TELUS offers conversational customer experiences on its phone channel with Nuance.
Using Nuance Natural Language Understanding, customer intents can be identified from natural, conversational voice.
Company profile
Telus, a large telco, uses Nuance Natural Language Understanding to recognize customers’ intents from conversational speech, making interactions with the IVR effortless. Customers no longer need to answer a series of rule-based questions, and transfers to specific service areas are more accurate.
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Michael Giorgio
Director, Technology Operations
TELUS
- Replace the rules-based questions in its legacy IVR (interactive voice response) with a more seamless customer intent recognition process.
- Nuance Natural Language Understanding (NLU) technology allows customers to express their intent in natural, conversational language, and callers are transferred to the service area they need.
- Customers have a more seamless experience when contacting TELUS and more customers are using the self-service IVR.
Background
With over 13 million customer connections, TELUS is one of Canada’s largest telecommunications providers. It offers a wide range of services, including internet access, voice, entertainment, business productivity solutions, and even healthcare—making it a unique provider for the country.
The telco has always put customer service at the forefront of its operations, and it wanted to streamline its legacy IVR system to offer customers a more seamless experience. Previously, customers calling the IVR were met with a sequence of rules-based questions that determined which service they were trying to access. But, as the number of TELUS services continued to grow, this process became longer.
With the rise of virtual assistants like Alexa and Siri, TELUS wanted to create an effortless IVR experience that would already feel familiar to customers. The telco knew a more conversational experience could reduce customer frustration, as well as cut costs—it just needed the right partner to make it happen.