The Importance of CPaaS: Building Engagement For a Better Employee and Customer Experience
More and more, businesses today are building their communications strategies on the understanding that creating innovative ways to connect and engage with customers is absolutely critical in the new, modern workplace.
The last 18 months and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic have only served to accelerate this demand and it is driving enterprise businesses to choose API building blocks to deliver customizable, programmable communications through Communications Platform as a Service (CPaaS).
Today’s businesses across all industries are realizing the need to engage with their customers across the channels of their choice - voice, video, messaging, social chat - and embed them into their existing applications and workflows.
At a time when employee connectivity and customer engagement around the world is more important than ever, APIs empower businesses to make these connections in tangible and meaningful ways. Whether it's receiving medical attention from anywhere through telehealth, tracking a package or a food delivery in real time, booking a rideshare service while maintaining privacy, providing fraud protection, connecting with the right customer support agent for your individual need, or enabling video and voice communications across thousands of office locations, APIs provide the kind of programmable and personalized experiences that today’s consumer expects, and demands.
In fact, use of programmable communications today - messaging, video, chat and verification - has grown explosively during the past several years as more businesses realize the benefit of embedding contextual, personalized communications, and the ability to connect and communicate with customers across any channel - from anywhere.
APIs Make for a Smoother Customer Experience
Customers expect their interaction with companies and service providers to unfold as one, seamless experience. Imagine you want to schedule a COVD-19 test. You schedule the test through your healthcare provider's smartphone app. Later you receive an email saying that day is actually full, and are directed to contact a customer service email address, which refers you to a patient hotline to call. By the time you confirm your appointment, you've used three different communication channels. When a customer must switch from mobile app to web browser to phone call, the communications chain becomes disjointed, even broken altogether.
Organizations that successfully leverage APIs for a modern communications experience are more likely to create lasting customer relationships. Now, imagine you make that testing appointment with your app. When the healthcare provider realizes that day is booked, the app sends you a phone notification. Swiping the notification opens the app calendar page directly with the next available date. You reschedule your appointment without ever leaving your smartphone app or resorting to other communications channels. Which of these two experiences would you prefer?
The Convergence of UC and CC - thanks to APIs
Leveraging communications APIs to embed programmable capabilities into existing apps is also taking a growing and evolving need for Unified Communications (UC) and Contact Center (CC) solutions to the next level, empowering businesses with the tools they need to transform the way they connect with each other and with their own customers.
Video collaboration solution Vonage Meetings is an excellent example of building a Video product for the Vonage Business Communications (VBC) unified communications solution on top of APIs and integrating with Vonage Contact Center (VCC) to leverage that same solution and enable video for agents. The tremendous growth in the need for video - for every individual, every business, and every industry - is a key proof point for why this kind of flexibility and agility, enabled by APIs, is crucial to meet the needs of today’s modern workplace.
The importance of this agility has grown tremendously and continues to grow as businesses of all sizes realize the need for flexibility, customization, augmentation, and personalized solutions through the use of over the top APIs.
Learn More
To learn more about the rise of CPaaS and the API Economy, check out the upcoming panel discussion at Enterprise Connect 2021 - Understanding the CPaaS Landscape on Tuesday, September 28, 3:30pm ET.
