Twilio Expands Customer Engagement Platform

At SIGNAL 2022, Twilio, the Customer Engagement Platform (CEP) that drives real-time, personalized experiences for today’s leading brands, announced a lineup of products and enhancements designed to equip businesses with the technology they need to build profitable, long-term, direct relationships with customers - an imperative in this economic moment.

“My conversations with Twilio’s customers are changing rapidly right now. While the focus before was on a passion for growth, leaders today are concerned about the economy, durability, and are looking for ways to do more with less,” said Jeff Lawson, co-founder and CEO of Twilio. “There’s a real desire out there to know customers so deeply that investments become targeted, personalized, and highly efficient. This is the promise of Twilio’s Customer Engagement Platform: a single platform that can create superior, data-driven customer experiences that increase lifetime value and strengthen your digital business to withstand these uncertain times.”

Omdia, a leading technology analyst group, released its annual Universe analysis on Customer Engagement Platform vendors. Twilio ranked as a “Customer Engagement Platform” leader, with the highest ranking when it comes to “Customer Experience” for its CEP.

Onboard and activate your customers with a VIP fast lane

Every brand has to decide how much information to collect so they can verify that new users are legitimate. Historically, it’s always been a trade-off between user experience and security. Every time a customer can't sign up or log in because the process was too long or frustrating, that's lost business. But brands shouldn’t have to make a trade-off between seamless, positive, user experiences and added protections.

With that in mind, Twilio today announced a password-less approach: Verify Silent Network Authentication (SNA). With SNA, Twilio provides a possession authentication method and the ability to quickly move an end-user through the new user registration without interrupting the sign-up flow, with the help of authoritative, deterministic mobile carrier signals.

By partnering with 56+ mobile operators across 30+ countries, Twilio is able to verify the device and phone number with an operator without the need for additional pin codes or visual tests from users. Gojek, an Indonesia-based ride share, delivery and shopping app, implemented SNA and reduced customer login time from 20 seconds to five seconds. Now available in public beta*, SNA removes distracting authentication requirements to ensure an exceptional user experience right from the very first impression, and for the long-term thereafter.

Engage your customers and power efficient growth with real-time, data-driven experiences through any digital channel

With volatility in the global economy, marketers everywhere are being asked to do more with less. Lowering customer acquisition costs (CAC) and increasing lifetime value (LTV), is top of mind, but challenging to achieve without good, real-time data at scale.

Enter: Twilio Engage, the marketing solution that uniquely puts the power of a native Customer Data Platform (CDP) and native omnichannel together in one platform - so from one place you can act on your data in real time and via any digital channel. With a complete view of the customer, built with rich, real-time profiles in the same place where you orchestrate journeys and activate precise personalized experiences, marketers can drive efficient growth at scale. Now generally available*, innovative brands like Discovery Education, EasyHealth, Harry Rosen, and Winnie are already putting Twilio Engage to work. With Twilio Engage, brands can at last deliver truly data-driven, personalized customer experiences that grow customer lifetime value.

“In building Twilio Engage, we set out to help marketers deliver exceptional omnichannel campaigns fit for the digital era. Today, pressure to lower acquisition costs and to bolster lifetime value has intensified, and the need for personalized customer engagement at scale is greater than ever before. But current marketing solutions can’t meet this need because they don’t have data at the foundation, or they just have a CDP bolted on,” said Kathryn Murphy, VP of Product at Twilio, “Twilio Engage is built ‘data up’ on a native CDP with native channels, so personalized experiences can be informed by consented, first-party data and powered by one platform.”

“Twilio Engage helps us keep the 4.5 million educators and 45 million K-12 students we serve tuned into our platform," said Jenny Lee, Senior Director of Product Marketing at Discovery Education. "With precise real-time data, personalized journeys, and access to digital channels, we’re able to get educators quickly started on our platform and keep them engaged."

At the core of Twilio’s CEP is the Twilio Segment Customer Data Platform. This year, for the third year in a row, IDC named Segment the world’s #1 CDP for market share*. Twilio Segment brings data together in a single place to create customer profiles in real-time, and helps leading brands like Allergan, Domino’s Mexico, and Fender extend the lifetime value of their customers.

Retain and deepen customer relationships, with data-backed interactions

When businesses empower customer service representatives with data and tools to make every interaction more personalized, it turns service conversations into value conversations that build and retain relationships. World-renowned brands like BSH Home Appliances Group and ToyotaConnected, newly announced as flagship Twilio customers, are revamping digital customer engagement experiences with Twilio Flex.

Automation is also playing a vital role in improving the contact center experience, with Conversational IVRs. Twilio today announced a new native integration between Google Dialogflow CX and Twilio Voice* that can equip best-in-class virtual agents with advanced AI capabilities in IVRs and Flex. With this integration, callers’ needs can be addressed promptly by virtual agents capable of natural-feeling conversations and of making personalized routing decisions. With little to no code, businesses can automate self-service use cases while scrapping frustrating IVR experiences that can damage customer relationships and increase the cost per call. This follows the recent announcement of Twilio Flex’s integration with the Google Cloud Contact Center AI (CCAI) suite of technologies, deployable using the Sabio connector solution.

“In 2022, we’ve continued to bring industry-leading customer engagement innovations to Flex, including Flex Conversations, HIPAA eligibility, and an expansion of our Flextensions partner program”, said Simonetta Turek, GM of Customer Experience Products at Twilio. “We believe that with Flex, brands can turn interactions into opportunities. Don’t ever pass by the opportunity to deepen a long-term customer relationship by arming representatives with complete context on a customers’ needs. We’ve seen this CDP-powered approach pay dividends for savvy brands like TravelPerk, and are constantly inspired by the creative ways we see customers leveraging data to bolster lifetime value.”