Lumen Teams Up With Talkdesk To Build Out CCaaS, XaaS Portfolios

The telecom giant is working with contact center software provider Talkdesk to add another CCaaS partner to its portfolio as Lumen turns its attention to building out more XaaS offerings for partners and end customers.

Lumen Technologies is expanding its portfolio of everything-as-a-service options via a new partnership with cloud-based contact center provider Talkdesk.

The telecom giant formerly known as CenturyLink revealed plans in February to grow in specific areas, including customer experience, digitization, and everything as a service (XaaS). To that end, Lumen on Thursday revealed Talkdesk as its latest Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) partner.

The new partnership with Talkdesk gives Lumen partners and customers access to another industry leading CCaaS service that offers network geography and scale, backbone resiliency and redundancy, baked-in AI features and additional security capabilities, such as real-time authentication and fraud prevention, the two companies said.

[Related: Lumen’s Exec Team Taking The Provider From ‘Channel-Friendly’ To ‘Channel-Focused’]

The portfolio, Lumen Solutions for Contact Center, also includes an existing partnership with another cloud-based contact center provider, Genesys. Lumen launched its Lumen Solutions for Contact Center -- Genesys Cloud offering in December.

Lumen Solutions for Contact Center -- Talkdesk, will unify customer and agent experiences across phone, email, chat, text, and social channels. The offering also gives partners and customers native AI capabilities that are embedded into the Talkdesk platform, which can also support integrations with third party AI solutions such as Amazon Lex and ChatGPT. End users and partners will be able to create custom CCaaS offerings via Talkdesk’s cloud-native platform, Lumen said.

“This solution is another great example of how we are co-innovating, co-marketing, and co-selling with top technology providers to create opportunities for our partners to position advanced solutions with their clients,” Sara Seegers, regional vice president of indirect channel sales told CRN in an email. “We will continue to leverage our proprietary assets to provide our partners and their clients with these industry-leading solutions.”

In addition to omnichannel engagement, the offering provides workforce engagement, employee collaboration, and customer experience analytics. Talkdesk’s service provides more than 60 out-of-the-box integrations with third party CX systems, the company said.

“As a tier 1 network provider partner in North America, Lumen brings tremendous value through its network capabilities and extensive reach in the marketplace. Our combined strengths make us well positioned to meet the increasing demand for customer experience technology solutions and drive continued business growth,” Chad Haydar, Talkdesk’s vice president of channel and alliances, said in a statement.

Lumen’s CEO Kate Johnson, who joined the company in September, said during the company’s most recent earnings call in February that she saw 2023 as a “reset year” as Lumen makes ambitious moves to grow both by divestiture and internal investments. The company has struggled to gain financial footing over the last couple of years and has shed several business units in recent months to help it return to revenue growth and leave room to invest in strategic business services.