How five departments in your company can use CPaaS

Analysts predict the communications platform as a service (CPaaS) industry market to grow to an $8.1 billion business by 2019 – a 1,925% increase from 2015. With the ease of deployment, flexibility, and cost-savings, it’s clear why so many companies are looking at CPaaS to fill the gaps in business communications.

CPaaS allows your company to embed communications into applications and create customized flows so you can better manage inbound and outbound interactions to enhance the customer experience. CPaaS APIs make it incredibly easy to integrate communications into existing business applications such as CRM, purchasing, billing, and automated ticketing systems, streamlining processes and workflows across your organization.

Here are some examples of how different departments in your company can use CPaaS:

1. Your Marketing team

• Build integrated campaigns: Create omnichannel campaigns that bring the customer through a personalized journey no matter where they are in the purchasing process. An email campaign can be followed up with SMS or a phone call to ensure receipt. Or, send a text that provides your customer an online discount code that can be tracked. All your outreach can be connected and analyzed on one platform.
• Automate customer surveys: For an effective method of gathering feedback about customer experience, you can automate a survey to be sent to a customer after they visit, purchase, or contact your business. Depending on the results from the survey, certain follow-up actions can be triggered like a call from an agent to follow up on a less than perfect survey, or a future discount code email to show your gratitude.

2. Your Finance team

• Implement two-factor authentication: Text or email customers a code to verify their identity when logging in from a new device.
• Streamline bill reminders and payments: Customers can opt in to receive invoice reminders and pay bills at their convenience through voice, SMS, or email without having to speak with an employee.

3. Your Customer Service team

• Optimize agent and customer interactions: Automate the trouble ticketing system and create the flows for how calls or SMS should be routed to speed-up the customer service process. By integrating with your current CRM or ticket management system, agents can pull in customer data so they have more information before speaking with the customer.
• Provide customer self-service options: Equip your customers with the tools to help themselves with routine issues such as balance checks, card activations, or simple technical troubleshooting through SMS, phone, or online chat options. A customer might have an issue that can easily be solved by restarting their system. Instead of having to call, wait on hold, explain their situation, and wait to be helped, they can chat with a bot programmed for troubleshooting through your website.
• Oversee Field support: If a field agent needs to be deployed to help resolve the problem, they can text out their progress and upload notes about the situation to your system. This way, your customer, your field agent, and your customer service team are all on the same page.

4. Your HR team

• Improve employee engagement: Send out company-wide notifications and alerts through the channel that your employees prefer the most. Pull employee information from your HR management system to send out birthday and anniversary messages to show employees your appreciation. Or, conduct employee satisfaction surveys to gather feedback.
• Send out office notifications: Notify employees about an office closure, routine maintenance, or big company developments. Your HR team can send a text that requires employee confirmation. If they don’t respond, follow-up with a phone call to ensure they are informed.

5. Your IT team

• Create custom applications and workflows: Either through APIs or ready-to-use applications, IT and development teams can easily deploy CPaaS solutions across the company. Your IT team can help other departments build their own applications for their individual needs to improve the overall tech experience for customers and employees.
• Improve internal technology processes: Internal technology questions and concerns can be automated to help save your IT team time. Similar to how your customer service team could use CPaaS to serve customers, your IT team can integrate CPaaS applications with your current technology to streamline the troubleshooting process for employees.

There are thousands of ways CPaaS can improve your overall business communication strategy; these are just a small number of opportunities. The customization possibilities are endless. IntelePeer’s Communication platform can help you build the best communication and engagement strategy that fits your exact business needs.

Read more in-depth look on CPaaS and how it differs from UCaaS.