Talk Commerce

A special episode from The Lead Summit. Talkdesk Director of Industry Marketing Michael Klein on the death of the IVR, why a deployment cannot run at a hundred percent bot, and the governance conversation he says conference stages keep skipping.

Show Notes

A special episode, recorded live at The Lead Summit, May 20 and 21, 2026, in New York City.
Michael Klein is the Director of Industry Marketing at Talkdesk, where he owns the messaging and the marketing for the retail, travel, and consumer goods industries. Talkdesk started in contact center software, began building its AI close to ten years ago, and now runs as a customer experience platform covering the work before, during, and after a sale, from product discovery through returns and recalls.
In this conversation: the phrase Michael uses for what natural language processing did to the phone tree, the European hospitality customer whose callers reach the right person without pressing a button, why he says a deployment cannot run at a hundred percent bot, the guardrails Talkdesk puts around customer data and where it travels, and Brent's own story of asking four times for a human and canceling the service instead.
What is next: governance, privacy, and transparency, which Michael says he is not hearing enough about on conference stages while a healthy percentage of consumers stay skeptical of AI.
Learn more about our at-event interviews at talk-commerce.com/events.

What is Talk Commerce?

If you are seeking new ways to increase your ROI on marketing with your commerce platform, or you may be an entrepreneur who wants to grow your team and be more efficient with your online business.

Talk Commerce with Brent W. Peterson draws stories from merchants, marketers, and entrepreneurs who share their experiences in the trenches to help you learn what works and what may not in your business.

Keep up with the current news on commerce platforms, marketing trends, and what is new in the entrepreneurial world. Episodes drop every Tuesday with the occasional bonus episodes.

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