As CPaaS continues to be utilized by businesses to enhance customer experience, several technological developments will offer benefits to businesses far beyond communications.
The CPaaS market value is on track to exceed $10 billion in 2022 – an increase from $8.6 billion in 2021, driven by the pandemic as companies utilized CPaaS to ensure a high-quality customer experience. 80% of companies have or will implement interactive communications with customers, and 52% of these companies will do so via a CPaaS communications platform. CPaaS offers companies the ability to provide an efficient and customized experience for customers. However, as an agile and flexible service, the possibilities extend far beyond merely communications or customer service. There are several important changes CPaaS will bring to the channel and the opportunities they offer partners.
Rise of Omnichannel
As smartphone usage remains popular in businesses, companies must also be able to engage their customers through many different communication channels to suit everyone’s needs. 9/10 customers want an omnichannel experience, driving the need for businesses to have relevant and contextual cross-channel communications. Separate channels would not only be time-consuming and costly to operate, but risk decreasing productivity and quality of customer service. CPaaS eliminates this issue by providing businesses with a singular, centralized platform from which to manage a multitude of communication mediums, such as SMS, web chat, messaging, social media, push notifications and more, all within a single suite. Partners will have the opportunity to help companies procure CPaaS solutions by emphasizing how it is key to providing the omnichannel experience customers expect to receive, giving them a competitive edge.
RCS/RBM Entering Mobile Payment Market
RCS (rich communication services) and RBM (RCS business messaging) will change the mobile payment market by allowing conversations to take place on a platform with built-in payment capabilities. Payments with card, OEM pay solutions (i.e. Apple Pay, Google Pay, mobile wallets) and direct carrier billing can all be executed over RCS clients. However, this also requires compliance with payment legislation, such as the EU PSD 2 payment services directive. This directive requires all payments to be subject to SCA (strong customer authentication), multifactor authentication and OTP’s (one-time passwords), making it more secure than SMS alone. Partners can sell this solution to address the needs for security, efficiency and customer service for clients in the finance and e-commerce verticals.
Low or No Code
While developers will continue to be necessary, enterprises value the ease and speed of adding new capabilities to a product and bringing it to market. In the past, solutions could take weeks or even months to create, requiring specialists to create them from scratch. Furthermore, the developers creating these new capabilities become a dependency that requires additional financing as needs, updates and integrations evolve. Now, companies can add new features in a matter of minutes with a low code platform. This will result in an increasing number of CPaaS providers launching low code products throughout 2022.
Video Conferencing Enhancement
Out of all the communication forms available, video continues to be the most popular, with the pandemic only accelerating its adoption by a variety of industries. Office meetings and group discussions have been replaced by virtual meetings and breakout rooms. As people continue to work from home, features such as background blurring and replacement, noise suppression and cancellation will continue to be in high demand by users, making CPaaS a profitable solution for partners. Additionally, CPaaS video is projected to grow faster than voice, SMS and chat, especially for insurance, banking, telehealth and online training. The video conferencing market is predicted to grow by 19% CAGR, with the market reaching $50 billion. Partners continue to have a large amount of interest and buy-in from prospects in CPaaS as remote work continues for the foreseeable future.
Blurred Lines Between UCaaS, CPaaS and CCaaS
As communications becomes even more integrated, the silos between UCaaS, CPaaS and CCaaS will become less distinct. Expect to see suppliers’ market solutions that combine UCaaS and CCaaS with CPaaS, allowing for the contextual management of different communication channels and making omnichannel possible. UCaaS providers will start offering a la carte options to bolt onto their lower-end licensing allowing the SMB space to compete with those that can afford a full-blown omnichannel contact center. Subsequently, CCaaS providers will offer their services on more of a consumption-based model to encourage the use of newer technologies and feature functionality at a pay-as-you-go rate. Partners will need to be aware of the number of products that help foster integrated communications, which companies need to increase revenue and protect their brand.
By all accounts, CPaaS will continue to grow as companies seek to provide a tailored, efficient customer experience to increase revenue and further their brand. Partners should try to speak to the benefits companies will gain by adopting CPaaS – from cutting costs and increasing productivity to fostering the omnichannel experience customers expect from businesses. As the market continues to grow, there will be future technological developments that neither businesses nor partners can afford to miss.