Case Study: Michaels achieves 89% service levels and slashes after-call work with Talkdesk AI

Michaels creates a customer service breakthrough with Talkdesk AI

Michaels, one of North America’s largest arts-and-crafts retailers with 1,200+ stores and over 40,000 SKUs across physical and digital channels, faced fragmented customer service teams, long agent onboarding, heavy cognitive load, and low service levels (~20%). Siloed systems and a clunky knowledge base led to extended call times, 5–7 minutes of after-call work, and a 25% call-avoidance rate that hurt customer experience and agent morale.

Partnering with Talkdesk, Michaels deployed the Retail Experience Cloud and Talkdesk Copilot for real-time agent assistance, auto-summarization, and advanced interaction analytics. The phased AI rollout unified workflows and data, boosting service levels to 89%, cutting after-call work from 5–7 minutes to 30–60 seconds, reducing call avoidance to 0.2%, and enabling a smaller, more efficient team while improving agent satisfaction and analytics-driven decision making.

Michaels

Krystal Roloff

Director of CX Store Experience