Success Stories : TELUS®

Large, lucrative and hotly contested-this describes the competitive world of today's residential telecommunications market. TELUS® Advanced Communications, Canada's second largest provider, vies for customers against its larger rival and numerous new entrants into this dynamic consumer market. With a flurry of new products, services, promotions and pricing options, consumers can find it difficult to determine which service package best meets their needs. And with the advent of electronic channels and sophisticated telemarketing, a neglected customer is more vulnerable than ever to the competition.

In the face of such considerable challenges, TELUS wasn't content to do business as usual. By creating the Interactive Commerce service, they could offer customers new, fast, more engaging ways to service their own accounts, order services, and access billing and usage information over the Web. But they had to be first“leading the innovation race would give TELUS a vital first-mover advantage. Real-time feedback from online customers would enable the company to come faster to market with targeted products, service enhancements and customer service innovations.

Once TELUS had determined that electronic commerce was a cost-effective way of doing business, the company set out to create a site that would serve as a compelling example of how services could be personalized over the Internet. They were looking for ways to reduce the need for human intervention, yet enhance customer intimacy and be responsive to customer requests 24 hours per day, 7 days per week. It was a tall order.

To meet all these goals and be first to market, TELUS realized they needed a partner with innovative ideas, advanced technology and proven expertise. With our fixed-time/fixed-fee rapid development model combined with world-class object-oriented analysis and design skills, it was clear that Applomatic was the partner of choice for this ambitious eCommerce mission.

Because the company serves most of the population of Western Canada, TELUS decided first to build interactive customer service capabilities for the residential market. But components of the solution would eventually have to scale across all business units, including business customers, paging networks, and cellular service. So, by leveraging the proven Applomatic Process, the baseline architecture and application was built by Applomatic and delivered to TELUS' Advanced Communications' Interactive Commerce service to adapt, modify, deploy and operate for the business.

TELUS wanted to create an extremely customized, user-friendly Web-self-service experience by using customer profile information from links to billing systems, online observations, and online user selections. Because time-to-market was critical, the team chose to implement BroadVision's One-to-One™ Internet application solution. Using BroadVision™ enabled the team of Applomatic and TELUS Advanced Communications to create the powerful, customized profiles and back-end integration necessary to achieve the team's goal of a solution that would scale across the entire business. Real-time service activation, ordering, billing inquiry, and payment options could be combined with more customized telephone services. And by using powerful profiling, promotions can be tailored-to-fit each customer's needs, one-to-one.

But the team didn't stop there. While browsing the site, if a customer has a question about an order or a service feature, TELUS wanted a text-based chat interface that would enable contact with a customer service agent directly over the Internet. The team implemented software from Net Effect Systems' Neware™ online customer service (OLCS). It provides live electronic interaction between customers and service representatives who can answer questions about product alternatives and accommodate even the most complex service requests. So now TELUS can offer an extremely flexible range of support service experience to its customers, wherever and whenever they need it.

By bringing together these latest technologies, Applomatic has helped TELUS grow their number of registered residential users by nearly 300% in the past year alone. The TELUS site improves customer service not only for online users, but for traditional customers as well, due to a reduced load on the call center. What's next for this innovative, digital enterprise? TELUS Advanced Communications is already accelerating the launch of a companion system for its business clientele, using components of its Interactive Commerce Service architecture.