By IntelePeer

CPaaS, or communications platform as a service, is a cloud-based platform that allows your company to embed communications into applications and create customized flows to enhance the customer and employee experience. Think SMS, voice and video capabilities embedded into your customer-facing applications. Think integrated internal processes. Think unicorns jumping over rainbows. Think finding $20 in your coat pocket. Think hot pizza right out of the oven. It’s THAT good.

CPaaS connects people with calendars, directories, CRMs and other business applications, giving them access to useful information and context while they communicate. With CPaaS, enterprises can program applications that fit their exact business needs to give customers and employees the best experience possible.

But what about UCaaS?

You may be thinking, “We already use UCaaS solutions to improve collaboration.” The beauty of CPaaS is that it enhances your existing solutions, including UCaaS. Whether your company is using CPaaS, or you’re just getting started with it, it’s important to understand the difference between CPaaS and UCaaS. While similar, they are built to address different business issues.

Key Ingredients of CPaaS

Every company needs to keep their communications spicy, yet tasteful, to help boost engagement and collaboration. The recipe for truly delightful communication experiences requires a highly scalable and customizable collection of communications capabilities that integrate with the organization’s apps, products and services. Here’s how CPaaS provides the ingredients:

What Can’t CPaaS Do?

OK, so maybe CPaaS can’t tell us our future, drive a car, or rock a fun bow tie. But it can do a lot for your business! Improving customer experiences, increasing engagement and better understanding the customer journey are just some of the ways CPaaS helps you level up your communications strategy.

For example, health care providers can …

… improve the patient experience by providing self-service options through multiple communication channels. Patients can easily and quickly take care of routine tasks like bill payment, appointment scheduling and prescription refills.

The use of AI-powered chatbots can make it even simpler to resolve customer issues and suggest when more attention must be given to a certain customer, making your team more accessible to assist with more complex issues.

As you know, we live in a mobile-obsessed world and texting is a huge part of our lives. Businesses are getting on board with using text messaging to interact with customers. CPaaS makes it easy to add on SMS to applications and workflows so you can ditch time-consuming phone calls and automate things like appointment reminders, delivery confirmations and surveys.

Companies can also use CPaaS to better track customer engagement across different communications channels. Some CPaaS providers, like IntelePeer (hint hint), have analytics tools that allow you to view the entire customer journey across multiple platforms and channels, so you can make more informed decisions that lead to the best possible customer experience.

CPaaS Turning up the Heat

The growth of the CPaaS market aligns with emerging trends in customer-facing communications. The market is made up of a mix of independent software vendors, systems integrators, service providers and traditional equipment vendors. While early CPaaS initiatives can be traced back 20 years with the effort to define APIs for telephone networks, the industry has dramatically picked up pace in recent years.

Much of the rise in interest in CPaaS offerings comes from the evolution of the workplace environment. The population of employees who telecommute on a regular basis has grown 115% since 2005. Additionally, employers nationwide report a loss of about $1.8 trillion annually due to lack of employee engagement. So, enterprises find themselves desperately needing collaboration and communication tools to create a smooth and seamless work experience. CPaaS is as handy as a Swiss Army knife and can help improve internal processes and employee collaboration, along with enhancing your external communications.

As the need for CPaaS advances, so does the technology. Developers and CPaaS providers alike are finding even more creative ways to empower their company communications. The use of AI, machine learning and automated flows is becoming more common by enterprises, and expected by customers.

CPaaS for All

Most providers focus their CPaaS solution to the ability of developer to embed real-time communications, but the ability to solve day-to-day business challenges and improve customer interactions should not be limited to those that know how to code. Look for out-of-the-box applications and plug-ins, so end users can create and integrate workflows without needing to access development resources. Look to analysts such as Gartner and Frost & Sullivan to better understand how to evaluate and select a vendor — and kick start your path to digital transformation!