Key takeaways
- TELUS Digital's performance in El Salvador earned it status as the airline’s sole chat support partner and a key voice partner, growing team member headcount and the relationship well beyond its original scope.
- A dedicated IROPS decision framework helps agents weigh cost-effective rebooking against the client’s customer-centric culture, a principle the airline reinforces with the team especially during weather and maintenance-driven disruptions.
- Fuel iX™ Agent Trainer, added after the team's initial ramp-up, builds each agent a personalized coaching path around the specific scenarios they need to practice.
- Regular training refreshers, floor-level feedback and a floor culture aligned with the airline’s own values have helped the team hold quality scores above target.
Rebooking a traveler is never just about finding a seat
For an airline, operational excellence means confronting one of the Travel & Hospitality industry’s toughest realities. Extreme weather, aircraft swaps and other disruptions can cascade quickly through an airline’s operations, leaving customers stranded, rebooked or waiting on a refund with little notice.
In response, a leading airline built a dedicated playbook for managing large-scale disruptions, aiming to get customers moving again as quickly as possible. Extending support capacity for these moments meant building a team trained specifically for irregular flight operations (IROPS), without compromising its drive for efficiency.
Building that kind of specialized, disruption-ready IROPS support takes years of specific training and the ability to flex quickly with seasonal peaks. These are the capabilities that can be accessed more quickly through a delivery partner with demonstrable airline industry expertise and a Customer Service Outsourcing solution. The carrier sought a partner who could bring that experience and flexibility to bolster its operation.
For this particular airline, the right partner needed to meet a specific set of conditions.
- Cost-effective rebooking capability: A partner whose agents could weigh cost and customer impact together, keeping customers moving without defaulting to the most expensive option.
- Workforce flexibility: A team structure that could adapt to the seasonality of the airline industry, scaling up and down without compromising quality.
- Customer experience transformation expertise: A digital leader with demonstrated perspective on where automation and AI could responsibly support agents and customers.
- Cultural alignment: A workplace culture rooted in empathy, one that mirrored the airline’s own commitment to traveler and team member well-being.
Meeting all four would mean finding a partner willing to operate less like a vendor, and more like an extension of the airline itself.
Customer support cleared for takeoff
TELUS Digital's relationship with the airline began in 2024 with Managed IT and Service Desk support for its internal IT function. Our team members in the Philippines built a strong track record, and recognizing the strength of our capabilities, the client expanded the partnership to include full customer support, which we provide from team members in El Salvador.
From there, consistent performance carried the relationship further, growing the team and eventually making TELUS Digital its sole chat support partner and a key voice partner.
A team and decision framework built for IROPS
Unlike routine bookings and changes, IROPS contacts arrive when a traveler’s plans have already fallen apart, often in large waves and with little patience to spare. Resolving them quickly and consistently matters as much to the customer experience as it does to the airline’s operations.
Our human agents are trained to work through the airline’s structured framework for every irregular operation, first identifying whether a disruption falls under the airline’s own policies or a third-party carrier's, then applying the right protocol for refunds, rebooking or baggage and ancillary support. Agents handling disruptions caused by the airline are trained specifically for IROPS decision-making, with the discretion to weigh options like rebooking on a partner airline against the cost of a non-partner flight, always with the traveler's need to keep moving in mind.
In one year, the team built to deliver on that framework has grown from 154 to 376 agents, giving the airline dedicated IROPS capacity that scales with seasonal demand rather than a fixed headcount stretched thin during peak disruption periods.
Voice and chat support that feels like an extension of the airline
TELUS Digital supports the airline across both voice and chat, the two channels customers rely on most during a disruption. Agents are trained not just on the client’s policies, but on the airline's tone and customer-first standards, so a customer reaching either channel gets a consistent experience regardless of which one they turn to.
On chat specifically, agents are trained and equipped to deliver reliable chat concurrency support, managing two customer conversations at once without sacrificing response quality. That capability lets the team absorb higher contact volume without adding headcount for every additional conversation.
AI-powered coaching, personalized for every agent
TELUS Digital introduced Fuel iX Agent Trainer after the team's initial ramp, an AI-powered coaching tool that builds each agent a personalized practice path around the specific scenarios their team leaders identify as areas to strengthen. Rather than putting every agent through the same generic training, team leaders flag exactly where an individual agent needs more reps, whether that's a specific IROPS scenario or a customer interaction pattern, and Agent Trainer builds practice accordingly.
The tool works alongside, not in place of, the team's existing training refreshers and floor-level feedback loop. It reinforces skills as new agents move through training and toward graduation, the point at which a new hire completes training and begins handling live customer interactions independently. Most of that progress has come from other training changes, including new pre-training materials and an adapted approach to training delivery. Agent Trainer is now helping the team sustain those gains as it continues to grow.
Exploring what's next, together
Beyond Agent Trainer, TELUS Digital and the client maintain an ongoing dialogue on where AI and automation can extend the team's capabilities and improve the customer experience, including regular input from TELUS Digital into the airline’s own internal AI initiatives.
Additionally, AI noise cancellation for voice support, through TELUS Digital’s partnership with Sanas, is in place to ensure background noise does not lead to a drop in clarity or CSAT.
- 5.66%Above target on chat quality, the airline’s top-priority support KPI
- 3.39%Above target on voice quality, sustained for over a year
A performance record built on consistency
TELUS Digital's team has held quality performance above target on chat and voice channels, while also resolving contacts faster than the standard the client set for the account.
Metric | Result compared to target |
|---|---|
Chat quality* | 5.66% above |
Voice quality* | 3.39% above |
Chat average handle time | 14.53% faster |
Voice average handle time | 7.5% faster |
New agent graduation rate | +25 percentage points |
Chat agents also sustain double concurrency, managing two customer conversations at once without sacrificing the quality that both parties expect.
The team of support experts has grown from 154 to 376 members, from December 2024 to December 2025, and new agent graduation rates have climbed to 85% or higher, a standard that Agent Trainer now helps the team sustain as it continues to scale.
Looking ahead, TELUS Digital and the airline will keep exploring where automation can extend the team’s capabilities further.
