Seamless communication is a key element for operational efficiency and customer satisfaction. Communications Platform as a Service (CPaaS) allows you to achieve this without having to completely revamp your infrastructure.
CPaaS works by adding communication features, such as voice, text, and video conferencing, to your existing tools. Your employees won’t suffer the frustration or time wasted switching tabs or moving data between tools, and your customers will appreciate the efficiency.
What is CPaaS?
Platform as a Service (PaaS) is a cloud-hosted environment where developers can build, run, and manage applications or services. The key takeaway is that it is intended for developers only.
In contrast, software as a service (SaaS) offers cloud-hosted applications to end users.
This brings us to CPaaS, a subset of PaaS that focuses on communication and allows developers to incorporate communication tools into their existing applications.
They won't have to worry about infrastructure maintenance (the CPaaS provider takes care of this), giving them more time to focus on customizing their applications.
Here are some of the capabilities that typical CPaaS providers include:
- VoIP telephone service.
- SMS and MMS text messages.
- Audio calls.
- Video calls.
- Two-factor authentication.
- Customer messaging.
- Number masking.
- Interactive voice response (IVR).
- Call recording.
- Chatbots for customer service.
- Push notifications.
- Real-time analysis.
- Call routing and forwarding.
- File sharing.
- Share screen during video calls.
- Geolocation services.
- Voice recognition.
- Virtual phone numbers.
- Language translation services.
- Sentiment analysis.
- Support for web real-time communication (WebRTC).
- Email services.
- Payment processing.
- Scheduling and appointments.
- Automated surveys.
- Text-to-speech and speech-to-text conversion.
- Fax services.
Combining many of these elements gives you the same functionality as a VoIP service, without having to pay a monthly subscription or adapt your workflows to their rigid interfaces.
CPaaS Use Cases
Here are my favorite examples of successful CPaaS implementations. Not only did these companies implement it well, they also achieved incredible results.
MercadoLibre used Twilio to improve customer loyalty
MercadoLibre, an online marketplace operating in 19 countries, needed to scale its communications from just email to multiple channels.
Initially, the team planned to contract with a telephony provider in each country they serve, but this proved to be more complicated than anticipated. They then focused on a custom solution. Their goal? A single solution that would integrate with their existing CRM platform and provide phone support worldwide.
MercadoLibre turned to Twilio, which allowed them to add a click-to-call system to their support portal: simple, yet incredibly effective.
By opting for CPaaS and providing a support solution that customers were asking for, the company was able to achieve a phenomenal Net Promoter Score (NPS) of 65%.
WhatConverts Reduced Call Tracking Costs with Avaya
WhatConverts, a lead tracking agency, needed a single platform to unite their company’s applications and be able to detect communication trends. Doing it in-house was too costly in terms of the human resources required.
By leveraging Avaya CPaaS, they reduced call tracking costs by 94%. This allowed WhatConverts to reduce costs for end customers while still providing superior service.
Conair achieved 90% employee satisfaction using RingCentral
Conair is a global company that sells personal care products. Their team experienced a lot of issues with their legacy phone system. It only allowed a limited number of employees to access voicemail at a time and didn’t offer any functionality beyond dialing.
The system was also time-consuming: 20% of IT time each week was spent handling small requests, such as changing users on the phone system.
Conair needed a robust CPaaS solution to unify communications and provide modern telephony capabilities, such as integrating with Salesforce and providing call volume trends.
RingCentral delivered these features through its platform, saving Conair four days a month managing phone system changes and improving employee satisfaction from 40% to 90%.
WATCH: Learn more about how conversational IVR can benefit a customer support team.
Advantages of CPaaS
CPaaS can generate significant cost, time and effort savings, especially when combined with a large number of users who regularly use alternative solutions to get their work done.
It can also lead to increased customer satisfaction, better decision-making, and improved analytics. Because CPaaS leverages APIs and a pay-as-you-go model, you can easily adapt to market or seasonal changes while still streamlining workflows for your team.
Plus, it's infinitely scalable and customizable. There's a lot to appreciate.
Disadvantages of CPaaS
The main disadvantage is that it requires a developer to implement. Even with a developer, creating custom systems is challenging and can be extremely time-consuming. Plus, you'll likely have to go through numerous rounds of tweaking before you get it right.
While that is the most important obstacle, there are also a few others:
- Safety concerns: The open nature of CPaaS platforms can leave you exposed to vulnerabilities, which is a major concern if you're transmitting sensitive information.
- Hidden costs: CPaaS may include unexpected overage charges, additional charges for additional features, and potential fraud prevention fees.
- Inefficiencies of multiple suppliers: While it offers many opportunities for simplification, you may experience connectivity or compatibility issues in a multi-vendor environment.
Alternatives to CPaaS
CPaaS is one way to consolidate business communications, but its long journey and initial investment are not for everyone.
Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS)
UCaaS is a viable option if you want a ready-to-use communications suite. It includes virtually all the features you might need for internal and external communication.
Unlike CPaaS, it is a complete solution that is ready to use from day one. Most UCaaS solutions combine text, video, voice, chat, email, and fax into one centralized interface, complete with a full list of one-click integrations to connect to other tools.
While its plug-and-play nature is appealing, you'll have fewer customization options. You'll also likely pay a flat fee per user per month, which can be significantly more expensive, especially if you have users who rarely use the included features.
UCaaS is often used interchangeably with VoIP software: in practice they are practically the same, although technically they have their differences.
Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS)
Similar to UCaaS, CCaaS is a complete contact center solution that is practically ready to improve customer experience across multiple channels.
It works by centralizing social media, video, text, voice, messaging apps, and email correspondence into one centralized interface. Unlike UCaaS, however, this type of solution includes a wide range of advanced features, such as interactive voice response (IVR), workforce optimization, and automatic call distribution to help call centers handle high volumes.
CCaaS offers a cloud-based contact center solution that facilitates customer service operations. This service provides a platform to manage customer interactions across multiple channels, including voice, chat, email, and social media.
Initial implementation complexity falls somewhere between UCaaS and CPaaS.
Traditional telephony and local solutions
All of the solutions I've covered so far are cloud-based, meaning the infrastructure and servers on which the software is hosted are maintained by the provider.
Some companies prefer full control and opt for on-premise deployment. This means you will install the software on your own servers and be responsible for updates, patches, security, and maintenance.
Many businesses are still using traditional PBX systems from the last century because upgrading them is too complicated.
In most cases, I recommend avoiding this option. Unless you have the need and resources to handle all of this yourself, the cloud is much easier to manage.
Mixed supplier environment
Instead of eliminating all communication channels with a single vendor, you can get each component from different vendors. For example, you can use Zoom for video conferencing and OpenPhone or Nextiva for your phone system. You can also continue using your legacy phone system and add Google Meet for team chat and video conferencing.
There's nothing wrong with doing this – it gives you the ability to choose the best platform for each communication channel – but it can get complicated as you grow.
Tailor-made solutions
CPaaS allows you to integrate communication capabilities within existing applications. A custom solution involves integrating communication capabilities within an application you created.
It's a great option if you have very specific needs, but it requires a substantial initial investment, even more than using CPaaS within other software.
