How to Help Your Product Impress Your Customers

Seamless communication is a key component of operational efficiency and customer satisfaction. Communications Platform as a Service (CPaaS) helps you achieve this without having to completely overhaul your infrastructure.

CPaaS works by adding communication features like voice, text, and video conferencing to your existing tools. Your employees will no longer have to deal with the frustration and time-consuming hassle of switching tabs or moving data from one tool to another, and your customers will appreciate the efficiency of this solution.

What is CPaaS?

Platform as a Service (PaaS) is a cloud-hosted environment where developers can build, run, and manage applications or services. The key thing to remember is that it is intended for developers only.

In contrast, software as a service (SaaS) delivers cloud-hosted applications to end users.

This brings us to CPaaS. This is a subset of PaaS that focuses on communication and allows developers to integrate communication tools into your existing applications.

They won’t have to worry about maintaining the infrastructure (the CPaaS provider takes care of that), leaving them more time to focus on customizing your applications.

Here are some of the typical features of CPaaS providers:

• VoIP phone service.
• SMS and MMS texts.
• Audio calls.
• Video calls.
• Two-factor authentication.
• Customer messaging.
• Hiding numbers.
• Interactive voice response (IVR).
• Call recording.
• Chatbots for customer service.
• Push notifications.
• Real-time analysis.
• Call routing and transfer.
• File sharing.
• Screen sharing during video calls.
• Geolocation services.
• Voice recognition.
• Virtual phone numbers.
• Language translation services.
• Sentiment analysis.
• Support for Web Real-Time Communication (WebRTC).
• Electronic mail services.
• Payment processing.
• Planning and appointments.
• Automated surveys.
• Text to speech and speech to text conversion.
• Fax services.

By combining several of them, you get the same features as a VoIP service, without having to pay a monthly subscription or adapt your workflows to their rigid interfaces.

CPaaS Use Cases

Here are my favorite examples of successful CPaaS implementations. Not only did these companies implement their solution well, they also achieved incredible results.

MercadoLibre used Twilio to improve customer loyalty

MercadoLibre, an online marketplace present in 19 countries, needed to evolve its communications from email-only to multi-channel communication.

Initially, the team had planned to use a phone operator in each country they served, but that proved more complicated than expected. They focused on a custom solution. Their goal? A single solution that integrated with their existing CRM platform and offered phone support worldwide.

MercadoLibre landed on Twilio, which allowed it to add a click-to-call system to its simple, yet incredibly effective, help portal.

By opting for CPaaS and providing a support solution that customers demanded, the company was able to achieve a phenomenal Net Promoter Score (NPS) of 65%.

WhatConverts Reduced Call Tracking Costs with Avaya

WhatConverts, a lead tracking agency, needed a single platform to bridge the gap between its business applications and spot communication trends. Doing this in-house was too costly in terms of human resources required.

By leveraging Avaya CPaaS, they reduced call tracking costs by 94%. This allowed WhatConverts to reduce costs for end customers while delivering superior service.

Conair Achieved 90% Employee Satisfaction Rate with RingCentral

Conair is an international company that sells personal care products. Their team ran into a multitude of issues with their old phone system. It only allowed a limited number of employees to access voicemail at the same time and offered no features other than outbound dialing.

The system was also very time-consuming, taking up 20% of IT time each week to handle small requests, such as changing users in the phone system.

Conair needed a robust CPaaS solution to unify communications and deliver modern telephony features, such as integration with Salesforce and providing call volume trends.

RingCentral delivered these capabilities through its platform, saving Conair four days per month in managing phone system changes and improving employee satisfaction from 40% to 90%.

SEE: Learn more about how conversational IVR can benefit a customer support team.

Advantages of CPaaS

CPaaS can result in significant savings in cost, time, and effort, especially when combined with a large number of users who regularly use workarounds to get their jobs done.

This can also lead to increased customer satisfaction, better decision-making, and improved analytics. Since CPaaS is powered by APIs and a pay-as-you-go model, you can easily adapt to market or seasonal changes while streamlining your team’s workflows.

Plus, it’s infinitely scalable and customizable. There’s a lot to like.

Disadvantages of CPaaS

The main drawback is that you need a developer to implement it. Even with a developer, creating custom systems is difficult and can be extremely time-consuming. Plus, you’ll likely have to do a lot of tweaking before you get it right.

Although this is the most significant obstacle, there are also a few others:

• Security issues: The open nature of CPaaS platforms can expose you to vulnerabilities, which is a major concern if you are transmitting sensitive information.
• Hidden costs: CPaaS may include unexpected overage fees, additional charges for additional features, and potential expenses for fraud prevention.
• Inefficiencies related to multiple suppliers: While it offers many streamlining opportunities, you might encounter connectivity or compatibility issues in a multi-vendor environment.

CPaaS Alternatives

CPaaS is a way to consolidate business communications, but its long journey and initial investment aren’t right for everyone.

Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS)

UCaaS is a viable option if you want a ready-to-use communications suite. It includes just about every feature you could need for internal and external communication.

Unlike CPaaS, it’s a complete solution that’s ready to use from day one. Most UCaaS solutions combine text, video, voice, chat, email, and fax into a centralized interface, with a comprehensive list of one-click integrations to connect to other tools.

While its plug-and-play aspect is appealing, you’ll have fewer customization options. You’ll also have to pay a per-user, per-month fee, which can be much more expensive, especially if you have users who rarely use the included features.

UCaaS is often used interchangeably with VoIP software. In practice, they are virtually the same thing, although technically they have their differences.

Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS)

Similar to UCaaS, CCaaS is a complete contact center solution that is virtually ready to use to improve the customer experience across multiple channels.

It works by centralizing social media, video, text, voice, messaging apps, and email correspondence into a centralized interface. However, unlike UCaaS, this type of solution includes a wide range of advanced features, such as IVR, workforce optimization, and automatic call distribution to help call centers handle high volumes.

CCaaS offers a cloud-based contact center solution that facilitates customer service operations. This service provides a platform for managing customer interactions across different channels, such as voice, chat, email, and social media.

The complexity of the initial implementation lies somewhere between UCaaS and CPaaS.

Traditional telephony and on-site solutions

All of the solutions I’ve covered so far are cloud-based, meaning the infrastructure and servers the software is hosted on are managed by the vendor.

Some companies prefer full control and opt for an on-premises deployment. This means you will install the software on your own servers and be responsible for updates, patches, security, and maintenance.

Many businesses still use traditional PBX systems from the last century because they are too complicated to upgrade.

In most cases, I recommend avoiding this solution. Unless you have the resources and needs to manage all of this yourself, the cloud is much easier to manage.

Mixed Supplier Environment

Instead of using a single vendor for all communication channels, you can source each element from different vendors. For example, you could use Zoom for video conferencing and OpenPhone or Nextiva for your phone system. Or you could continue using your old phone system and add Google Meet for team chat and video conferencing.

There’s nothing wrong with this per se: it gives you the flexibility to choose the best platform for each communication channel. But it can become complicated to manage as you grow.

Tailor-made solutions

CPaaS allows you to integrate communication features into existing applications. A custom solution means integrating communication features into an application you have created.

This is a great option if you have very specific needs, but it requires a substantial upfront investment, even more so than using CPaaS in other software.