When Andy Baer told 170,000 attendees at its annual conference in September that “Telus is leading the way, not just in Canada but in all of North America, on customer experience,” people listened. Baer works for Salesforce, which serves CRM tech to just about every North American telco. That endorsement solidified Telus as the Canadian telecom brand to beat in 2015.
Virtually all messaging in this sector swung to customer service and experience this year to finally address longstanding complaints from consumers. But Telus got to the battlefield first and brought the biggest guns: its churn rate is the lowest (consistently below 1%) and according to the latest from the Commissioner for Complaints for Telecommunications Services, it got only 243 complaints in same the period Rogers received more than 1,200 and Bell more than 1,900.
Not that Telus is shy in acknowledging complaints. In this-year’s “Expect More” campaign, those who tweeted the brand with praise and condemnation alike were acknowledged on both new and traditional media by Telus employees — sometimes within minutes.
While competitors are just starting to communicate a promise to do better, Telus is simultaneously showing customers that better things are coming and effectively flaunting its past record.
But the brand is looking forward, too. As the CRTC began pushing the cable industry towards “pick and pay” packages, Telus’ “You Call The Shots” ads positioned its Optik theme packages as the next best thing — “Love watching hockey? Don’t pay for fishing.” James Sadler, deputy executive creative director with Telus’ agency The & Partnership, said the spots were meant to “get ahead of the curve a little bit.” Looking where its competitors are, they’ve been ahead of the curve all year.
