What is CPaaS?
A Full Guide To Communications Platform as a Service
When it comes to creating customer journeys and business communications for today’s customer – immediacy and consistency is key. We are living in a time where we can reach anyone or anything at the touch of a button. It is crucial for businesses to adapt their digital strategies to ensure they are sending the right information, to the right person, in the right format, at the right time to ensure the right outcome.
A Communications Platform as a Service (or CPaaS) solution works in exactly this way. It allows businesses to reach out to customers, patients and employees using each customers’ preferred communication channel – and ensures the contact can continue the conversation on any channel they wish, whenever they’re ready.
Frost and Sullivan define CPaaS as any cloud-based platform that enables developers to programmatically embed voice, video, chat and messaging services within their business or consumer applications.
See in action
What is CPaaS?
CPaaS is a platform enabling businesses to integrate real-time communication channels into their existing web and mobile applications. When an action is taken, such as a new booking is made, a login is attempted, an update to a delivery journey is recorded or the calendar recognises an upcoming appointment, the CPaaS solution will trigger the desired outreach via the preferred communication channel.
A CPaaS solution is usually used alongside a business’ existing applications and leveraged to deliver the communications features of the application.
When a variety of available communication channels are leveraged strategically, it can help organisations redefine how they engage with their clients, partners and employees.
A CPaaS solution enables more meaningful communication with an organisation’s customers, employees, patients or citizens. The sophistication of the tool enables a fully integrated and automated experience to help scale communications and to engage and advance the user experience.
Discover more about Soprano CPaaS Platform
- The Advantages of CPaaS →How to make business communications applications richer and well-integrated
- The Need for CPaaS in the New Normal → Steps to update the strategies to serve the new needs of business and customers
- How Companies Use CPaaS →We show you some examples of how CPaaS helps businesses
- Soprano Connect →Soprano Connect is a leading communications platform-as-a-service (CPaaS) praised by the world’s leading analyst firms
Communication Platform Benefits
Enable businesses to embed communications directly into their existing applications
A CPaaS solution enables businesses to easily embed communications directly into their existing applications to streamline communication-heavy business processes and to achieve some early successes in their digital transformation efforts.
Reach customers on their preferred channels
Most organisations need to communicate regularly with customers, patients, citizens, or employees and with so many channels to choose from, it’s often a bit of a minefield. A one-size-fits-all model no longer meets expectations, so companies need to digitally transform their communication strategies to keep up with growing demands.
Customers expect to be contacted on their preferred device and channel, at a time that’s convenient for them. A CPaaS solution is so powerful as it ensures businesses can reach contacts on their favourite channels, at the touch of a button.
Helping budget and resource go further
Eliminating the need for your employees to manually send reminders, notifications and updates can drastically reduce the time spent on administration tasks.
CPaaS solutions are often used to replace or fill gaps in call centres or admin teams. The CPaaS can be integrated into your CRM to trigger automated order confirmations and delivery updates and can also be configured to send automated review requests after the delivery has arrived.
Automating the entire process ensures faultless communications and can save your business thousands in overheads.
Increased customer satisfaction
The demand for a multi-channel communication platform is being amplified even further by the need for perfect customer interactions. 90% of your customers already expect consistent, trusted interactions across various channels. This shows how important it is to allow customers to reach you across several channels and CPaaS provides this flexibility.
Over 35% of customers expect to be able to contact the same customer service representative on any channel and 64% of customers expect to receive real-time assistance regardless of the customer service channel they use.
CPaaS can ensure your marketing and sales journeys are perfectly executed and that you delight your customers with every outreach. It can be the differentiator that separates you from your competitors by keeping your customers engaged and satisfied.
Reach your contacts, every time
Customers, employees, patients and citizens are constantly inundated with marketing and sales messages and their inboxes are bursting at the seams. It’s important to stand out from the crowd to ensure you’re heard.
Reaching out to your customers across several channels ensure your message will be seen instantly. It’s also great news for your brand. Customers that view a consistent messaging across multiple channels improve their perception of that brand by 68% and they’re 90% more likely to increase their purchase intent.
Whether you’re sending an urgent notification, a two-factor authentication code or an appointment reminder; you can be confident it will reach your contact quickly and safely.
Reduce the space for human error
When communicating with customers, especially in large businesses the space for human error can be massive. Spreadsheets and tick boxes showing who has been contacted ahead of appointments or to confirm orders can get messy and it requires a lot of manpower.
Employing a CPaaS solution to automatically send these notifications for you means they are never missed, and your employees have more time available to focus on other tasks within the business.
Make missed appointments a thing of the past
Sending automatic confirmations and reminders to customers or patients has been proven to drastically reduce ‘Did Not Attend’ rates and no-shows, saving your employees time and wasted resource.
You can configure the CPaaS solution to automatically send a confirmation via any channel when a booking or appointment is made in your current CRM. The tool can then send out reminders closer to the appointment date alongside a quick, easy way for the contact to cancel or reschedule their appointment.
Increase communication while working remotely
Internal communication tools can ensure teams stay well connected and highly motivated while working remotely. It’s important that employees stay informed and still feel as part of a larger team even when they’re not present in the office.
A CPaaS solution can be integrated with internal communication mobile apps and platforms to ensure important updates and notifications reach your employees even outside of working hours.
There are many other benefits to onboarding a CPaaS solution.
Communication Platforms for Business in the New Normal
COVID-19 has exposed gaps in digital strategies for many businesses, with 66% of businesses admitting they felt the pandemic exposed weaknesses in their digital strategy (AppDynamics by Cisco).
It’s more important than ever for organisations to update their strategies to serve the new needs of their business and their customers, and this is exactly what we’re seeing.
74% of businesses signing off digital projects in weeks rather than years and 66% of these companies implementing projects that were previously deemed unnecessary which shows the urgency of having a digital presence in the new normal (AppDynamics by Cisco).
34% of <$1bn revenue companies and 63% of >$1bn revenue companies plan to increase spending on employee communication tools and collaboration technologies going forward (451 Research study) which raises the question – is your business prepared for the new way of working?
Reaching your customers and employees digitally is more important than ever in the new normal. Soprano Design commissioned a report with 451 Research which discovered some major behavioural changes in the way businesses are planning to communicate and collaborate.
This white paper discusses these changes in detail and illustrates what products and services organisations are planning on investing in post-COVID-19.
How Companies Use CPaaS
At Soprano, we see our customers across a variety of industries globally using our solution for many different purposes. Here’s some examples of how CPaaS helps businesses.
Appointment and reminders
- Appointment confirmations
- Scheduling system communications
- Appointment reminders
- Appointment amendments or alterations
Security and
Compliance
- Two factor authentications
- Secure communication platform
- Sending and receiving sensitive documents
- Maintaining compliance and privacy controls
Urgent
notifications
- Crisis management
- Worker safety
- Patient notifications
- Banking security notifications
Marketing and sales communications
- CRM updates
- Promotional marketing messaging
- Lead nurturing
- Sales outreach
Updates and Confirmations
- Dispatch and delivery updates and confirmations
- Booking confirmations
- Contact centre communication
- Billing confirmations
Education and Awareness
- Student engagement
- Charity outreach
- Government awareness programmes
- Surveys
Internal Communication
- Remote work communication
- Workplace transformation
- Employee satisfaction and wellbeing
- Internal staff communication tools
Why Choose CPaaS by Soprano?
Soprano Connect is a leading communications platform-as-a-service (CPaaS) that has been praised by the top analyst firms in the world.
We send more than 10 billion mission critical messages every year, from over 4.5 million active users and more than 150 Global Forbes 2000 customers. Soprano is used by leading financial, retail, healthcare institutions and large government agencies across five continents. Soprano’s award-winning engineering and innovation has resulted in a powerful cloud-based enterprise platform that powerfully integrates IP, SMS, email, MMS, voice, and location into a seamless secure business mobile messaging experience.
Soprano is heavily focused on providing a solution which gives users high engagement rates and results. We have a team of experts based worldwide ready to help you with your business requirements.
CPaaS Resources
Learn about communications platform as a service from Soprano. Get insights about the CPaaS market, best practices and industry trends in mobile messaging.
- What Is a CPaaS and How Can It Add Value to Your Business?
We discuss the benefits of creating a unified communication platform designed to consolidate and simplify your business communications. - Overcoming Challenges in the Mobile Customer Journey with a CPaaS
Matt Thompson discusses creating a customer journey with CPaaS. What are these challenges, and how might a brand go about navigating them? - How a CPaaS Enables an Improved Mobile Customer Journey
A Communications Platform as a Service (CPaaS) is a powerful platform for designing customer journeys in a mobile-first world. - Customer Communication: Making Your Virtual Engagement Count
Mastering virtual communication with the right tools and execution is key to ensuring you don’t lose that all-important customer engagement. - How Mobile Technologies Are Reshaping the Future
It’s time to start building better, more meaningful connections between your customers to increase trust and improve satisfaction and loyalty.
- What Is an Omni-Channel Messaging?
Learn about creating a multi-channel messaging strategy for unified business communications. - Are You Using Communication Tools the Right Way?
Building quality communications channels is important for developing long-term customer relationships. Have you considered if you are using the right channels to reach your customers? - Mobile and the Future of Customer Experience
The landscape for communications technologies and capabilities has always been rapidly evolving. Creating quality customer communications is now more cornerstone to brand strategy than ever before. Learn about creating a mobile-first strategy utilizing technology that scales with your needs. - What is API messaging?
API messaging and system integration capabilities that enable the Soprano platform to communicate across multiple platforms to form powerful workflow solutions - Playbook: 10 tips to create an effective business case for CPaaS
Business case proposals to persuade your company to invest in a communication platform as a service.
The Channels Our CPaaS Supports
Soprano’s enterprise communication platform offers customers a variety of channels. These channels can be integrated into your existing platforms using our API platform as a service.
SMS
Build and integrate SMS APIs and applications faster using our unified SMS messaging platform. Our documentation is direct, clear and very easy to understand. You won’t believe how quickly you can integrate our SMS API.
IP Messaging
Encrypted two-way IP messaging designed for business productivity. IP-based messaging capabilities enable immediate advantages over traditional mobile messaging channels, including improved security, multi-media interaction, advanced acknowledgment and the ability to audit conversations.
Voice
Go beyond the traditional channels and enable A2P voice broadcast messaging using audio files and personalised text-to-speech messages which can be sent to mobile and landline telephones.
Create new powerful brand experiences for your customers through Soprano WhatsApp Business Messaging. Enable more meaningful interactions with your customers by introducing your brand in a mobile channel where they prefer to engage.
RCS
Deliver feature-rich, personalised and interactive experiences using the ubiquity of a text message. RCS can help you create impactful, intuitive and engaging interactions and campaigns to send to your customers, whilst tracking open and read rates.
Send email messages with attractive HTML pieces to your consumers and / or employees, using the same communication platform and user interface as the other channels described. The platform can also be easily integrated with your email managers to convert email messages into SMS.
Soprano’s Communication Platform Customers
Soprano Design has nearly 4500 customers globally across APAC, EMEA, LATAM and the US.
Our customers range from large corporations to independent companies across most industries including government, healthcare, finance, education, retail, manufacturing and logistics.
Get in touch to discuss how to get started with CPaaS.
