As today’s consumers demand to interact with brands using their preferred messaging channels in real-time – the same way they interact with friends and family – enterprises understand that they have to adapt and innovate. This means adopting an omnichannel approach and enabling digital engagement with consumers on popular instant messaging apps in order to stay in the game.
Messaging apps themselves are realizing how lucrative this market is and making changes to their interfaces accordingly. We see popular apps like WhatsApp and Instagram, which were originally meant for peer-to-peer communication, adding designated features for business accounts.
As a result of this evolution, the CPaaS space has been going through a major transition from one-way communication, where SMS is the go-to mobile communication channel; to two-way conversations involving a mix of messaging channels like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and Viber.
But while traditional CPaaS vendors were all about providing enterprises with access to communication channels via APIs, that is no longer the case.
“It’s not only about providing access to those channels anymore, but rather, providing the orchestration and configuration capabilities to help enterprises use them successfully,” shares Richard van Anholt, Director of Global CPaaS at CM.com.
CPaaS: More Than a Set of APIs
As a modern-day CPaaS vendor, CM.com offer their enterprise customers various next-level services through their platform. Other than providing Conversational AI and campaign building tools, CM.com is also the only CPaaS vendor with a Payment Service Provider license, as well as the only one offering a full suite of Digital Ticketing capabilities.
“In the three-years-ago scenario, if a company wanted to get all those services, they had to connect with a few different types of vendors,” van Anholt explains. “But nowadays, if you choose wisely, you don’t have to move away from your CPaaS vendor to get CCaaS, Conversational AI or marketing orchestration solutions.”
One of the most prominent showcases of the entire CM.com tooling-umbrella working seamlessly together was the recent Formula 1 event, where the CPaaS vendor covered all aspects, from messaging channels and customer care to digital ticketing and payments; creating the ultimate fan experience.
It’s important to note that while CM.com is the type of CPaaS vendor that provides its customers with that all-in-one package, it definitely allows them to pick and choose, if they like.
“It’s a modular approach, which means all of our tools work in perfect alignment with each other on the one hand, but can also be consumed separately on the other hand, depending on the use case,” van Anholt says.
Doing the Heavy Lifting for the Enterprise
Conducting two-way conversations with consumers, combining traditional channels like Voice and SMS along with newer messaging channels, also means having to navigate a lot of complexity for enterprises.
How can your CPaaS vendor help make things easier on that front, then?
“For us, it’s about refraining from burdening our customers with the complexity or the heavy lifting, caused by eco-system complexity ” says van Anholt.
“That heavy lifting is already done by our engineers and developers based on our relationships with Telecom carriers, Financial Institutions or Facebook, WhatsApp, Google RCS and other messaging channel partners”
As CM.com see it, their job is to make sure that enterprises are able to make the most of these communication channels as simply as possible. This means that there’s zero coding involved – the platform is 100% drag and drop.
“At the end of the day, the essence of our job is to enhance meaningful digital engagement for our enterprise clients,” van Anholt concludes.
