How CPaaS Revolutionizes Communication for SaaS Companies
SaaS companies spend up to seven times more on acquiring new customers than other businesses, so loyalty is critical to long-term revenue streams and profitability. Forward-looking SaaS enterprises focus on customer engagement. One way is by integrating Communications Platform as a Service (CPaaS) technology into their software applications and workflows. Using CPaaS for customer engagement enhances the value they provide to customers while also providing an excellent user experience.
According to Gartner, by 2025, almost all businesses will be using API-enabled CPaaS solutions as an essential IT skill set to improve their digital competitiveness. CPaaS has been proven to give businesses a competitive edge by unlocking new communications features and tools without replacing those companies’ IT stacks.
CPaaS for Customer Engagement and a Better Bottom Line
For SaaS companies, CPaaS for customer engagement is great because it allows them to use customers’ preferred communication styles for service requests, follow-ups, delivery notifications, two-factor authentication codes, etc. By leveraging CPaaS technologies, SaaS companies reduce resource and infrastructure costs, respond better and faster to changing market demands, and scale faster. The results are often evident in their bottom line: those businesses have extraordinary revenue-generating potential and the highest average lifetime value (LTV).
Elsewhere on The Neural Compass: What Is CPaaS and How Can You Use It: Learn how you can elevate customer experiences through cloud-based communication solutions.
It takes time for businesses to establish genuine customer interaction; it results from consistent and clear communication over time. Customers today want to be able to have a substantive discussion with your brand in a variety of ways, including phone calls, SMS, and email.
For businesses offering SaaS, the fact that customers have questions, need immediate assistance and want instant communication makes customer support a challenge. Having a variety of ways to reach out to potential and existing clients will improve customer acquisition and retention.
The following is a rundown of ways a CPaaS solution may help you bring your team and clients together to boost retention and increase revenue.
CPaaS Enables Omnichannel Communication
Omnichannel communication is an integral part of customer engagement. When you can talk with your clients on their preferred mediums, they feel understood and are more willing to engage with your business over time.
Some customers enjoy telephone conversations, while others like to get help via chatbots or emails. Customers in their fifties and sixties often desire to talk with a customer care representative, while Gen Z and Millennials prefer the chat option.
CPaaS for customer engagement allows organizations to have reliable omnichannel communications to make and receive calls, send and receive text messages, and provide stellar customer care.
Instead of forcing a customer to leave the app or website to get help, a CPaaS solution enables companies to integrate multiple communication methods within the app or website itself. This results in a better purchasing experience.
CPaaS Enables Rich, Real-time, Personal Interactions
Today’s customers want a personalized experience. They desire easy access to real-time support or a way to make requests from the convenience of their mobile phones. Some individuals even expect businesses to adapt to them rather than vice versa, which means companies must embrace proactive engagement.
CPaaS allows organizations to customize how they communicate with customers by offering multi-channel services via APIs that minimize errors and optimize interactions for any platform. When you have a CPaaS solution in place, you can store all customer data within its interface so anyone at your business can access information about a client without having direct access to your primary systems. The result is a better customer journey for everyone involved.
CPaaS Enables Switching Channels Mid-Stream
The ability to switch communication channels mid-stream can offer distinct advantages for organizations and customers. When a service ticket is opened, the customer now has the option to change their preferred channel as they work through an issue or request.
This feature provides SaaS companies with powerful capabilities that allow them to be more agile and adaptable, improving time-to-market by reducing the number of roadblocks a company may face.
For example, if it takes ten days to build a new component for your product, you’ll have the option to help your clients finish this process without delay by offering support on other channels. In essence, businesses don’t need to use up resources on one particular way of connecting with clients because they have various methods at their disposal.
CPaaS Improves Data-Driven Decision Making
A CPaaS solution helps organizations improve decision-making by providing teams with customer data at their fingertips. When you have access to real-time information about customers, sales, marketing, and even billing, business leaders can make informed choices that impact revenue generation.
For example, a manager who notices that most customers opt for an SMS service may want to increase the number of texts sent out for automation purposes; it’s more effective than other campaign methods because customers are more likely to respond quickly to an offer if they receive it via text message immediately after downloading an app. Overall, the result is more conversions since your organization is better equipped to understand what customers want.
CPaaS Results in Reduced Costs for Customer Engagement
Businesses can often spend tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of dollars on marketing, especially when trying to entice new clients to use their services. The best way to reduce costs is by engaging existing customers instead of repeatedly targeting new ones; CPaaS can help you do that by providing a single dashboard for multiple channels.
CPaaS Ensures Compliance with Customer Privacy Laws
Customer data must be protected at all times, which means it’s crucial to have a CPaaS solution that understands the laws that govern customer information. While the US does not yet have a federal privacy legislation similar to the EU’s GDPR, it does have many vertically focused federal privacy regulations as well as state-level consumer-oriented privacy laws. To avoid non-compliance and expensive fines, it’s critical to understand these regulations and their ramifications for your business.
A proper CPaaS solution should provide end-to-end encryption services to ensure personal data remains anonymous and secure during transit and storage. It should also make it easy for individuals to revoke consent via a simple form filled out in just a couple of minutes.
CPaaS Can Be Used to Integrate Third Party Applications
Companies had very few options for building their customer experience tools from scratch in the past. Custom development was time-consuming and costly, which is why many organizations turned to third-party applications with APIs (application programming interfaces). These tools allow customers to add functionality or create new features by integrating existing software with other software or applications with a click of a button.
When you work with a CPaaS solution, you’re able to choose from several pre-built integrations instead of having to rely on your developers for custom integrations. This can save you a lot of time and money in the long run, especially if you’re just getting started and don’t have a dedicated team for IT support.
