TTEC is a global provider of customer experience services, supplying solutions focused on strategy, technology, training and outsourced customer support to a large client base. Headquartered in the US, the company has a workforce of 50,000 employees, many of whom work on client premises or at home.

Communicating with a remote, distributed frontline workforce has proved challenging, particularly in sending out targeted messages. All employees have email accounts which are used for internal communications; however, email has proved an inefficient and poorly adopted medium, not fully justifying the significant annual licensing costs.

Targeted messaging for the frontline

TTEC approached Content Formula with a view to creating an alternative approach to deliver targeted messaging to frontline workers that would be far more successful and cost-effective. In particular, the team wanted to build on the success of the LiveTiles intranet "Mosaic" which we had already delivered.

Working closely with the team at TTEC, we scoped, designed, developed and delivered a user-friendly messaging feature with hyper-targeting capabilities directly built into the existing intranet experience.

Super-easy messaging for communicators and managers

Taking advantage of detailed Active Directory profile data, the solution - based on SharePoint, LiveTiles Everywhere and Azure Cosmos DB - allows internal communicators and team managers to send messages to different groups and individuals throughout TTEC.

Using a simple content editor accessed through the intranet, administrators can create and format a message with images, then select the individuals or different groups they want to send it to.

Exceptional targeting capabilities

A simple interface allows administrators to select multiple attributes to pinpoint message recipients. Dynamic filters allow groups to be defined by country, location, department, level of seniority, type of employee, client team, team supervisor and more; lists of recipients can also be further refined down to the individual level. The enterprise directory can alternatively be searched by name or employee ID.

Administrators can control the settings for each email, asking for confirmation of read receipts, marking items important, allowing replies and specifying expiry dates. In-built analytics also show views, likes and numbers of comments once a message has been sent.

Messaging that is always relevant

So far, the new messaging capability has had an excellent response from both users and the communications team.

The attractive interface brings messaging directly into the intranet that employees regularly access; more messages are getting read, because the advanced targeting means that individuals are confident the messages they receive will be relevant to them.

Communicators appreciate the near-effortless ability to target messaging to an unusual level of granularity, also meaning that managers and supervisors are using the tool for team-wide and even one-to-one communications.

Reducing costs, meeting privacy challenges

The solution has also significantly reduced costs as TTEC has been able to scale back the level of Microsoft 365 licensing needed to make the tool operational, as well as retire an unloved and underused email solution.

Further, the solution is completely within TTEC’s own Azure environment, ensuring that both regulatory commitments relating to data privacy and stringent security standards are met.

A solution proofed for the future

The TTEC team and Content Formula are planning to evolve the capabilities of the platform, for example, by extending analytics and reporting, while also using the API (enabled by an Azure function app) to allow automatic system notifications to be viewed through the tool.

There is also the possibility of being able to surface messages in other systems such as Microsoft Teams, an employee onboarding system or even in the Windows 10 or 11 environment.

The system has been designed and built in such a way that it is extremely scalable and fully future-proofed to meet the needs of TTEC for the coming years.