Background
In the fiercely competitive telecommunications market, it is important for TELUS Corporation to foster customer loyalty from each of their 11.9 million valued subscribers. In order to achieve this, they must communicate with each customer in the manner they prefer.
Catering to customers with disabilities, such as the visually impaired, is good for business and is required by law. Providing monthly statements in Braille, e-text and large-format print using CrawfordTech’s DAS solution (Document Accessibility Services) helps TELUS stay at the forefront of client communications and customer satisfaction while conforming to all applicable regulations and laws.
The Challenge
Like many corporations, TELUS recognizes that not all their customers have the same needs when receiving business communications such as invoices and statements. Their range of products, which include traditional and mobile telephone services, internet services and TV media distribution, means that TELUS offers products requiring a very diverse set of communication needs. The company also understands the importance of communicating in a manner most appropriate to the lifestyles and needs of its millions of customers.
Over the years, its customer service function has been on the forefront of many new advanced methods for distributing monthly billing statements.
Being one of the first to offer e-billing presentment in addition to traditional mailed paper statements was a way to address both their younger customers and their environmental commitments.
With this same drive and foresight, combined with a corporate responsibility to ensure they conform to national disability regulations, TELUS is ensuring that clients with any form of reading difficulty are able to receive important subscription information in a suitable and accessible format.
Why CrawfordTech
CrawfordTech’s DAS solution accepts electronic print files containing statements, invoices and other key communication documents, with complete security at their PCI- compliant facilities, and re-formats these into output for those clients that require Braille, large-format print, e-text and audio files.
Because CrawfordTech provides this as a services offering, organizations do not need to invest in IT projects, purchase or install new software, make expensive application changes or bring about adjustments to their infrastructure to meet the needs of visually impaired or print-disabled customers.
Since the DAS solution makes use of Crawford Technologies’ award-winning document re-engineering software, they don’t simply ‘enlarge’ the print —the data is re-ordered and re-flowed on the page so that it makes sense to the reader when produced and laid out in large- format.
Similarly, Braille and audio files are created in a way that makes sense to the customer. Clients like TELUS also benefit from CrawfordTech’s ability to extract just those statements that require re- formatting, avoiding the need to create subsets of output on their own systems.
The software and services provided by CrawfordTech fully complies with all processes, service levels and privacy requirements required by large corporations. CrawfordTech also keeps up to date on all of the latest encoding rules, international standards and specialized accessibility knowledge, required so that their customers don’t have to.
Thanks to automated document factory production facilities and the ability to provide ink address labels, barcodes and visually readable information on Braille statements, CrawfordTech’s DAS was able to meet and exceed all TELUS’ service, customer privacy protection and technological requirements.
Conclusion
CrawfordTech’s software has the ability to process a variety of data in multiple formats without requiring manipulation by the customer.
TELUS, like all CrawfordTech’s DAS clients, can either send a file that contains only those statements requiring accessible formats or they can send full print files which are processed by CrawfordTech to extract only the documents requiring reformatting.
The ability to send mixed accessible format requests and languages in one single file greatly reduces TELUS’ need to touch the statements before they are sent securely to CrawfordTech.
After expressing interest in using CrawfordTech’s DAS solution in December of 2009, TELUS was very satisfied after performing a series of pilot tests. They ultimately made the decision to fully use CrawfordTech to meet all their accessible format customer service needs in January 2010.
CrawfordTech’s DAS solution is now successfully producing and distributing Braille, large print and e-text bills for TELUS’ monthly statements for their visually-impaired and print disabled customers throughout all of Canada.
