The Essential Guide to Choosing the Right CPaaS Provider for Your Business

As more enterprises embrace the supreme importance of customer engagement, they realise that they need a complete communications platform that can support multiple channels. Be it through online chats, phone, or SMS, customers are connecting with the businesses they patronise in a growing array of ways. Enterprises can no longer ignore the need to use an integrated and unified approach to manage communications on different channels, to interact with customers.

This growing need to offer elevated customer engagement is driving the popularity of the cloud-powered Communications Platform as a Service (CPaaS) tools. The global market for the CPaaS platform is set to grow from $12.5 billion in 2022 to $45.3 billion by 2027. (source: www.marketsandmarkets.com)

That being said, given the many options out there, it’s important for companies to choose the right CPaaS provider to meet their communication requirements.

Here’s a complete guide on how to choose the right provider.

Introduction to CPaaS Provider Selection

As a cloud-powered solution, CPaaS enables enterprises to integrate communication capabilities into their current applications and legacy systems. To achieve this, they don't need to invest in expensive communication infrastructure, but instead use a variety of communication APIs.

Here are some of the common APIs that CPaaS providers offer:

• Messaging APIs are used for marketing messages to customers, sending alerts, and reminders, or enabling two-way interactions.
• Voice APIs - used for voice calls with customers across the globe.
• Email APIs - used to send and receive business emails to customers.
• Video APIs - used to enable high-resolution videos within the customer application.

Additionally, CPaaS providers offer a range of Software Development Kits (SDKs) and documentation for the benefit of software developers. Fast-growing companies need a CPaaS provider that can facilitate end-to-end control over its communication infrastructure, along with direct connectivity with channel providers and operators.

Key Considerations in CPaaS Provider Evaluation

When evaluating CPaaS providers, here are some of the key considerations that organisations must measure:

1. Scalability and Flexibility in CPaaS Solutions

Using communication APIs, organisations can build scalable and flexible CPaaS solutions, which can easily scale up with more customers and features. This must be an essential consideration when evaluating the capabilities of any CPaaS vendor. Besides, scalable solutions are cost-effective as customers only have to pay for the services that they use.

Additionally, choose a provider with flexible solutions that can easily meet performance standards and enterprise-wide demands. Identify those CPaaS vendors who are already equipped with:

• Direct connections with communication operators
• ISO certification
• Public and private cloud infrastructure
• Multiple channel offerings including Voice and SMS

2. Security Measures in CPaaS

Be it any industry, no organisation can compromise on data security. When evaluating CPaaS providers, ensure that they can keep your data secure with certified expertise. Additionally, evaluate their compliance with industry regulations regarding data privacy and local laws regarding data.

Any CPaaS provider must have the following security-related capabilities:

• Dedicated solutions for digital identity management and user access control
• End-to-end data encryption to minimise any data breaches
• Enterprise-level security connections such as SSL, VPN, and more

3. Integration Capabilities with Existing Systems

• How easily can their APIs integrate with third-party tools and systems?
• Is it easy to add more communication channels to their CPaaS solution to meet future demands?
• Does the CPaaS vendor offer native integration with third-party systems like eCommerce, CRM, and cloud marketing platforms?

Additionally, CPaaS solutions must offer a host of APIs and SDKs, so that application developers can integrate and deploy existing systems with this cloud-powered solution.

4. Customer Support and Service Level Agreements

Last but not least, companies need a CPaaS provider who can provide efficient 24x7 support when things don’t go as expected. Here’s how to evaluate the vendor’s customer support capabilities:

• How quickly can they respond to customer issues and queries?
• What are the current methods that they offer for customer support?
• What is the regular process that they implement for bug fixes and software updates?
• What support do they offer when onboarding a customer?
• What are their CPaaS integration and customisation capabilities?
• Do they offer in-house customer support, or through a third-party partner network?

Besides exceptional customer support, organisations must evaluate the Service Level Agreements (SLAs) offered by vendors.

Future-Proofing with Emerging CPaaS Trends

Overall, CPaaS offers a reliable and scalable platform for growing organisations with a host of Cloud Telephony solutions in VoIP, video conferencing, and instant messaging. With the right CPaaS solution, organisations can future-proof their customer engagement with communication channels like WhatsApp, WeChat, and Viber.

Here are some of the futuristic trends in CPaaS that organisations can prepare for:

• Low-code and no-code development tools to integrate existing systems with the CPaaS platform
• AI-powered chatbots to automate customer service and interactions
• Real-time tracking of customer interactions
• Real-time analytics and reporting of communication quality using cloud telephony services

Among the leading CPaaS providers in India, Vi Business offers a host of communication-related services including: 

• Business cloud phone systems
• Cloud calling solutions
• Lead management solutions

Are you looking for the best provider of Cloud Telephony solutions in India? Vi Business is here to help you.

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