Communication Platform as a Service (CPaaS) solutions are becoming increasingly popular in today’s CX market. Leading analyst Gartner predicts around 90% of businesses will be leveraging these tools by 2026, an increase of 30% from 2022.
Combining a selection of APIs, SDKs, and cloud technologies, CPaaS solutions empower companies to embed real-time communication solutions into their existing tools and workflows. In today’s world of omnichannel communication, this means companies can serve customers wherever they are without compromising on speed, personalization, or efficiency.
CPaaS technologies can transform how companies and their customers communicate, paving the way for greater customer loyalty and retention. Here are some main reasons companies should consider investing in CPaaS platforms heading into 2024.
1. CPaaS Solutions Save Money
In today’s experience-focused world, companies need to be able to communicate consistently with customers on various channels. While CCaaS technologies pave the way for an innovative omnichannel contact center, updating your entire contact center can be costly.
With CPaaS solutions, companies can minimize the costs of updating legacy systems. You can invest exclusively in the communication tools and platforms you need and pay only for the technology you use. Additionally, because the platform offers businesses everything they need to evolve, there’s no need to spend a fortune on expert developers and IT teams.
CPaaS vendors streamline the path to CX innovation, allowing companies to scale their strategy to suit their needs without a “one-size-fits-all” approach. With no infrastructure overheads, maintenance costs, or hardware installation fees, CPaaS platforms are highly cost-effective.
2. Powerful Omnichannel Opportunities
As mentioned above, most leading CCaaS vendors allow companies to build omnichannel contact centers where they can connect with consumers on a range of platforms. However, with CPaaS solutions, companies can unlock these omnichannel opportunities without investing in a brand-new contact center.
CPaaS doesn’t just add new platforms to your CX stack; it allows you to leverage real-time communication capabilities and automation within the tools you already use. With CPaaS, companies can start small, adding SMS shipment notifications to their apps or leveraging live chat capabilities before ramping up with new interactive channels.
You can also use CPaaS to interact with customers on the channels they use, such as WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, without buying new software licenses or hardware. You can even use innovations like AI-powered chatbots and virtual assistants.
3. CPaaS Solutions Improve Business Insights
When customers interact with a business, they’re searching for simplicity, speed, convenience, and consistency. Unfortunately, many businesses take a disjoined approach to communication.
Many companies launch, monitor, and maintain individual contact channels with separate teams and technologies. Since everyone doesn’t have access to the same information, it’s challenging to retain context and consistency from one channel to another.
With CPaaS, you unify your ecosystem. All of your channels can draw on the same data sources, making it easier to personalize interactions for customers. At the same time, because you’re bringing the elements of your CX stack together, it’s easier to maintain a comprehensive view of the customer journey. You can use the data you collect to optimize your CX strategy over time.
4. Enhanced Agent Productivity and Efficiency
Your contact center agents are crucial to building meaningful relationships with customers. The better the employee experience in your contact center, the better your CX scores will be. CPaaS solutions empower agents to accomplish more without asking them to learn how to use new platforms.
With CPaaS technologies, companies can embed real-time communication capabilities into the existing tools employees use. You can use these solutions to unify various communication channels and other tools, such as CRM systems, for end-to-end context in every conversation.
Some CPaaS solutions even come with innovative technology designed to enhance agent performance. For instance, automation workflows allow companies to automate things like sending purchase notifications to customers. This reduces the time agents must spend on repetitive tasks in the contact center.
5. Improved Security and Compliance
CPaaS solutions can do a lot more than allow companies to interact with customers on various channels. Many leading CPaaS providers also offer access to unique APIs and SDKs. These tools can enhance a company’s approach to data privacy and security.
With digital fraud on the rise, compliance standards are becoming a lot stricter. With CPaaS, companies can implement multi-factor or password authentication tools into their communication workflows. There are even solutions that can embed analytics and monitoring capabilities into your end-to-end communication tools.
What’s more, with end-to-end visibility into your communications, it’s easier for to spot potential security and compliance issues.
6. Endless Innovation Opportunities
Finally, one of the best things about CPaaS solutions is their ability to let companies innovate at their own pace. Companies can embrace the power of video for immersive customer experience or leverage AI chatbots and intelligent assistants.
With CPaaS, you can automate processes like marketing and sales campaigns and even unlock new tools for segmenting your audience and delivering personalized interactions. These tools can even help to align the CPaaS, CCaaS, and UCaaS stacks in your ecosystem.
With CPaaS, the barriers to innovation are much lower, allowing companies to embed new technology into their ecosystem with just a few clicks.
The Benefits of CPaaS Solutions for CX
Offering an exceptional combination of flexibility, cost efficiency, and simplicity, CPaaS solutions are transforming how companies approach customer experience. With the right tools, any business can empower its workforce and deliver personalized, convenient customer service across all channels.
If you haven’t invested in CPaaS solutions for customer experience, now could be the perfect time to start reviewing the top vendors.
