Webex Connect’s Enterprise-grade CPaaS Explained

Customer experience (CX) is a focal point for organisations across every industry. How to enable meaningful interactions with customers that increase revenue, streamline operations, and reduce costs are now a boardroom discussion, according to imimobile, part of Webex. As a result, the pressure on IT to enable innovation and create customer journeys at scale is immense.  

With enterprise IT increasingly turning to Communications Platform as a Service (CPaaS) to build applications, enhance their digital competitiveness and meet rising consumer expectations, imimobile has released an overview which formally defines the role of their CPaaS solution, Webex Connect, in the cloud communications space. 

This whitepaper details the features of the Webex Connect ‘enterprise-grade’ CPaaS platform and how it enables large, global enterprises to improve customer and employee experiences, as well as outlines best practices for implementing CPaaS. 

Enterprise-grade CPaaS 

Enterprise needs have changed considerably over the past few years, with the pandemic acting as a catalyst. New digital communications capabilities, channels and AI technology are in high demand, driving CX transformation forward. imimobile believes meeting these demands requires no ordinary CPaaS solution and, therefore, it is positioning its platform as ‘Enterprise CPaaS’. 

The Webex Connect whitepaper explains that while most CPaaS solutions enable developers to facilitate calls or messaging via APIs, enterprise-grade CPaaS solutions enable the automation of end-to-end journeys. It acts as an orchestration layer between communication channels and enterprise systems, providing all the key capabilities like rapid deployment, seamless integration of business systems, among others that enterprises demand. 

Brian Heikes, Director of Product Management, imimobile, part of Webex: “When you think of the evolution of CPaaS and its growth over time, what you’ve really seen is the maturation and expansion of its capabilities and channel availability.  

“What started as simple APIs for being able to deliver messages has rapidly grown as the needs of businesses have evolved. 

“From doing simple notifications and alerts to much more interactive and engaging experiences, businesses are now looking to digitally enable their customer experience. 

“A CPaaS platform like Webex Connect really is a powerful tool. Enterprises are able to take its base capabilities, integrate with existing IT systems that they’ve spent years building up and then surface the content across all of the different channels their customers are using” 

Capabilities of Webex Connect 

Webex Connect provides a central communications platform from which businesses can automate end-to-end customer journeys across multiple channels.  

The platform has pre-built integrations for common applications such as contact centre, CRM, database management software, and e-commerce. In addition, the platform can facilitate custom integrations with an enterprise’s own systems, as well as third party systems, via webhooks, message queues, and secure FTP. Data feeds can also be exported for compliance, analytics, audits, and more. 

Six Core Capabilities of Webex Connect: 

1. Intelligent enterprise control centre 
2. Integrations setup and management 
3. Business logic and flow orchestration 
4. NLP, NLU, and AI-powered conversational automation 
5. Communication channel management 
6. Service assurance and infrastructure management 

Heikes told UC Today: “Enterprise-grade CPaaS platforms already come with solutions to the common business problems, making it easier for an enterprise to focus on the customer experience and making interactions smarter, instead of building or maintaining those base-level blocks. 

“One of the powerful elements that an enterprise platform brings is freeing businesses to focus on running the businesses themselves, instead of wasting time on lower-level problems.” 

End-to-end automation of customer and employee journeys 

End-to-end automation is one of the central components of Webex Connect, improving the experience for customers and streamlining day-to-day operations. Developers can configure customer journeys by embedding programmable communication APIs or using a low-code flow builder without having to re-engineer systems to support it.  

Webex Connect’s low-code offering extends past the developer, providing tools and capabilities that cater to a wider range of business users, further expediting deployment and reducing the dependency on IT.  

Heikes explained: “As customers were starting in CPaaS and building applications, they would solve the same problems repeatedly. 

“But then the maintenance and operation of those became repetitive tasks. You would have a team for one application, a team for another application, a team for a third, all because they’re solving those same common problems. 

“By making elements of them reusable as part of the workflow tooling, or just as solved elements in features inside an Enterprise CPaaS platform, we’re able to free those teams up to add more value.” 

Alongside its low-code toolset, imimobile believes its direct connections to Tier-1 mobile network operators across channels, including SMS and RCS, will provide a reliable and optimal connection to communicate with customers. 

The future of Webex Connect 

imimobile is currently working on improving the Webex Connect platform’s AI and video capabilities, and much more. It claims to be evolving to enable enterprises to launch new customer experiences faster and at a lower cost, reduce the burden on IT and meet the needs of CX stakeholders, as well as manage the entire lifecycle of customer engagement applications.   

Find out more about Webex Connect and what Enterprise CPaaS can do, download the new whitepaper.