What's Up with Tech?
Tech Transformation with Evan Kirstel: A podcast exploring the latest trends and innovations in the tech industry, and how businesses can leverage them for growth, diving into the world of B2B, discussing strategies, trends, and sharing insights from industry leaders!
With over three decades in telecom and IT, I've mastered the art of transforming social media into a dynamic platform for audience engagement, community building, and establishing thought leadership. My approach isn't about personal brand promotion but about delivering educational and informative content to cultivate a sustainable, long-term business presence. I am the leading content creator in areas like Enterprise AI, UCaaS, CPaaS, CCaaS, Cloud, Telecom, 5G and more!
What's Up with Tech?
The Future of Customer Experience: TELUS Digital's Journey from Telecom to Global Technology Leader
Interested in being a guest? Email us at admin@evankirstel.com
What happens when you combine cutting-edge AI with a deeply human approach to customer care? TELUS Digital provides the answer, demonstrating how a 20-year journey has transformed a Canadian telecom offshoot into a global digital powerhouse operating across 32 countries with 78,000 employees.
Monty Hamilton, Chief Product and Marketing Officer at TELUS Digital, takes us behind the scenes of their innovative approach to digital transformation. Rather than simply putting "humans in the loop," TELUS embraces what they call "humanity in the loop" – making people the foundation of everything they do. This philosophy has allowed them to leverage their diverse global footprint to create personalized customer experiences that blend technological innovation with human insight.
The conversation explores how TELUS Digital is revolutionizing customer care through AI-powered solutions including real-time translation, voice accent neutralization, and their groundbreaking Fuel IX platform. This technology enables personalized agent training that reduces onboarding time by 25% while building team member confidence and improving service quality. We also discover how their TELUS Days of Giving program builds schools in Guatemala, restores orphanages in El Salvador, and revitalizes industrial sites in India – often inviting clients to participate alongside team members.
For businesses at any stage of their digital transformation journey, Hamilton offers an encouraging message: "There's never been a better time to start." With today's accessible technology tools and affordable computing power, organizations don't need massive budgets to achieve meaningful transformation. The key is listening to customers, embracing new technologies thoughtfully, and maintaining a foundation of human values throughout the process.
Ready to transform your customer experience? Discover how balancing cutting-edge technology with deeply human values can create exceptional results for your organization. The TELUS Digital story shows that when humanity leads and technology follows, extraordinary things happen.
More at https://linktr.ee/EvanKirstel
Hey everybody, really excited to have a digital giant here today, telus Digital, a global powerhouse. We're going to dive into all things customer experience, digital transformation and beyond. Before that, monty, how are you?
Speaker 2:I'm very well, evan. Thanks very much for having me here and with the viewers today.
Speaker 1:It's great to be with you, thanks very much for having me here and with the viewers today. It's great to be with you. Well, thanks for being here, really a big fan of your work and your team's work. Before that, maybe introduce yourself your role as CMO at TELUS Digital and maybe introduce yourself in particular to my American friends and colleagues here who think TELUS and they think Canada and telecom. But of course, you're so much more than that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, look, evan. I'm the Chief Product and Marketing Officer of Telus Digital, which gives me the unique perspective to be designing the products and services we operate and then taking those to market. Telus Digital is a 20-year-old business, so we celebrate our 20th anniversary in September this year, and we were born out of the Canadian telecommunications company Vivid. Today, we operate in 32 countries with over 78,000 employees worldwide, and we have four key lines of business. One is digital customer care. The second is our data services business, which is powering these large language models and AI generation that we're using and thriving upon today. The third business is in trust and safety, which is really the first responders of the Internet, from fraud prevention right through to trust and safety as the social communities that we occupy. And, last but not least, is the stitching that brings it all together is a full digital services business in software design.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's quite a lot to unpack. I'm fascinated by all of it. Let's talk. You know you have a focus on innovation and customer first experiences. What does that mean in practical, on the day-to-day side?
Speaker 2:practical on the day-to-day side. Yeah, what it means absolutely is bringing together technology to allow people-based services to be better, faster and more productive overall. So when we use the term digital customer care, we really mean it, and that is about fusing software with the world-class talent that we have operating across the geographies we operate in. And, of course, talent that we have operating across the geographies we operate in. And, of course, over the last two years, evan, it's just been so exciting to see the technology promise that we've been waiting for for so many years has arrived, and so the advent of AI and, of course, generative AI, agentic AI, has allowed us to bring massive productivity gains for our clients and net-net, significant uplift in customer care and customer service and, of course, customer experience.
Speaker 1:Well, that's a great topic, so we'll dive in, probably a little early, but we'll dive into how you're leveraging AI and data and automation. And, of course, you're a global concern. You work with global blue-chip names. But I think your personalization story is interesting. How you personalize campaigns at scale. How do you manage to keep the human touch, the human connection which you're known for at TELUS, but while personalizing these experiences for your clients?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think, Evan, a lot of organizations talk about the role of people and people-based values. We have what we refer to as humanity in the loop. We hear a lot about human in the loop. The term we've embraced is humanity in the loop and, you know, with the 20-year history and the geographic footprint we have, we can't be an organisation that puts people alongside technology.
Speaker 2:People are the foundation of everything we do and the diversity of our business both footprint, talent, languages, ethnicity, the cultural background of our business allows us to bring a point of view into personalised experience. So it really is the meshing of that human lens with the data science lens that allows us to focus on delivering a better outcome. You and I have grown up and live in this technology world and nothing gets me more excited than what we can do with the technology. But I've always believed in the principle that that has to sit on top of our human values and now more than ever, with the excitement of technology, those human values prevail for better solutions. So, when it comes to personalisation, yeah, we absolutely bring the best of data science. We bring the best of customer journey analysis and a full closed loop data and insights approach analysis and a full closed loop data and insights approach, but the foundation of this is real people, real ideas and working with our clients to find the best outcomes possible.
Speaker 1:Oh, great mission. So big companies tend to have lots of silos. You have product and marketing and customer service, customer experience, but all those lines are blurring. You know how do you deliver and collaborate across all those different segments and areas to deliver a unified sort of omni-channel journey for the customer? I mean you have lots of departments, lots of people doing different tasks. How do you create that one delightful experience for the customer?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think we're used to this notion that somehow big companies are unable to capture the speed of perhaps small and small companies. First and foremost is, yeah, technology accelerators. I'm sitting here from my office in Melbourne, australia, and you're, of course, in the US, and that's a great example of how we can cut through traditional barriers but also harness the diversity and global footprint. So, you know, a typical day for me is very, very different to a 9 to 5 experience. Often I'm up very early, 4 or 5 am for meetings into North America. If I'm lucky, I get out for a bit of exercise during the middle of the day and then europe comes online here in australia. So we kind of hack the traditional um, the traditional work day to make sure we can carve through and have really important key connections. Um, we instead of um believing in in the concept. You know, remote work is challenging, um, uh, and geographic footprint gets in the way of our business.
Speaker 2:We actually look at it the other way and say how can we use these technologies as an executive team which is pretty small and lean, to be honest to get together and focus our energies on the big things that matter?
Speaker 2:And then we go away and we get on with it and we embrace commitment-based management as a leadership team to do the right thing by our people, to do the right thing by our clients, to do the right thing by our shareholders and to bring those solutions to life. Of course, there is a lot of travel. As much as I love technology and everything you can do for us, we place a premium on the time we spend together as teams, as colleagues. It also allows us to spend time on the ground in the regions that we serve. So the closest region for me outside of Australia, which is a growing market for us, is the Philippines. We have over 20,000 team members in the Philippines. I can be there in seven hours, evan, and on the ground with our clients, on the ground with our colleagues, and so it's a great opportunity to turn what might be perceived negative into a positive, which is proximity to our delivery footprints around the world.
Speaker 1:Amazing and you have a hand in so many different emerging technologies, platforms, trends, and we mentioned a couple of them. What's on your radar right now? You mentioned Gen AI and AI. Obviously You're looking at your website in the CCAS space, but what are you really bullish about when it comes to digital engagement?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah well, I guess the foundation of our business over 20 years ago was delivering world-class customer care and that red thread has continued over two decades. We're really bullish about the but evolving AI and looking at it wing-to-wing. We continue to invest heavily in the model build side. So what we're seeing in terms of data services and data labeling and the data annotation for Gen AI, we've moved from large volumes and lower fidelity tasks into really bespoke exercises now and that's followed the advancement of Gen AI tools. So we're excited about the direction the models are heading because we're playing such a big role in enabling that.
Speaker 2:When it comes back to customer care, it is a fusion of people and technology, or people and software. So you know, in 1998, evan, my first job was in a call centre for a major bank here in Australia and you know, just five years ago I went back into a contact centre environment and I was a bit disappointed at how little that environment had changed. And over the last five years we've seen so many opportunities for those environments to change greatly. And we're empowering our team members, my colleagues, with real-time insights. We're bringing technology to bear in customer interactions, such as real-time translation, things like voice accent neutralisation. We're bringing personalised training experiences, agent training.
Speaker 2:We've built a platform, evan, that we call Fuel IX, and Fuel IX is about bringing model orchestration to life, and one particular piece is training.
Speaker 2:If you think the way we learned when we went to school, it was batch learning, it was insert enough knowledge into the brain so we can recount it at the moments that matter.
Speaker 2:And there's a new generation way of working, and that applies to digital customer care. So our team members now can be onboarded about 25% faster, using personalized agent trainer experiences, which simulate customer phone calls, and then focusing on training team members with the actual events that matter, rather than a broad brush technique. If one team member is more advanced on one area, let's focus on a personalized training module on their deficiencies or areas we want them to improve, instead of a one size fits all training approach. So speed to proficiency, which, of course, is such a big deal in terms of team member confidence. When I take myself back to August 1998, I was so nervous speaking to a customer for the first time and I had binder books of information and training material. Now all of this is popping on my screen real time, and it allows our team members to deliver a better grade of customer care in the moments that matter and build self-confidence on that journey.
Speaker 1:Amazing. Yeah, it's a brave new world, very exciting as well as a little daunting. You have a lot of sort of mission-driven principles, values that tell us. You talk about many things, including sustainability, which is interesting. How do you think about that authentic? You know purpose-driven messaging when it comes to working with customers, as well as marketing and sales. Tell us more about your philosophy there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it's a really important point.
Speaker 2:I mean, I talked about our humanity in the loop framework, evan, but one particular aspect of our values to standards I'd like to talk about is our TELUS days of giving.
Speaker 2:We're very proud of our Canadian history and something we borrowed from TELUS in Canada was the give where we live philosophy, and it's actually taken place right now this month of May, where our team members all around the world participate in local causes that matter. For example, in Guatemala, where we're one of the larger employers, we've built nine schools, I believe, now over the course of a decade, contributing back in to the local community and either taking a closed school facility and bringing it back to life. In El Salvador, I've personally participated in the restoration of a shelter and home for orphaned children a shelter and home for orphaned children. So we look at local causes that matter and very much give where we live. Now sometimes you know, for example, in India planting trees on old industrial sites and bringing those back to life. So a local cause that matters and really bringing our people in around it. I mean, and perhaps one of the most exciting things is when we have our clients come and join us in the regions for those events.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's wonderful. That's great to see and hear about. So, putting on your business hat, you know the bottom line. You have to think about KPIs and metrics and prioritizing. You know the impact of your efforts with customers and marketing budgets and all these things. It's one of the most difficult roles to be in a company as CMO these days. How do you think about your approach to navigating all this change and sometimes chaos these days while serving customers? I wouldn't necessarily want to be in your shoes these days as a chief marketing officer.
Speaker 2:Well, I love being in my shoes to be honest.
Speaker 2:Evan, I think it's. You know we have to double our own individual efforts to stay relevant and keep learning, but there's a lot of technology that can help us just about every day. For me, I'll have a Google Notebook LM feed that will tell me the things I know to start my day. And does it replace me going and scanning and reading my own information in entirety? Of course not, but it's things I know to start my day. And does it replace me going and scanning and reading my own information in entirety? Of course not, but it's a good way to start the day and a good synopsis of what's going on. So I use my own little learning hacks to make sure I stay relevant and learning the things and staying in front of the things that matter in our business.
Speaker 2:But when it comes to bringing our products and services to life and nothing beats sitting down and listening to our clients the voice of our client is the voice that matters the most. And so spending time with our clients, spending time on the ground, in our centers around the world, and listening to customer interactions, observing software engineers embracing new technologies, seeing these things in practice and I think you know I'll come back to that topic of AI for the moment because it's inescapable and it brings with it an incredible amount of opportunity, which you know is absolutely brilliant, don't get me wrong for one moment. But the evolution of an academic view of what that can do into business and the deployment are separated at the moment, and our job is to help our clients embrace and deploy technology and move experiments from laboratories and closed loop pilots and small scale endeavors to at-scale outcomes. And so the real world is when large volumes of team members, large volumes of customers, are using these services and with our privacy, by design philosophy, we can help our clients get there better and faster.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's fantastic. I love that approach and there seems to be a big gap between, you know, the big tech companies that are succeeding at transformation and digital engagement I think Apple and Amazon and all the big tech players and a lot of others who are sort of being left behind or maybe have stumbled on their transformation efforts or haven't had the right partners, haven't always made the right choices. What advice would you give to some of the up-and-coming marketing know want to make an impact, want to have successful change and transformation but might be struggling not having the deep bench that an Apple or Amazon or brand that they have as well?
Speaker 2:I think it's a great question and I think the best advice I could give is that there's never been a better time to start.
Speaker 2:The technology, tools, resources, connectivity, compute power that we have at our disposal at actually prices that typically are getting cheaper and more accessible, allow us to achieve things today that were almost impossible three years ago and extremely expensive 18 months ago. So there's never been a better time to get started on your technology transformation, which is really just a whole of business, or business transformation. When it comes to data, some of the most valuable data in your organisation is sitting in an adjacent business unit to yours. When it comes to product design and software engineering, some of the tooling that's at our disposal to, you know, accelerate the way ideas and product design emerges. Software solutions, you know, not only flattening the cost, but reducing time to market. These tools are available to us right now and you don't have to go back to the CapEx line to solve everything. You can be creative and take a look at some of the early stage startup businesses and what they're able to achieve with limited resources before they get their first large seed route.
Speaker 1:Yeah, really well said. It's not always about the budget at the end of the day, and you know, looking at your website, you have so many interesting stories and anecdotes and case studies on different industries and verticals like healthcare, IoT, smart cities. It must be really rewarding to have such a bird's eye view of so many different projects be really rewarding to have such a bird's eye view of so many different projects.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, look, evan. I mean there's two sides to that. I mean, firstly, the industries and vertical approach we take is a privilege we get through learning and co-developing with some of our clients, of course. It's incumbent on us, though, to be leading the way in particular verticals. One industry I would like to call out is the comms and media sector. Given our background and the fact we were born out of a wonderful Canadian technology company, now the communications provider has allowed us to truly differentiate in the comms and media sector, and whilst we won't talk specifically about client names today, the services we can provide and the benefits we harness having worked with Telus and bring solutions to life for the telecom sector globally, allows us to lead the way in that space.
Speaker 1:Well, very exciting. Thanks for joining and taking time away from your busy schedule. What are you looking forward to the next few weeks and months as we head into the summer or the winter in your case? Good point, I'm looking forward to escaping our winter.
Speaker 2:so, uh, getting, uh, looking forward to spending some time with our team. It's uh, and we're back into the throes of conference season, which means a lot of our team are on the ground in conferences across europe, um, and particularly the ai summit and london technology week, some events in Dublin, so a lot of our clients in Europe will have teams on the ground there. I'm very excited and still unpacking the insights from Google IO last week and, of course, we're only a couple of months away from some pretty big new consumer hardware releases. Typically, our good friends at Google have released the Pixel Suite in September and then Apple following just a couple of months later with their range, which is always an exciting time. And then, of course, supporting our clients. You know we start Black Friday and Cyber Monday preparation well in advance. It's still a major beacon and sales channel and helping our clients get ready for some of those large-scale launches in consumer hardware and, of course, bringing to life their Black Friday and Cyber Monday ambitions.
Speaker 1:Oh, fantastic. Well, so much to look forward to. Thanks for joining and sharing a peek behind the curtain. Really interesting stuff, appreciate it. Well, long-time listener, it's so much to look forward to. Thanks for joining and sharing a peek behind the curtain. Really interesting stuff, appreciate it.
Speaker 2:Well, long time listener. It's great to be joining you today and, thanks to all those tuning in, I'm looking forward to many more installments, evan, and thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1:Wonderful and thanks everyone for listening, watching and check out our new TV show, which is on Fox Business and Bloomberg at techimpacttv, where you'll see another version of this.