As companies expand into digital commerce, their communication stack becomes more critical to their customer service mission and the digital workplace where their employees engage customers. With this goal in mind, many companies have turned to CPaaS as a way to enhance their communication and marketing strategies.
Communications Platform as a Service (CPaaS), along with APIs, offers businesses an easy and convenient way to expand their communication stack. CPaaS simplifies the process of integrating programmable voice and messaging applications for customized and cost-effective enterprise cloud applications, offering multiple channels on web and mobile formats to engage customers and employees. CPaaS tools help businesses customize their communication needs without overhauling their existing technology stack.
The CPaaS market is experiencing extraordinary growth, from just over $7 billion in 2020 to an estimated $26 billion by 2025. A growing interest in customer engagement is fueling the market’s growth and advancements in cloud technologies are driving CPaaS adoption by businesses.
Benefits of CPaaS
The increasing popularity of CPaaS is the result of its simplicity and the solutions it provides companies. A business can identify and integrate the tools it needs with their existing stack. CPaaS doesn’t require extensive developer resources or a huge initial investment. Instead, companies focus on the solutions they need and can build more into their stack as their goals and objectives evolve. Once a vendor is selected, you can choose the solutions you need and they can provide the SDKs, APIs, and any other tools needed.
Some common business use cases for CPaaS include:
- Transactional messaging, automated reminders, and scheduling: CPaaS provides a simplified method for transactional communications, such as alerts, reminders, and notifications. You can send automatic meeting reminders to reduce absenteeism. Automatic reminders help increase on-time payment percentages and extend revenue cycles. Transactional messaging is more convenient and made easier for use in e-commerce.
- Records and transcribes calls: Among the customer support capabilities CPaaS provides are recording and transcribing of calls, a helpful tool to provide direct feedback and customer assistance.
- Enhanced security that provides two-factor authentication for mobile payments: SMS APIs are crucial for two-factor mobile device authentication when using CPaaS. It offers user verification through OTPs if users choose not to use passwords. The two-factor authentication also works for a password reset, mobile banking, and other uses. This leads to increased conversion rates and simplified mobile payments.
- A powerful platform for handling integrated marketing communications: CPaaS integrates with many communication platforms, offering solutions through SMS, audio, email, video, and OTT. This helps companies stay ahead of customer and employee engagement as their goals evolve.
How to get started with CPaaS
As you consider adding CPaaS to your existing stack, you should:
- Identify your most pressing needs and gaps in your current stack: What makes CPaaS so attractive to companies is the ease in which solutions can be readily integrated to serve specific needs. Identify what your needs are and focus on the functionality needed to produce the best results.
- Develop a strategy to combine your communication stack: Determine how best to connect multiple channels of communication to improve customer service and to strengthen connections between your system’s back-end employees and APIs and integrations.
- Establish appropriate security and compliance protocols: Make sure you evaluate how your communications will be protected once the new tools and features are added to your stack. Discuss options with your vendor to ensure that any special requirements for your industry are addressed.
- Select your vendor: A variety of CPaaS vendors offer solutions in the market, including basic APIs that allow you to choose specific solutions or a comprehensive collection of tools. Find out what type of support they offer to implement, customize and service your selected tools.
Take advantage of CPaaS agility
It’s not enough to integrate new CPaaS tools in your stack. You should stay agile with CPaaS, looking at how capabilities can increase as the market evolves. Efficient and productive communication changes at a fast pace, so take advantage of the opportunities you have to change your stack whenever needed to stay on top of the latest and best functionality that can help you meet your business objectives.
