What you need to know about Communications Platfom as a service
We caught up with Adam Klodner, Vice President, Application Development for IntelePeer, a cloud-based, multi-channel business communications to find out more about CPAAS and its implications amidst the worst pandemic in a century.
This year is one of rapid change. No one could prepare for what the current pandemic brought globally. The need for digital transformation accelerated as remote working took over and IT teams scrambled to get workers set up at home in a quick and secure manner. Call Centers were put at the center of communications, with an explosion of new technologies being sought out to enhance consumer engagement and support remote workforces. Even though companies have adjusted to the new normal, the impacts are far from over.
It is important to plan for the future and be agile when a shift of the pandemic occurs, or other unforeseen events such as natural disasters. Companies need a solution that can be just as nimble and not require lengthy or costly implementations of new technology platforms. Through all of this, Communications Platform as a Service (CPaaS) has emerged as the easy, reliable, agile type of solution to bring enterprises into the digital world of the cloud. IDC forecasts the CPaaS market will grow to 17.7% billion by 2024. What is (CPaaS)? Why is this technology growing in popularity?
CPaaS, or Communications Platform as a Service, is a cloud-based platform that allows your company to embed communications into applications and create customized flows to enhance the customer and employee experience. This can be SMS, voice, and social media messaging capabilities embedded into your customer-facing applications or internal communications. In addition to integrating omni-channel communications, it can also be used to add AI and automate workflows into your business processes.
Every company needs to keep their customer communications strategy innovative, such as offering multiple channels based on their preferences, utilizing AI to provide assistance and route their call to the correct agent, reduce dropped calls, and continually provide the new customer experience in this digital world. Delivering truly delightful communication experiences requires a highly scalable and customizable collection of communications capabilities that integrate with the organization’s apps, products, and services. CPaaS gives you that.
CPaaS can bring to your business:
- Scalability: Cloud technology offers companies of any size the ability to easily develop and embed communications features as business needs change and grow, saving enterprises time and allowing for new revenue, increased productivity, and decrease operational costs.
- Cost-efficient: Companies using CPaaS can save on human resources, infrastructure, and time to market. Another advantage is affordable pricing models, where companies can pay for just the services they need, such as SMS, voice, or automation.
- Easy implementation: Implementing a CPaaS solution saves businesses time with quick and simple deployments. Low code/no code or through APIs or ready-to-use applications, IT and development teams can easily deploy CPaaS solutions across the company. Your IT team can help other departments build applications for their individual needs or use it for their own purposes to improve the overall tech experience for customers and employees.
- Programmable components: CPaaS delivers unparalleled flexibility letting you implement a full end-to-end solution or create one that meets specific needs. You can build on top of existing solutions such as contact center or other business applications. CPaaS allows developers to focus on creating applications rather than on the underlying IT infrastructure.
Along with all these benefits, CPaaS helps prepare your business to stay ahead of the curve with ever changing markets and consumer expectations. The growth of the CPaaS market aligns with emerging trends in customer-facing communications. The market is made up of a mix of independent software vendors, systems integrators, service providers, and traditional equipment vendors. While early CPaaS initiatives can be traced back 20 years with the effort to define APIs for telephone networks, the industry has dramatically picked up pace in recent years. As the need for CPaaS advances, so does the technology. Developers and CPaaS providers alike are finding even more creative ways to empower their company communications. The use of AI, machine learning, and automated flows is becoming more common by enterprises, and expected by customers.
The rise of technology solutions like CPaaS can be largely credited towards the increase in remote workers with many enterprises planning to remain that way into 2021. IDC's August survey of IT leaders found that 43.7% look to invest in content and collaboration tools in 2020–2021 to promote work from anywhere and 56.1% will focus on its collaborative work benefits. Enterprises find themselves desperately needing collaboration and communication tools to create a smooth and seamless work experience while maintaining security. CPaaS can help improve internal processes and employee collaboration, along with enhancing your external communications.
One of the most popular and first uses of CPaaS for many companies is enabling the ability to send and receive text messages. Businesses are getting on board with using text messaging to interact with customers. CPaaS makes it easy to add on SMS to applications and workflows so you can automate actions like appointment reminders, delivery confirmations, payment due dates, and customer surveys.
Companies can also use CPaaS to better track customer engagement across different communications channels using analytics. Tracking customer sentiment, length of call times, when a customer drops off, agent productivity, and so on is crucial to consistently improving the customer experience. In short, whether your use cases are simple, like automating text message reminders or complex, building a full seamless integration and compatibility with existing systems, CPaaS becomes your one stop shop.
With the everchanging landscape of communications and customer engagement driven by emerging trends such as AI, 5G, and IoT, the need to continue innovating with cloud technologies is just getting started. The CPaaS market is not slowing down anytime soon as providing the enhanced customer experience will remain in the spotlight for businesses adapting to the digital market going forward.
