The benefits of embedding real-time communications features into business and consumer applications are well-known. When it comes to customer service, most people would much rather click-to-call from within a web experience, social media site or business application to connect with another person, than find their phone to dial a number and wait in a queue.
In today’s new digital world–where instant gratification comes when consumers can choose their communication channel of choice and get their issues resolved more quickly–businesses only stand to benefit from delivering better service with fewer intermediaries. Customer service isn’t the only beneficiary of innovation in communications platform as a service (CPaaS)–web developers can add options to get answers automatically, or from an expert, without the presence of a full contact center. Even small businesses with limited staff can interact with customers through communications channels embedded into their websites or mobile apps, automatically directing questions about specific products, orders or services to the right person through text messaging, email or voice.
This is all made possible through CPaaS–and this is where the future of customer communications experiences lies.
Breakthroughs in CPaaS Are Powering Embedded Communications
CPaaS is one of those industry acronyms that has been tossed around for a few years now, but what exactly is it? CPaaS is a cloud-based platform that enables developers to add real-time communications features to their own applications without the complexity of building infrastructure typically required when developing apps.
The ability to embed communications capabilities directly into apps or websites enables businesses of any size to engage customers more effectively across different communications channels, including mobile, web and desktop environments. The result is a much-improved customer experience leading to increased customer satisfaction, customer loyalty and recurring revenues.
Breakthroughs in CPaaS are making it increasingly easier to embed voice, video, messaging, chat, presence and collaboration into experiences than ever before. Instead of building backend infrastructure and interfaces, CPaaS-based applications are made accessible through low-code development platforms. These platforms allow developers to access the robust application logic within the CPaaS with just a few lines of code, made possible through APIs. These APIs empower developers to quite literally copy and paste code by dragging and dropping application components and connecting them together to create a mobile or web app.
As an industry, we’ve spent the better part of the last few years building out embedded real-time communications solutions. With low-code development, new communications capabilities take only minutes to create and launch, versus years, months, weeks or even days. By making it easier to add immersive communications solutions into existing applications, low-code development allows companies to introduce innovations such as communications-enabled business processes and automate any component of business processes.
The Future of Communications Experiences
There’s no doubt–the future is low-code solutions. In our digital world, with the right CPaaS technology, and a little creativity and planning, businesses can now accomplish things that would have been impossible without the support of APIs.
We are just at the beginning of even more exciting and valuable applications. By accessing the massive compute and software application capabilities of CPaaS through just a few APIs, harnessing the power of artificial intelligence and natural language processing is possible. Applications including voice recording, transcription and analytics for greater insights will be made a reality. Bots that sound like humans and can speak in multiple languages, with multiple choices for voices, will leave old breakthroughs like interactive voice response in the dust.
We’re still early in the cycle, but the benefits and applications of low-code development continue to grow. Jump in–you may be surprised how easy it is to roll out new services that customers will love, and your business will thank you for.
