Enabling Omnichannel Strategies: Choosing a Partner that Can Optimize User Experiences

Over the last 18 to 24 months, the telecoms industry has seen the silos in services replaced by an integrated communication environment. A platform and Application Programming Interface(API)-centric approach has accelerated enterprise access to a growing mix of services. It is no longer about simply routing a call but offering an end-to-end experience that meets users’ needs.

More than ever users are driving service providers and enterprise ICT teams to refresh, innovate and accelerate the adoption of new omnichannel services. The challenge is to keep up while ensuring quality of service and experience across multiple communication channels.

As user behaviors and expectations change, traditional voice service providers need to be ready to evolve their offering and find partners that understand what it takes to deliver omnichannel solutions end-to-end.

It is a changing market that requires new adaptability and relationships. Juniper Research predicts the global value of the Communications Platform as a Service (CPaaS) market will be worth $10 billion with 17% growth year-on-year. Gartner predicts that 95% of global enterprises will use API-enabled CPaaS offerings to increase competitiveness by 2025. Service providers who have traditionally focused on either voice or messaging need to bridge the gap and transform their approach to match the needs of enterprises, from the end user up.

Accelerating Omnichannel Growth

Service providers have an opportunity to monetize omnichannel communications and use it as a growth driver if they can deliver a consistent and reliable experience. The challenge is to serve increasing distributed enterprise customers across multiple devices and channels. They need a partner that can support this new era of communications with knowledge and expertise in Application-to-Person(A2P), Over the Top(OTT), data and analytics, APIs, security, fraud prevention, global networking and a whole range of capabilities that underpin these platforms and solutions.

It is an increasingly complex world that needs to be simplified and optimized for enterprise customers. In order to serve end users with omnichannel communications, service providers need partners that can deliver a mix of these capabilities:

• Assuring Quality and Reducing Latency – Global reach with the fewest hops between networks enables increased quality assurance and reduced latency. The right partner will be able to connect to hundreds of mobile network operators directly and support the delivery of high-quality calling experience as well as rapid message delivery, which is crucial for services like Two-Factor Authentication (2FA).
• Predictive Fraud Prevention – Big data analytics combined with alerting and proactive blocking high-risk traffic protects service providers’ bottom line. Fraud prevention is critical for ensuring that both the service provider and enterprise customers do not face bill shock and losses from a variety of forms of telecoms fraud.
• Global Number Management–Service providers can offer global numbers to enterprise customers that support the use of CPaaS platforms. With efficient number management, they can pull numbers as and when needed rather than buying numbers that they may never use.
• Validation, Intelligence and Experience– Global number intelligence ensures the rapid delivery of messages, supports least-cost routing for voice calls and enables optimized experiences. A service provider needs to ensure calls are reaching the right user with minimal delay without accruing surcharges. Number portability data across different markets is critical for cost efficiency and meeting end user expectations.
• Friction-Free Integrations – The right partner will present out their capabilities via APIs, ensuring seamless integration of CPaaS into existing systems. APIs are essential for automating processes, orchestrating services and expanding capabilities. In a cloud-centric world, service providers need to turn-up services to serve new enterprise demand in minutes and hours rather than days and weeks.

The Future of Omnichannel Communications

As the industry has seen in digital transformation, service providers have to be prepared to evolve to meet market demands. Omnichannel communications are only going to continue to diversify, which will present new challenges and opportunities.

By 2026, over 20% of CPaaS revenue will be attributable to Rich Communications Services(RCS) and OTT business messaging channels, rising from less than 2% in 2021, according to Juniper Research. RCS and OTT are creating opportunities for new collaborations while challenging service providers to innovate and grow across different challenges. Service providers and enterprises are shaping their services to match the expectations of users.

Today’s communications market is wide open and there will be new innovations that we have yet to anticipate. The key is to have a foundation with solid partners that can support the long-term growth of the business and understand the entire value chain.