The pandemic has led to an acceleration in cloud adoption, with many businesses having already purchased some form of SaaS communication tool
In many cases, these tools will have kept businesses going amid covid breakouts, lockdowns and transitions to remote working.
The benefits are clear, but a consequence of this adoption is that users can often find themselves hoping between multiple platforms which, ironically, can hinder the productivity that they are designed to improve.
With this in mind, it’s important that technology providers make sure they don’t overcomplicate life for their users.
“We really don’t want to get in the way of communication and productivity,” Shimon Detwiler, Product Manager at net2phone told UC Today.
“We’re a technology company and we’re focused on building a robust, technologically advanced backbone, but to the end-user we want to get out of the way. What that means is giving them the easiest experience possible.
“Fundamentally, some customers prefer phone calls, some prefer messaging, some prefer email – so whatever it might be, we want to create a single hub for them to be able to communicate with their customers.”
Part of net2phone’s mission to create this single hub, and make life simpler for its customers in the process, has seen it create “zaps” inside Zapier.
Zapier is designed to make integrations and automation easy, by providing a third-party platform that bridges the gap between over three thousand applications.
A zap is an automated workflow that tells applications to carry out simple tasks. Every zap has a trigger that leads to an action – so “when this happens, do that”.
All zaps can work with one another, giving users a fast and simple way to connect the tools they use day to day – with the likes of Slack, Google and Microsoft all featuring on Zapier.
From a net2phone perspective, this brings its communication tools more in line with other platforms that its customers might be using, such as collaboration platforms, file sharing tools, and CRM systems.
For example: a zap could be set up that sends a Slack direct message every time a user misses a call; or creates a Huddle video meeting link every time a new meeting is created in Google Calendar.
Detwiler said that Zapier’s automations can also be used to drive user adoption – particularly for SaaS products that are useful for a business but have proved hard to bake into a user’s day-to-day routine.
“What it’s really about is mapping a customer’s daily journey and then creating efficiencies through workflow automation by utilizing the net2phone application within Zapier,” Detwiler said.
“Businesses are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on SaaS products every year, whether its CRMs, sales systems marketing platforms, or any other system.
“If you ask anyone that spends that money what their biggest roadblock is, they’ll say user adoption and part of that challenge is because these systems don’t fit in with a user’s workflow.
“A salesperson might have a great meeting but then have to rush off to another one, then by the time they finish for the day they’re not in the right headspace to deal with the CRM, for example”
Upcoming net2phone Zaps
net2phone has a number of zap triggers available that can be used to kickstart automated workflows, such as call answered, call busy, called missed and call finished.
But the team is currently working an important trigger involving SMS, Detwiler revealed.
“The main new trigger that we’re adding is around messaging,” he said.
“A dentist could set up a zap that sends a patient an SMS through net2phone with a link to a video they should watch, for example.
“Or it could be that a customer gets an SMS thanking them after every sales call they’re on.
“Zapier really gives every company it touches the ability to create light integrations and workflow automations with every other company that has done it; it saves customers money and gives them power”
