the brief.
A telecom rewards program competes for attention against every other loyalty card in a customer's wallet. To matter, TELUS Rewards had to do three things at once: differentiate in a crowded market, feel intuitive for both members and the admins running it, and launch on an aggressive, deadline-driven timeline against TELUS's new digital standards.
The hard part wasn't the front end. It was everything behind it. A rewards experience that looks simple is usually sitting on top of several systems that don't naturally talk to each other, and this one had to bring three together under enterprise security and accessibility requirements, with no room to slip the date.
the challenge.
Three systems, one experience. The platform had to unite stacks that were never designed to operate as one:
- The TELUS Account API for login and authentication, so members used the credentials they already trusted.
- Aimia's Rewards API for points balances, redemption, and activity: the live engine the whole program runs on.
- Contentful as the CMS, so TELUS could manage and evolve content without a developer in the loop.
On top of that: a deadline-driven launch held to TELUS's new digital standards, with WCAG 2.0 AA accessibility and enterprise-grade security as non-negotiable conditions, not finishing touches.
the process.
We didn't treat this as one build. We treated it as a program with a sequence, and the sequence mattered, because each phase de-risked the next.
Phase one: launch the platform. Stand up the member-facing site, prove the integrations under real load, hit the date.
Phase two: equip the people behind it. A consumer launch is only half the system. The customer service reps fielding member questions were working out of fragmented legacy tools, so the next phase gave them a portal built for the job.
Phase three: optimize for the long term. With the platform live and supported, we mapped the full member journey to find where activation and redemption were leaking, and rebuilt those moments to scale TELUS Rewards from a launched product into a durable loyalty ecosystem.
the solution.
a seamless customer platform.
We designed and developed the customer-facing Rewards site to make three disconnected systems feel like one. Member identity flowed from the TELUS Account API, points and redemption came live from Aimia, and every piece of content was managed in Contentful, chosen because it let TELUS's own team ship and evolve content without engineering involvement. The build was responsive, mobile-first, and WCAG 2.0 AA–compliant, hosted on TELUS's own AWS environment for the security and scalability an enterprise loyalty program demands. It launched on time and on budget.
a secure agent portal.
Then we turned to the people supporting members. We built a dedicated portal with SAML single sign-on for authorized agent access, giving CSRs a 360° member view (account search, history, and validated, permission-based points adjustments) in place of the fragmented workflows they'd been stitching together. The judgment here was simple: faster, more accurate support is a member experience too, just one the member never sees.
Account search, transaction history and validated points adjustments: behind SAML SSO.
optimizing the program end to end.
With the foundation in place, we mapped member journeys to locate friction, then rebuilt the weak points: a clearer activation flow with proper onboarding and triggered emails, a redemption experience improved with wishlists, tiers, and a refined catalogue, and an upgraded architecture with stronger reporting and tighter Aimia integration, engineered to carry the program's next stage of growth.
The journey map that found the friction (activation, redemption, re-engagement) and set the optimization agenda.
the outcome.
TELUS Rewards launched on time, on budget, and ahead of plan.
- 300K+ members enrolled within six months: 22% ahead of forecast. The platform didn't just hit its date; it beat its activation target out of the gate.
- 100% of polled Rewards CSRs preferred the new agent portal to the legacy tools they'd replaced, a clean adoption signal from the people who use it every shift. In their words, the team was “amazed at the simple and more specific layout to help support customers.”
- Rewards members reported higher likelihood-to-recommend (L2R) scores across the enterprise than non-members: the program changing how customers feel about TELUS, not just what's in their points balance.
The optimization phase rebuilt activation and redemption to lift engagement and position the program for long-term ROI. TELUS's internal projections indicated that the redesigned activation flow would nearly triple activation rates.
I wanted to say a HUGE thank you to the Power Shifter team for making our site so user-friendly, with an incredibly clean design that really reflect the TELUS brand. The team was extremely helpful in answering our questions and was able to address and deploy several changes on a whim.