CPaaS: Beyond Basic APIs

As companies explore ways of transforming how they serve customers and optimize customer experience (CX), they are increasingly looking at Communications Platform as a Service (CPaaS) as an enabling technology. CPaaS offers an attractive proposition for them because with it comes all of the tools and services they need to customize their CX offerings and layer real-time, cloud-based communications capabilities on top of existing business applications, websites, or communications platforms. Examples abound, starting with the click-to-call/video, live chat, and messaging capabilities that have become integral to the modern customer support operation.

Already, 62.0% of 1,695 companies in Metrigy’s Customer Experience MetriCast 2023 global research study have either adopted a CPaaS platform (38.5%) or plan to do so by year’s end (23.5%). An additional 21.5% see CPaaS as a roadmap deliverable for as early as 2024 or they’re evaluating the technology’s use for their CX purposes. Fewer than 12% have no plans for CPaaS today.

Companies evaluating CPaaS options have no shortage of potential providers. Dozens of companies offer CPaaS to enterprises, ranging the gamut from pure-play providers with roots in voice and messaging to cloud communications platform providers offering open programmability to
API providers that are also network carriers. The table on the next page provides a sampling of the various providers that support enterprise use cases for embeddable communications.