The TELUS Digital Partner Summit: How digitizing TELUS improves the customer experience

Culture · Mar 14, 2019

TELUS Digital enables our teams to deliver great experiences at scale by providing a set of tools, resources and technologies through communities of practice. Not only has the digitization of a traditional telecom company reimagined traditional models, but it has also changed the way our teams communicate, collaborate, and execute big ideas within the organization.

So what else are we doing to facilitate digital transformation? At TELUS Digital, we also help drive digital literacy by supporting our team members and partner agencies through a governance forum called the Digital Review Board and hosting an annual TELUS Digital Partner Summit.

What is the Digital Review Board?

TELUS Digital realized there was a need to protect our digital footprint and to ensure our teams were delivering consistent and secure digital experiences. In 2014, the Digital Review Board (DRB) was established to ensure all digital initiatives were meeting TELUS Standards, such as privacy & security, brand & design and accessibility.

Since then, the forum has reviewed and supported a wide breadth of projects, with over 375 digital initiatives across various lines of businesses within TELUS. And now, it has evolved to not only provide guidance on TELUS standards but also provide strategic support and drive the adoption of the Digital Platform. Some of these initiatives include websites such as Community InvestmentFriendly Future Foundation, and TELUS Health

We’ve also partnered with various agencies to further support our TELUS team members. And we’ve invested in onboarding and training our partner agencies to ensure they are set up to successfully deliver web or mobile applications. 

Among the many ways we provide training to partners is the annual TELUS Digital Partner Summit. This year’s theme revolved around the topic of “How digitizing TELUS improves customer experience.”

2019 TELUS Digital Partner Summit 

In one day, the TELUS Digital team connected with various agencies and other TELUS team members looking to build digital initiatives. The Digital team presented and hosted interactive sessions with topics revolving around customer experience at TELUS and the evolution of our technology and platform. Furthermore, attendees had the opportunity to learn about the importance and benefits of TELUS standards, highlighting the why and the impact to our customers and the role each individual plays in delivering a consistent experience to meet these TELUS standards. 

Here are some key themes/ highlights from the day:

  1. Shift happens. We need to constantly evolve our technology, our platform and tools to accommodate our customers’ expectations and the ever changing digital landscape. And we do it all in public to truly embrace our customers first commitment.

  2. The importance of Search Engine Optimization. Google rewards sites that provide the best experience for a given search. In order to be #1, we need to check a lot of boxes, including accessibility, content, user experience, visual design, usability, performance. All of this while also delivering a superior experience than our competitors.

  3. User research is an integral part of all product development processes. By investing in quality user research, we’ll be able to make great products, interfaces, and systems.

  4. Build for one and extend for many. Accessibility should be at the heart of how digital experiences are designed and coded. At TELUS, our core principle is customers first, as we are committed to improving the lives of Canadians. This includes all customers - regardless of their abilities, devices or screen size. 

  5. We’re all in this together. To build great products for our customers whilst meeting TELUS standards is not a siloed practice. It is a team sport and we all have a role to play to deliver on this. None of this is possible without a team effort. With shared and improved processes, we can all work together to build something great. 

What’s Next?

We’ve spent the last few years determining which pieces of technology provide the most value in furthering our goals to provide a consistent, accessible and secure customer experience. We’ve reimagined the traditional team model and created a digital culture that allows our people to carry out initiatives in communities of practice. We’re ready to streamline our resources to create a single access point for both our team members and partner agencies. The Brand Resource Centre will contain the TELUS standards, tools, assets and information needed to deliver the ideal branded customer-experience to anyone that interacts with TELUS. 

Our commitment to delivering an excellent customer experience is steadfast, but our means to accomplish this objective continues to evolve contingent upon technological capabilities. Our ability to seek out technology, create change, and quickly adapt to better support our goals is what makes working with TELUS so exciting. And this wouldn’t be possible without the collaborative efforts and active participation from our team members and digital partners. Hosting summits like this is just one of the ways we can encourage transparency, communication and stay on track in digitizing TELUS.

Authored by:
""
Emelyn Ticong
Project Manager & Chair