In today's fast-paced business landscape, seamless, efficient, and integrated communication is key. Enter CPaaS (Communications Platform as a Service), a tool that has revolutionized the way companies engage with their customers and streamline their operations.
We often talk about CPaaS in use case-related contexts; however, we rarely discuss it from a more holistic angle, considering its versatile roles in different aspects of the business.
I spoke with Divya Ghai Wakankar, Executive Vice President of Enterprise Market & Marketing at BICS, to try and offer a bird's eye view of the transformative power of CPaaS, reviewing the way it's being used in a few main business domains.
CPaaS and Top-of-the-Funnel Activities
Regardless of vertical, any business has one important goal: attracting customers. This is typically done using top-of-the-funnel activities, which are marketing activities aimed at creating brand or product awareness. CPaaS may not sound like the classic tool for marketing, but according to Wakankar, it can serve as a powerful ally to those types of activities.
"Traditionally, salespeople would be the ones to pursue potential clients, but now, this is often done using interactive and personalized CPaaS-powered communications," she explains.
"CPaaS platforms allow companies to reach out to customers through different channels with interactive, contextualized communications, which makes it easy for brands to meet them where they are."
This can be done using SMS, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, or whichever means of communication is prevalent in their region.
Top-of-the-funnel activities can be either interactive or one-way, depending on the scenario. According to Wakankar, the use of interactive communication is on the rise.
"Top of the funnel is in the process of getting much more fine-tuned," she notes.
"In the past, brands simply used to send out a campaign, but now it's becoming more interactive – they send a message, then make sure there's a follow-up, and all of this is done using automated processes," she explains.
"CPaaS platforms play a key role in allowing that, as the campaign reports and metrics generated by the platform can help identify the performant channels, preferred by the customers."
