CPaaS: The key takeaways from WebexOne 2022

Customer experience (CX) has never been more important. This was demonstrated in recent research Webex CPaaS Solutions conducted among 2000 consumers. According to the study, 75% see good customer experience as a reason to be a repeat customer, making it just as important as price. With 55% of consumers likely to change brands for a better customer experience and 72% wanting to `engage with businesses on their preferred channel, organizations can’t afford to get it wrong. Companies however need a way to connect their communications channels with the business systems that they already use. This is where Communications Platform as a Service (CPaaS) technology comes in. In this blog we explore key insights shared by industry analysts and senior leaders during the collaboration event of the year, WebexOne, and what we can expect from the industry going forward.

The CPaaS market is growing

Due to the rise in customer expectations and the proliferation of channels, many organizations have turned to CPaaS solutions in the last few years to help manage their customer interactions. According to Metrigy, 68% of companies are using or planning to use CPaaS technology by the end of 2022. Gartner predicts that as many as 90% of organizations will adopt a CPaaS solution within the next year, with the CPaaS market growing 30% year on year.

CPaaS applications are wide ranging

According to Metrigy’s Customer Experience MetriCast 2022 study, which included surveys of 1,846 CX leaders from companies across North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific, 67.2% of businesses found a 28.5% revenue increase when they used CPaaS technology. Typical scenarios driving revenue include:

• Voice/video messages to remind customers about appointments
• SMS/business messaging services with seasonal discounts, reminders to reorder, products, outreach for loyalty memberships
• Click-to-call and webchat to get quick answers or advice on products, and recommendations on complementary products
• Virtual assistants to guide customers on products or services in the self-service channel.

The messaging landscape is evolving

The current disconnect between businesses and their customers is well known. A study by Bain & Company that surveyed 362 firms found that 80% of CEOs believe they deliver a superior customer experience, but only 8% of their customers agree. According to Gartner, by 2025 80% of customer service organizations will abandon native mobile apps in favor of messaging to meet customer expectations. Whether it’s by leveraging WhatsApp Business that recently introduced transactional notifications, influencer marketing platforms like Instagram and Facebook, Google Business Messages to connect with consumers directly from search and search Ads, Apple Messages for Business, RCS or Branded Text, companies are investing in rich messaging channels to bridge the gap.

CPaaS and digital channels deliver serious ROI

With competing priorities for spend, IT and CX transformation leaders are often challenged with proving return on investment (ROI) to justify this investment. We recently conducted a study from Forrester Consulting for our CPaaS solution, Webex Connect, to examine the Total Economic Impact of the platform for businesses. The results from the study showed that Webex Connect delivered a 330% ROI over a three-year period, reflective of the ROI Webex CPaaS Solutions see repeated time and again across many of its customers. Other findings from the customer interviews showed a 50% increase in efficiency and a 1.2-million-dollar productivity and cost saving across customer facing staff through SMS and mobile communications improving the onboarding processes.

Enterprises are achieving smarter CX with Webex connect

Businesses have hundreds of consumer journeys across different product and business units, geographies, business functions, and different stages of the customer lifecycle. Implementing each journey as a separate application causes fragmentation, duplication, cost overruns, delays, and maintenance challenges. Empowering organizations to deliver outcomes to their customers, Webex’s cloud communications platform Webex Connect, helps automate and orchestrate customer journeys from end-to-end. Designed and built to sit as a software layer between customer channels a business has, and its backend business systems Webex Connect powers over a billion interactions for end customers monthly and processes over two billion messages per month. It contains all the intelligence, compliance, service assurance, integrations to develop end-to-end customer engagement applications that deliver the great digital customer experiences organizations desire today. Pan-African investment, savings, insurance, and banking group Old Mutual is just one customer that has chosen Webex Connect to solve all its customer experience needs. Allowing them to increase their collections rate in a cost-effective way, the business began with implementing an integrated WhatsApp journey for its funeral claims business. Old Mutual is now focusing on a true omnichannel journey approach and cites speed-to-market, the ability to iterate and create unified journeys quickly, and reduce costs as just some of the benefits. Prior to using Webex Connect, BT, one of the world’s leading communications services companies and largest provider of fix line broadband and mobile services in the UK, sent customer communications across email and SMS with the help of costly, third-party agencies. With over 30 million customers, BT wanted to bring the execution in house and use a platform that provided the agility, emerging channels, integrations, reporting, and speed-to-market required. The business was subsequently able to move away from single, one-way communications with its customers to richer, more engaging two-way, personalized conversational messaging. To watch all our WebexOne sessions on demand and learn more about what our customers have to say click here. To learn more about Webex Connect click here.