Organizations and companies can use Communications Platform as a Service (CPaaS) to improve their business communications. It’s like a bundle of services that contain programs required by businesses to streamline and manage their communications channels.
Imagine receiving texts, emails, calls, and even fax in one place where you can add and customize various functions, features, and workflows—that’s CPaaS in a nutshell. The best thing about it is that it can be ready the moment the business subscribes to a provider. (1)
So what can CPaaS bring to the table? How can it improve your essential business communications? Is it worth the investment? Is it the future of workplace collaboration?
To learn more, let’s find out three ways to Improve Business Communications:
1. More Efficient Customer Service
Your customer service team has various customer-facing responsibilities, from billing to even serving as the helpdesk. They’ll mainly benefit from CPaaS services as they handle most of your business communications. Making them more efficient can result in increases in sales, reputation, and customer satisfaction. (2)
Most businesses, particularly small and mid-size enterprises (SMEs), may only have a single customer service team working their communications channels. If you have a similar setup, it’s most likely that your team’s facing the typical dilemmas that come with using the various platforms.
Working with different platforms presents a few issues, which may hinder your customer service team. Subscribing to a CPaaS provider solves those problems, such as:
- Forgotten usernames and passwords: With CPaaS, your customer service team only needs to log in to one single platform and doesn’t need to remember multiple usernames and passwords.
- Confusing different user interfaces: With a single platform, your team only needs to familiarize themselves and receive training for a single website. Also, when you add new communications channels, the team may find it easier to learn how to integrate them into their workflow.
- Multiple pieces of hardware: With numerous communications channels, your customer service team may need different pieces of equipment. They may need VoIP phones for voice calls, fax machines or printers for fax, and even smartphones for messaging apps, social media messages, and SMS. With CPaaS, they may only need computers, headphones, and the usual peripherals.
2. Enhanced Communication Stack:
You may have already looked into Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) and compared it to CPaaS. Know that both are great business communications solutions and offer similar benefits. However, the most significant difference between them is their implementation. (3)
With UCaaS, you can get a ready-built platform complete with possibly all the tools you need to improve your business communications. With CPaaS, aside from a built platform, you also have the option to customize it to suit your needs. (3)
Nevertheless, you can combine both platforms to further improve your business communications through:
- Multichannel Marketing Tools: Most CPaaS don’t just offer unifying your communications channels; they also allow easy marketing. For instance, some of these tools can help automate sending bulk promotional messages and even hyper-personalized ones on multiple channels.
- Enhanced Security: Being in constant communication with customers and collecting their data in the process, you can become a victim of data breaches. Most CPaaS providers offer additional features and better APIs to mitigate security risks. (4)
- Tracking And Monitoring: Various features enable a business to track and monitor everything in its communications channel. The data collected can be used for analytics and risk management.
3. Integration To Existing Systems
Most companies don’t take advantage of CPaaS and its benefits through their business communications to ensure stability in their operations.
It’s normal for companies to choose and stick to the programs, tools, and services they use. They’ll stick to what works and avoid anything that may require them to undergo a complete overhaul. For instance, around 48% of SMEs still have old operating systems installed on their companies’ computers. (5)
If you also feel the same way, you don’t need to worry about that when getting CPaaS. Most providers built their platforms to be compatible with the most widely-used services and software among businesses. Aside from that, if you’re using homebrew applications in your company, you can still make the platform work with your existing system, programs, and tools through its application program interfaces (APIs).
Conclusion
CPaaS has the means to improve your business communications, and it’s a good choice. Getting it is a more practical approach than having your IT or software team develop your system to accommodate your business communications needs. Aside from that, it’s a much more flexible option than UCaaS, which may force you to let go of some parts of your current setup.
References:
- “The Evolution Of Enterprise Communications: Understanding How CPaaS, UCaaS And CCaaS Work Together To Meet Your Business’ Communications Needs,” https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2021/07/28/the-evolution-of-enterprise-communications-understanding-how-cpaas-ucaas-and-ccaas-work-together-to-meet-your-business-communications-needs/
- “CPaaS: The Benefits Of Customized Customer Communications,” https://innov8tiv.com/cpaas-the-benefits-of-customized-customer-communications/
- “CPaaS vs UCaaS: Understanding the Difference,” https://www.uctoday.com/unified-communications/cpaas/cpaas-vs-ucaas/
- “API Security: CPaaS Data Breaches and Endpoint Security,” https://www.channelfutures.com/mssp-insider/api-security-cpaas-data-breaches-and-endpoint-security
- “The long goodbye: 41% of consumers still use unsupported and near end-of-life OS,” https://www.kaspersky.com/about/press-releases/2019_consumers-still-use-unsupported-and-near-end-of-life-os
