Key takeaways
- Proactive customer care became possible through conversational AI, moving TELUS to a model that reached new internet customers before they even thought to contact support.
- Choosing the right technology partner was as important as choosing the right technology, with ElevenLabs’ voice quality, agent framework and security posture all decisive to the program’s success.
- TELUS’s AI voice agent powered by ElevenLabs ElevenAgents was built to proactively reach new internet customers in their first 90 days and address the four most common reasons they struggled or churned.
- Responsible AI governance was built into the program from day one, with mandatory AI disclosure, live data verification and a thorough privacy review ensuring the program met TELUS’s standards.
- The welcome call use case was just the beginning. With five new use cases in active development, it established the foundation of a broader agentic voice AI capability across TELUS.
The new customers most likely to leave had never received a welcome call
TELUS Communications is a dynamic, world-leading technology company with $20 billion in annual revenue and 21 million customer connections across wireless, internet, television, healthcare and business services. High-speed internet is one of its highest-volume consumer products, with 123,000 net new internet customers added in 2025 alone.
TELUS Digital, a global technology service provider specializing in AI-powered digital customer experiences, is an entity of TELUS Communications. That relationship means every solution we build is designed, tested and proven inside one of the world’s most competitive and regulated telecommunications environments before it reaches any other client.
In early 2026, TELUS completed an analysis of the first 90 days following a residential high-speed internet activation. TELUS identified four compounding friction points that, without proactive intervention, drove confusion, inbound call volume and early churn.
- First-bill confusion: New customers’ first bills appeared higher than expected due to prorated charges covering a partial activation month, driving a high volume of inbound calls.
- Low self-serve adoption: Many customers were unaware of MyTELUS and telus.com as 24/7 tools for account management, increasing avoidable contact volume.
- DIY install churn: Customers who installed their own equipment without a technician were more likely to churn.
- Missed bundling discounts: Customers holding both home and mobile services with TELUS were missing meaningful savings simply because they had not been told to link their accounts.
Proactive outbound capacity for customer care did not yet exist and outbound calling was seen as a sales motion. If TELUS could reach new internet customers in those first critical days, before confusion could become frustration, the impact on experience and retention would be significant.
Rethinking proactive customer care with conversational AI and ElevenLabs
TELUS Digital designed and led the end-to-end implementation of an AI-powered outbound voice program for TELUS, built on ElevenLabs’ enterprise conversational AI platform, ElevenAgents.
From vendor evaluation and solution architecture through persona design, systems integration and responsible AI governance, every facet of the program was considered and delivered as a single connected initiative. The goal was to enable TELUS to reach new internet customers, proactively.
We didn't wait for customers to call in frustrated — we flipped the script entirely. By anticipating customer needs and getting the experience right the first time, we're building the trust that drives loyalty. That's how you create customers who grow with us.
Choosing the right conversational AI partner for enterprise customer care
Selecting the right technology foundation was the first and most consequential decision of the program.
Between November 2025 and February 2026, TELUS Digital conducted a structured evaluation of enterprise conversational AI platforms, assessing vendors across five dimensions:
- Voice expressiveness and tone: How human and expressive the AI voice sounded in real conversation
- Agent framework flexibility: The ability to support complex outbound conversational flows
- Real-time emotional modulation: Enabling warmth and empathy rather than a transactional posture
- Enterprise security and compliance: Meeting TELUS’s requirements for any customer-facing deployment
- Response latency: The speed of AI response in real-time voice conversation, ensuring interactions feel natural rather than stilted
ElevenLabs emerged as the clear choice.
As a leading AI audio research and product company, ElevenLabs brings together voice technology, integrations and enterprise-grade infrastructure through its ElevenAgents platform, enabling businesses to deploy conversational AI agents at scale.
For TELUS Digital, partnering with ElevenLabs meant access to natural-sounding voice AI available for enterprise customer operations — and a technology partner with the security posture and compliance infrastructure to meet our high standards. The decision was further validated by experience: TELUS Digital had already deployed ElevenLabs for AI-powered voice simulations with Fuel iX™ Agent Trainer for human agent training scenarios. In that context, low response latency in real-time voice interaction had been proven in production.
Responsible AI governance was treated as a program requirement from the outset. TELUS Digital conducted a thorough governance and privacy review in parallel with the technical build, covering AI disclosure requirements, data handling protocols and the boundaries of what the AI voice agent could and could not do on a customer call. The result was a program that TELUS, its customers and regulators could trust.
Deploying AI agents at enterprise scale is harder than it looks — the technology has to hold up in a live operation with real customers, real complexity, and [there is] no margin for a bad experience. TELUS Digital understands that. They bring the operational depth and engineering expertise to take ElevenAgents from a deployment into something customers actually experience. That's exactly the kind of partner we want building with us.
Meet the AI voice agent built for new internet customer onboarding
The TELUS AI voice agent is purpose-built to reach newly activated TELUS internet customers within their first 90 days, in a natural, empathetic conversation that addresses the four most common reasons new customers struggle or leave.
Every welcome call follows a structured but conversational flow:
- Identity confirmation and AI disclosure: The AI voice agent greets the customer, confirms their name and gets their agreement to continue, disclosing its AI nature and meeting TELUS’s mandatory transparency requirements.
- First-bill education: The AI voice agent explains the prorated charges that make a first bill appear higher than expected and sets clear expectations for future billing.
- Self-serve setup: The AI voice agent introduces MyTELUS and telus.com as 24/7 tools for account management, bill review and ongoing support.
- Bundling discount activation: The AI voice agent informs customers with both home and mobile services that linking their accounts through the self-serve portal activates their discount.
Before wrapping up the call, the AI voice agent shares a quick troubleshooting tip and collects a satisfaction rating from the customer.
Powered by voice AI technology from ElevenLabs, the solution was designed to sound warm, casual and empathetic, using natural speech patterns and conversational cues that feel human rather than scripted. Customers who decline to continue at any point can end the interaction immediately.
Connecting the AI voice agent to live customer data for real conversations
A scripted AI agent can deliver information. One connected to live customer data can have a real conversation.
TELUS Digital integrated the solution with TELUS's billing systems and self-serve channels, enabling the AI voice agent to respond to each customer's actual account details rather than delivering a generic call.
When a customer has a billing question, the AI voice agent can:
- Authenticate the customer mid-call via a one-time SMS passcode, without requiring them to leave the conversation
- Retrieve live billing data through a verified API connection, surfacing real account details including amounts owing, due dates and payment method
- Direct customers to self-serve channels when a query falls outside its scope, rather than guessing or leaving the customer without a next step
The AI voice agent only ever states billing figures retrieved from a live, verified data source. If verification fails or data is unavailable, it directs the customer to MyTELUS or telus.com rather than approximating. The core principle of the program was simple: every interaction should leave the customer better informed.
From proof of concept to the foundation of a customer care roadmap
From initial vendor engagement to first live customer call, TELUS Digital delivered the AI voice agent in approximately six weeks. While initially designed to prove feasibility, it ended up serving as the foundation of a new customer care capability.
Across approximately 2,300 outbound calls in the initial POC, the solution delivered:
- 8.5/10 Customer satisfaction score, reflecting not just the quality of information provided but the empathy and conversational quality of the interaction itself.
- 19% Right-party contact rate, consistent with TELUS’s top-performing human outbound callers across early runs of the program.
- Among customers who received a welcome call from the AI voice. agent, 30-day cancellations were less than half the rate of the broader new internet activation cohort.
Five new use cases are in active development across TELUS, making this program the foundation of a broader agentic voice AI capability roadmap.
Voice AI can get customers the answers they need in the moment, without wait time or being passed between agents. That frees up our frontline teams to spend their time on the conversations that need them most. ElevenAgents is built for this, and it can deliver that experience to every customer, at scale.
