Customers are the lifeblood of any business. That’s why all enterprises should make it easier for their clients to get in touch with them using various digital platforms. Elevating customer experience can be highly beneficial for businesses working to increase brand visibility and enhance customer base and retention. This ultimately translates to higher revenues.
But how can companies elevate their customer experience with an increasing number of customer channels and in a scalable way? One emerging technology addressing this challenge is Communications Platform as a Service, or CPaaS. CPaaS is a cloud-based platform that allows businesses to choose communication channels without spending too much on new applications.
Understanding CPaaS And What It Can Do
Organizations often face hiccups in integrating multiple communication channels to interact with customers, third parties, and internal departments. This can result in costly mistakes and missed opportunities. One of these opportunities is customer satisfaction.
When a customer is fully satisfied with the services received from a business, there are higher chances of repeated transactions. Statistics reveal that 73% of companies that provide high levels of customer experience are financially better off compared to their industry competitors.
When done right, customer experience can be an important marketing and sales tool. As a digital communication tool, CPaaS services function as a platform where organizations can add real-time communication to multiple channels across many devices.
Platforms maintained by CPaaS services eliminate the most common tedious tasks faced by companies. Examples are logging customer complaints and calls, sending short messaging services (SMS) or text messages, among other key customer relationship management tasks.
CPaaS enables the seamless integration of voice, messaging, and video into a single solution. This is commonly made possible through application programming interfaces (APIs). Because CPaaS is cloud-based, businesses shouldn’t need to update their information technology (IT) hardware to use the service.
How CPaaS Can Enhance Customer Experience
The pandemic has significantly changed how businesses engage with customers. Lockdowns have limited face-to-face transactions, and there is an increasing reliance on digital channels. Most interactions and transactions are now conducted digitally. Businesses need to ensure that digital interactions are just as personal as face-to-face ones were.
And as anyone in the marketing field would know, more personal interactions will lead to better customer retention. The challenge for businesses is to replicate a unique customer experience – and fast. Here are five ways CPaaS can help businesses achieve this:
1. Promoting Omnichannel Presence
A CPaaS platform helps brands fulfill their customer engagement strategy, which includes enhancing customer experience. That said, customers can reach out and interact with the brand using any platform, including live chats, text messages, emails, chatbots, and social media. Even better, CPaaS makes it easier for companies to connect these platforms without the need to switch or open numerous screens.
One of the ways to enhance customer experience is to be available for their queries and concerns 24 hours a day, seven days a week. There are over four billion social media users as of 2021, and the average person has 8 active social media accounts. With CPaaS, you can integrate some or all the social media channels relevant to your business and your customers. Your customer service team can then field questions and queries efficiently on just one tool, while your customers receive their answers on their preferred channels.
For clients who prefer audio and video calls, a CPaaS platform can provide a high-quality call experience that adjusts based on the user’s data network capacities. This means customers sticking to traditional channels such as telephone calls are not left out.
2. Real-Time Communications with Clients and Prospects
For customers, it’s simply not enough to find their favorite brands through their social media accounts. It’s now very important for them to get responses to their questions and concerns quickly. Almost all folks nowadays lead busy lives, and convenience should be an essential part of the customer experience.
CPaaS allows businesses to offer real-time communication to their customers and prospects. Clients can message, make video calls, and start audio calls to contact brands through various applications and communication channels. Organizations can receive these messages in real-time and through any chosen contact point––desktop, tablet, or mobile.
Because the platform is cloud-based, companies don’t have to worry about investing in additional software or hardware. Boosting customer engagement during the pandemic is no longer a major challenge with CPaaS.
3. Increasing Overall Customer Response Efficiency
When it comes to customer experience, being able to provide high-quality, two-way interactions is key.
Since CPaaS allows clients to integrate chat, audio, and video capabilities into all client communication platforms, businesses can respond to client concerns promptly. As a result, companies won’t have to focus on improving one communication channel alone, leaving clients and users of other channels frustrated because no one is available to answer their queries.
This cloud-based platform also stores customer data, including profiles and details of past transactions. These help company representatives understand their clients’ concerns, enabling a more efficient service.
Another major advantage of CPaaS is that it can make order placement easier. It also improves live chats by giving users a variety of channels to communicate with. When a customer gets a quick response from a brand no matter which channel they use, it contributes to an overall positive impression of the whole organization.
4. Simplifying Appointments and Sending Reminders
Organizations can use cloud-based platforms like CPaaS to personalize certain aspects of customer service to suit the nature of their business and customer preferences.
Because the platform integrates information from all communication channels, it’s easier for businesses to manage their client appointment schedules. Whether they contacted the front desk, messaged through your website, or sent you an email, your business can handle them and leave no appointment overlooked. Even better, CPaaS can help enhance customer experience by sending a reminder before scheduled appointments.
5. Allowing Customers to Contact Businesses with a Single Click
When a user sees a product, service, or offer that catches their attention, their only option to contact the business for more information is a phone number or a contact form. But phone lines are often busy, customers get stuck in queues, and contact form responses are automatically generated. That’s hardly a great customer experience.
CPaaS skips these complicated contact processes in a number of ways. It can be used for two-way communication, allowing customers to contact a real person in seconds, or it can utilize intelligent chatbots to quickly answer questions without the need for additional customer service resources.
Final Thoughts
CPaaS integrates communication tools such as live chats, telephone lines, and social messaging channels into one platform, making it easier for both clients and businesses to interact. CPaaS makes it possible for clients to contact businesses, place orders, or ask for help with ease. At the same time, it can help businesses extend their services to current customers and potential prospects.
When a business is this easy to reach, it elevates its clients’ experience with the brand. In turn, it promotes loyalty and repeat transactions. Take time to read more about CPaaS and consider how it can positively affect your workflows and the bottom line.
Syniverse powers mobile experiences for almost every person and device on earth. The world’s largest companies and nearly all mobile carriers rely on Syniverse’s global network to seamlessly bridge mobile ecosystems and securely transmit data, enabling billions of transactions, conversations and connections [daily]. Building on its 30-year history of innovation to shape the future of communications, Syniverse is focused on harnessing the potential of 5G to transform how businesses engage with customers and help carriers reimagine how far they can reach.
