moving beyond experimentation to outcomes like higher support resolution, faster response, and scalable service operations. Intercom's latest direction for Fin AI centres on making AI Agents dependable enough to take on more complex customer service work - supported by stronger training and testing controls, broader channel coverage, and clearer performance optimisation. Through Unfold, partners will have a single, local pathway for AI-powered commercial and presales support, enablement, as well as go-to-market programs. "Customer expectations haven't lowered - they've accelerated. AI is now becoming the only way to deliver consistently great service at scale, but it needs to be deployed with the right controls and confidence," Intercom APAC head of partnerships Keith Chan said. "Unfold brings an enablement-led distribution model that helps partners move quickly while doing the fundamentals well: positioning, pricing and economics, governance, and ongoing optimisation. Together we'll support Australian and New Zealand partners to deliver measurable customer service outcomes with Fin." The two companies will focus on helping partners package, sell, and deploy AI-first customer service. While also receiving guided presales, commercial workflows, and embedded enablement - removing friction and giving partners confidence in how Fin AI is positioned, sold, and expanded. For Unfold, the partnership is a significant addition to its Australian and New Zealand distribution portfolio. Unfold launched into the market last year to disrupt the SaaS distribution space. "We're excited to bring Intercom to market through Unfold at a time when customer service teams are making real decisions about AI - what to automate, what to keep human, and how to scale quality without scaling cost," Unfold co-founder James Cunial said. "Intercom's messaging with Fin is clear: performance matters, reliability matters, and control matters. Arnnet is also now really starting to see repeatable tangible evidence of real business outcomes. "Its role is to guide partners on building their pipeline, curating high quality proposals and get instant access to highly autonomous, intelligent pricing capability. "Partners don't need more delays and SLAs from distributors; they need practical enablement and an easier path from opportunity to outcome. We'll focus on making Intercom simpler to engage with commercially, easier to position, and easier to deliver - so partners can grow recurring services around AI-first customer service." Last week Unfold revealed it will serve as Talkdesk's "new era" distributor, helping partners build momentum faster and simplify engagements. Don't miss a thing From its editors straight to your inbox. Get started by entering your email address below. Editor ARN | Reseller News With years of experience covering the latest technology trends and business news across the IT channel, Julia Talevski has been keeping the IT industry connected in Australia and New Zealand. She is currently the editor for ARN and Reseller News, responsible for keeping the community engaged at every touch point through its newsletters, websites and main events such as EDGE, WIICTA and Innovation Awards.

Talkdesk: pedro Andrade on AI as a digital workforce in the modern contact center, podcast. Pedro Andrade, Vice President of AI at Talkdesk, spoke with Moshe Beauford of Technology Reseller News during the Enterprise Connect conference about how artificial intelligence is evolving from simple automation into a true digital workforce within contact centers. Andrade explained that the latest wave of AI adoption goes beyond task-based automation. Instead, organizations are beginning to deploy AI systems that can manage entire workflows and handle meaningful portions of customer interactions. "AI is no longer just a tool that performs individual tasks - it's becoming a digital worker capable of managing complete processes," Andrade said. Talkdesk is developing AI capabilities that help enterprises automate complex customer service operations while supporting human agents with real-time insights and guidance. These technologies allow contact centers to scale operations more efficiently while improving the quality and consistency of customer experiences. The conversation also highlighted how generative AI is already handling a significant share of customer interactions in many contact centers. As AI continues to mature, organizations are exploring how digital workers can collaborate with human agents to manage workloads more effectively. As discussions at Enterprise Connect continue to focus on AI-driven transformation across enterprise communications, Talkdesk is positioning its AI platform as a foundation for the next generation of intelligent, AI-powered customer service operations. Video Player