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Google Cloud and TELUS Digital: From the inside out (and how Work Anywhere came to be)

Posted April 16, 2020 - Updated September 1, 2022
Ladders reaching up to a cloud

Effortless, real-time and intuitive interactions are key attributes of connecting in the digital age. In the business world, this often translates to finding ways to enable synergies between people and technology. This can be a game-changer, helping teams break out of siloed geographical or team function constraints to ensure business needs are met, regardless of where and with whom the expertise lies.

“We have been long-time users of Google Cloud, using it internally to keep our global team connected and engaged across our sites around the world since 2011,” said Michael Ringman, chief information officer at TELUS Digital. “By enabling collaboration and driving productivity, Google Cloud has helped us achieve exponential growth, fostered our caring culture and powered the delivery of many of our customer and digital experience solutions for our clients.”

Facing new challenges

Over the years, TELUS Digital has evolved significantly, requiring innovative and agile solutions supported by the right people, processes and technology. But never has there been a greater need for business plans and models to evolve than due to the global outbreak of COVID-19, which sparked unforeseen business challenges, including the need to rapidly enable remote work for entire workforces.

TELUS Digital understood the assignment. At the onset of the pandemic, we focused on health and business continuity, for ourselves and for our clients. That meant securely transitioning thousands of TELUS Digital team members to a work-from-home model and keeping them engaged once they were set up. The rapid shift was made possible by Google Cloud technology and cloud-enabled virtual workstations, meaning we could stay online from anywhere to deliver a high level of support.

Sharing the expertise

Cloud technology can provide immense value and long-term benefits to organizations of all sizes and across all verticals, and it has proven to be more important than ever during these trying times. (Also see: How Google Meet supports 2 million new users per day.)

The strength of Google Cloud’s performance internally led to TELUS Digital’s decision to use the technology to power its Work Anywhere solution. The pure-cloud, omnichannel offering enables rapid, remote work deployment and its customizable format offers brands the ability to connect, enable, and engage with their customers on- or off-site, anywhere in the world.

Connect

Work Anywhere is part of TELUS Digital’s cloud-based contact center portfolio, which hosts centralized information and tools for the customer experience (CX) workforce. It seamlessly facilitates customer interactions to go from chat, email, voice and any other enabled communication channel, allowing agents to consistently deliver an effortless experience.

The cloud also helps brands respond quickly to customer preferences such as the channels they like to use, including SMS messaging or social media direct messages. This similarly applies to software updates that can be automatically pushed to an agent’s virtual workstation, eliminating unnecessary downtime and improving the speed to deploy new CX solutions.

Enable

The investment in a virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) is critical to creating a seamless work-from-home experience for employees and further enhancing the “connect” element of a remote CX workforce. A VDI allows brands to securely connect employees to their work from any device (including mobile phones and tablets) wherever there is a secure internet connection.

Brands can benefit from VDI in a wide variety of scenarios. Whether a team member needs to simply log in from home or if an organization is dealing with a national emergency, being able to provide safe and reliable access to remote desktops is essential for all types of businesses.

Engage

Last but certainly not least, Work Anywhere includes a full suite of solutions to keep entire workforces engaged through virtual learning, coaching and workforce management capabilities to support the development of team members. Recruiting and hiring can also be 100% remote by leveraging the cloud. Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, TELUS Digital established a new digital recruitment model that moves a candidate from application to training within a 125-minute timeframe.

Whether leveraging innovation and scaling opportunities, or requiring talent acquisition or coaching capabilities, cloud-enabled technologies can strengthen business continuity while keeping team members engaged and customers happy — from anywhere.


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