Boosting customer and employee engagement with TELUS International, Automation Anywhere, and Google Cloud

While artificial intelligence grabs all the headlines, there’s a quieter — but just as impactful — revolution going on behind the scenes. Intelligent automation is transforming the world of work by enabling companies to automate complex, end-to-end enterprise processes so they can drive business transformation.

The result is improved employee experience and increased productivity; improved customer experience and satisfaction; and reduced costs and time saved all resulting in increased business growth. Instead of filling out forms, copying and pasting information, or looking up information in multiple systems of record, employees can return to activities that demand creativity, critical thinking and human interactions.

In this way, automation-as-a-service (AaaS) can be a game-changer, fostering employee loyalty and trust that form the bedrock of successful businesses.

To the cloud and beyond!

TELUS International is a leading digital customer experience (CX) innovator that designs, builds, and delivers next-generation solutions such as artificial intelligence (AI) and content moderation for global brands’ software business. It also supplies intelligent automation services to other customers including its parent organization, TELUS, which uses the software to power business functions including human resources, finance, IT, and supply chains.

Until recently, TELUS International delivered intelligent automation services via a network of on-premises data centers. Aamir Yousuf, Director of Digital Solutions, TELUS International, says, “We are always looking for ways to increase efficiency and reduce costs for our customers. By moving to the cloud we saw an opportunity to offer more competitive services.” In their search for a cloud partner, Automation Anywhere, and its Automation Success Platform grabbed Yousuf’s attention. “Compared with other automation providers, it was cloud-ready and available ‘as a service’ for our team at TELUS International,” he says.

Our goal is to offer an intelligent automation platform which works across the value chain with virtual and voice assistance, integrating low-code applications and applying proactive automation, cloud enables these service offerings.

Automation Anywhere is a Google Cloud partner, which also appealed to Yousuf. “Automation Anywhere can be easily integrated with other AI platforms on Google Cloud,” he says. “Google Cloud’s extensive product suite was a key differentiator for us.”

AaaS is also fundamental to the organization’s growth strategy. “With on-premises IT, you need a lot of capital investment to set up the infrastructure, load licenses, and support a DevOps team,” says Yousuf. “But by offering AaaS, TELUS International works with Network teams on both sides, connecting to the customer environment, resulting in faster turnaround times. “Better license utilization gives us higher ROI for our customers,” he adds.

This means it can offer a more competitive delivery model for its customers at TELUS International. “On enterprise AaaS platforms we charge customers by the hour rather than contracting through annual licenses — a change that has reduced TELUS’ licensing costs by 25%,” says Yousuf.

Other stand-out results include ‘five nines’ (99.999 percent) availability thanks to the stability of Google Cloud hosting Automation Anywhere. “Previously we had both infrastructure and application teams supporting our intelligent automation service. Now it’s more of a DevOps function that frees up our team to focus on more complex work. It also makes it easier to attract and retain talent,” says Yousuf.

Parent company TELUS has added new Intelligent Automation services including OCR (optical character recognition), that scans archived documents and extracts relevant customer information. Crina Kajioka, Director, Information Services - Intelligent Automation, TELUS, says, “We have several legacy systems where we store customer contracts, but it is too costly to read the documents and extract information manually. With Automation Anywhere’s technology, we can quickly search and retrieve information for the customer.”

Put Google AI to work with Automation Anywhere

In addition, TELUS International is evaluating Contact Center AI to create natural interactions with virtual agents based on deep learning technologies powered by Google Assistant. “Based on early proofs of concept, the AI tools available in Google Cloud will help us provide further end-to-end value chain automation for our customers and make work more meaningful for employees,” says Kajioka.

TELUS International is exploring further Google Cloud integrations including Vertex AI for building, deploying, and scaling machine learning (ML) models faster. Yousuf is also studying the potential of Document AI to structure data that can be stored, analyzed, searched, and used to automate processes.

Generative AI will play a vital role in the future of TELUS International. Yousuf says, “We are looking at large language model integrations and how we can create synthetic data to evaluate new bots and automations. There are a lot of gen AI proofs of concept underway at TELUS International right now.”

With the support of Automation Anywhere and Google Cloud, Yousuf anticipates the emergence of more sophisticated and intelligent bots, capable of not only executing repetitive tasks, but also making informed decisions through machine learning and AI integration.

“This human-machine collaboration will foster innovation, and organizations that strike the right balance will thrive in the digital age,” says Yousuf. “Through our work with Automation Anywhere and Google Cloud, we can support TELUS' and TELUS International’s mission to make the world a better place for generations to come.”