TELUS: Delivering Future Friendly Services
The bar for what it takes to be a successful telecommunications company is continually being raised. Companies are transforming themselves, oftentimes at break-neck speeds, to stay innovative with new products and services in order to win customer loyalty in a fiercely competitive marketplace.
New services such as digital television, VoIP and the blurring of the distinction between mobile and landline services have enabled forward-thinking companies, such as TELUS, to transform its business by offering compelling suites of converged services to its customers.
With 8.9 billion ($CDN) in annual revenue in 2006 and 10.9 million customer connections, Canadian-based TELUS provides a wide range of communications products and services including voice, video, entertainment, data and mobile services. “We have a real opportunity to change the way our customers work, play, and relax—be it tuning into digital TV, downloading and sharing music and photos, playing games or accessing work from anywhere,” says Michael Berger, Vice-President of Strategic Planning and Execution in Client Operations at TELUS Consumer Solutions.
“The challenge with so many touch points is ensuring that the customer has a seamless service experience from start to finish. That means no hassle installs, solving problems expeditiously before the customer realizes there is an issue and providing a consistent experience across all our services. It’s what we call ‘future friendly’ service and it has become a cornerstone of TELUS’ corporate mission,” states Berger.
To help deliver the ‘future friendly’ promise, TELUS turned to Austin, Texas based Motive Inc. for its service management solutions. Motive software shields customers from the complexities of installing and using new services and provides TELUS with ability to automate the management and support of its broadband and converged services.
Providing superior service throughout the entire support lifecycle
Creating an easy, consistent and personalized experience across services and devices—and throughout the purchase, installation, maintenance and upgrade of a service—is a key factor in ensuring customer satisfaction. With digital coverage in Canada approximating 95%, managing the entire lifecycle of the customer relationship will be the next arena in which the battle for customer loyalty will be fought.
“When we add new services or support and upgrade existing services, we owe it to our customers to make the experience as simple and effortless as possible,” says Berger. Consumers repeatedly tell researchers they feel as if they’ve been forced to learn more about computers, home networks and technology than they ever wanted to. While they crave additional features, they simply don’t want to invest the time to make complex products work.
That’s why TELUS partnered with Motive. Motive’s service activation solution makes the process of launching new service easy and painless. “Self-activation not only reduces the cost of installation, but it also creates a great experience for the customer to get up and running quickly without making a phone call or scheduling a service call,” explains Berger. Last year alone, TELUS saved roughly 10 million dollars ($CDN) through avoided field installations. With the majority of TELUS’ customers using the software, the number of customers calling the support center during the first thirty days of service has dropped dramatically. In fact TELUS estimates that customers who use self-activation for high-speed Internet and value-added services are 2.5 times less likely to call for help than those who do not.
The activation process is the first point of contact with the customer and provides the launch pad for leveraging all of the services TELUS provides. While configuring and activating high speed Internet service, not only does the software guide the customer through connectivity and email setup, it also performs a security to determine if antivirus protection is installed via Program Files. “The installation process becomes a revenue-generating opportunity for us to offer our eProtect solution that includes anti-virus, firewall, and anti-spyware software. For our customers, this is a reminder to safeguard their environment with complete online protection. It’s a win-win proposition,” remarks Berger.
Integrating support services to provide a seamless customer experience
Delivering a superior customer experience also means not asking the customer to solve problems for themselves. This fall, TELUS will launch its next generation of customer support—TELUS Support Center, based on Motive software. While TELUS currently offers automated support to its customers, TELUS Support Center will coalesce existing services such as eCare and Smart Call with new services like PC Health Check and the TELUS Wireless Connection Manager into a seamless solution that is accessible to all of its customers through the TELUS Support Center portal.
The goal is to create a unified support experience for the customer with a complete solution that proactively searches for problems, solves them in an automated fashion when possible, and gathers and forwards pertinent technical information to a customer service agent when necessary.
PC Health Check is a key component of the new release. “We’re not waiting for customers to run into problems. Great customer service means being proactive and resolving issues before they become a problem,” says Berger. PC Health Check will generate regular alerts to scan the health of customer systems by performing basic checks such as disk space, memory and file settings and routine maintenance such as emptying the recycle bin. Proactive interaction with the customer not only keeps their systems up to date and running smoothly, but also provides additional value by ensuring regular visits to the support portal where TELUS can share information about new services and provide access to new customer-friendly service management and support tools.
When issues are detected, customers are taken to the TELUS Support Center portal where they are guided through a series of troubleshooting exercises. Once there, TELUS has the ability to provide automated remediation for a variety of common problems. “Our customers appreciate the fact that they can often fix their problems without a call.” TELUS estimates that customers who use eCare are 94% less likely to call for help when compared to customers that do not use eCare. “However, when contact with a support agent is necessary we’ve ensured that it will be as efficient as possible,” states Berger.
Motive technology helps technical support representatives diagnose and resolve issues quicker and more efficiently by automatically collecting and forwarding information—such as PC settings, modem settings, email settings and browser settings—to the TELUS representative in order to make the customer experience better and more efficient during a service call or chat session. This approach also helps ensure the problem is solved the first time a customer calls for help.
“The ability to provide all of these innovative support services cohesively through the TELUS Support Center reduces the number and duration of support calls and improves our ability to resolve issues on the first call. And, a seamless customer support experience —including a great activation and a great service assurance experience—all lead to our ultimate goal of improving customer loyalty,” says Berger.
Offering multiple connections with one TELUS experience
With more and more customers living a connected lifestyle, TELUS’ vision is to create a Future Friendly Home where playing online games, downloading and sharing videos and photos and ordering entertainment on demand are an integral part of its customer’s lives.
For Michael Berger’s team, each new service—such as the recent rollout of TELUS TV, a fully digital service with Video on Demand and Pay Per View features—must be incorporated into the support infrastructure in an imperceptible and cohesive manner. “Our customers don’t differentiate between services. They view TELUS as one company and expect the service and support to be consistent across all their services”
TELUS chose Motive Home Device Manager to remotely activate, configure and manage devices, such as the set-top boxes for TELUS TV, in the home network. “Our plan is to manage TELUS TV through the TELUS Support Center portal and just like PC Health Check, we will have a TV Health Check as well,” explains Berger.
Motive technology gives TELUS the ability to manage all the services in the home and all the devices in the delivery chain. That capability, coupled with providing customer service representatives with visibility into all the products and services a customer subscribes to, results in a holistic view of the customer’s service. “We may be using three or four different tools to manage our services, but it will be transparent to the customer. They will have a single, unified support experience,” states Berger.
An excellent example is TELUS’ Kid Find, a service which utilizes GPS technology to enable parents to map the real-time location of a child’s mobile phone and have that displayed on the parent’s mobile phone or their computer. Plans are underway to expand that capability to view the map through TELUS TV, resulting in three different services and mediums in which to view the location map. Berger is emphatic, “In the world of converged services, the customer doesn’t want to have to figure out whether they are dealing with a wireless issue, and Internet issue or a device issue. If there is a problem, they just want it fixed.”
Designing the customer experience from the ground up
With digital services evolving so quickly, fixing a design problem once a service has been released is a costly experience—both from a monetary and a customer satisfaction perspective. Technical support is no longer viewed as damage control; it is often the face of the brand to the customer.
As such, TELUS doesn’t just fix problems. They design great customer experiences from the ground up. With services changing every quarter, Berger’s team does extensive usability testing and analysis of support calls to prioritize what needs to be added or changed. “It’s imperative that we create living solutions that evolve in concert with our customer needs. It’s one of the reasons we chose Motive as a trusted partner. The strength of their products is common knowledge in the industry, but they also bring a deep knowledge of best practices to our quarterly meetings. We work hand-in-hand to architect the best experience for our customer.”
TELUS is committed to providing best-in-class customer service from the moment a customer initiates service and throughout the lifetime of the customer relationship. For TELUS and for Michael Berger and the Consumer Solutions team, the promise of a friendly future is here today.
