Choosing an API Provider (VJD Portfolio)

Critical considerations when choosing an omnichannel API vendor

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Executive summary The only thing moving faster than the world of business is the world of technology. Keeping up with consumer expectations (that simultaneously shape and are informed by the latest tech) can be a herculean task for companies of any size, as enterprises struggle to implement new solutions on a large scale and SMEs scrape together resource.

This is where omnichannel API vendors provide relief, enabling businesses to continue to innovate in their own fields and outsource the worry of having new and relevant communication channels which cut costs and generate revenue.

But choosing an API vendor can be a complex business in itself. There are many things to keep in mind to make sure your vendor is the best fit for your company, and ensure your continued growth is not hindered, or your future plans (realised, or not) threatened.

In this ebook, we will explore all of these considerations and examine how they may affect your business more than you realise. We will highlight key concerns that many businesses have when switching from traditional A-to-B connectivity and identify the ways that your omnichannel vendor can resolve these so that you know what to look for whilst researching for a provider. Finally, we will provide you with a number of crucial questions to ask vendors so that you can be fully confident in your decision.

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The omnichannel landscape Mark Zuckerberg will tell you, we are using more communication channels than ever before, and we are adopting them at a faster rate each year. The wealth of channels that we use is growing, and adoption accelerates each year. For example, it took seven years for Facebook to reach 1 billion users, but their messaging arm Facebook Messenger reached the same milestone in under five. What’s more, we aren’t just using these channels to communicate with our nearest and dearest.

There were over 2 billion conversations on average each month to businesses alone on Facebook Messenger in 2017. Then there’s WhatsApp, now of course also under the Facebook umbrella (undoubtedly purchased because of the anticipation of an omnichannel future).

It’s finally starting to unlock its capability for B2C A2P use and is thought to well exceed Facebook Messenger’s figures when the business version goes fully live later this year. With smartphones today like an extended limb, pervasively in reaching-distance, and ownership never higher (94% for under 54s, and 51% for 55+ in the UK), your customers and prospects are more than used to using messaging apps to make their consumer decisions.

They expect you to be there, on hand and available to speak to on every channel. But that isn’t where their expectations finish either.

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The imperative of “perfect execution” “By 2020, the demand for an omnichannel customer experience will be amplified by the need for nearly perfect execution,” commented PwC over four years ago. What this translates to is the idea that it is not enough to simply adopt every channel. Consumers demand omnipresence from their chosen brands, but they also want omniscience (where context of their conversations is carried from channel to channel with a centralised profile), and they also expect it to be omnipotent, able to withstand any modern-day security concerns that threaten their personal data. They are not delighted by any of this, but simply expect it, and they expect it without friction or seams, especially when it comes to adopting the next big thing in communication, whatever that may be. If you don’t fulfil these criteria, they will simply find a company who does. To survive, your communication strategy must be more intelligent than ever before – more joined up, more flexible, more efficient, more powerful and more secure. It should be able to adapt to the future, and yet be strong enough to endure rigorous security protocols. It should improve the lives of your customer service agents, and your developers, which, in turn, will bring about business savings. The only way to achieve this whilst remaining focused on your business is with an omnichannel vendor that provides fluid, simple and powerful APIs to reach your customers, right at the heart of your omnichannel strategy.

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Future proofing in a fast moving world We adopt technology as consumers at a faster rate every passing year. But as businesses, we can be sluggish and rigid when it comes to making change. If your customer-base is evolving, and if brand-loyalty is declining (as technology makes it easier than ever to switch suppliers or services), it is more imperative than ever to keep up with the latest channels and capabilities of communication. Either that, or you risk losing out to the competition who got there sooner. In today’s market, it may not be survival of the fittest, but survival of the quickest. So how do we achieve this agility in practice?

No more fire-fighting The most critical and valuable change an organisation can implement is to make the switch from implementing their own A-to-B connectivity to using a versatile, centralised omnichannel communication API. Fire-fighting has traditionally been the approach for many businesses (addressing channels, apps and the systems which connect them as and when is needed, sometimes under a lazy guise of ‘agile development’ when it is anything but). The legacy of such an approach leads to a spider web of chaos, ever-increasing technical debt and an increased surface area for attack. This is not even to mention the fact that A-to-B connectivity lacks the idea of centralised real-time data, making the information both customers and customer service agents are working from often irrelevant to their needs or slow to react. With so many disparate connections, the lack of synchronisation can become a chronic inefficiency for business they cannot afford. What was first implemented for a specific use case to save time eventually compounds to a systemic issue that each time creates more work for developers who must create work-arounds or repeatedly integrate on different networks.

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Get smart, secure, centralised APIs Versatile, centralised omnichannel APIs, on the other hand, enable businesses to say yes to their clients or customers, because this approach allows companies to be nimble with their solutions and responses.

Choosing a provider who requires only a single integration and promises support for future channels equips the business to handle not only their present requirements and problems, but also endless future ones without even anticipating what these may be, as this concern has been outsourced to the provider.

This provides businesses with one of the most valuable corporate commodities of all – time. With more time due to increased efficiency, companies can monetise more products and services, bolstered by the power of their centralised API. The added advantage for your business and consumers is that this approach is also more secure than multiple A-to-B implementations because a single integration significantly reduces the attack surface area for hackers, allows you to control data with ease for compliance and allows your security teams to focus their efforts.

Not only is the data of your customers therefore more secure, but so is any sensitive company data.

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The value of possibility With the kind of near-perfect omnichannel strategy that PwC highlighted as being essential to a company’s success, improvements in spending and generating revenue will quickly become abundant. Service agents will be empowered to provide the kind of exceptional personalised experience that will turn customers into walking-talking billboards for your brand.

Alerts, reminders and notifications on the channel of the customer’s choice will offer further revenue generation, with increased spend opportunities at several touch points, and provide great brand experience that will increase the likelihood of repeat business. The introduction of chat bots will enable customers to self-serve, affording the business with a self-generating stream of new income, greater customer satisfaction and increased customer lifetime value.

But this true omnichannel approach is wholly dependent on the concept of a centralised API with single integration because it is the only model that negates A-to-B connectivity and removes inefficiencies in data processing that cause lag and outdated information between different systems and apps. This not only frustrates customers who crave contextual interactions where their conversation histories are known, no matter the channels they have used to communicate with the business on, but it also creates vast inefficiencies for customer service agents who provide poor customer service due the disparate data sets and managing of multiple channels at great expense to the business.

A centralised omnichannel API with the right provider conversely delivers real-time data across all systems and enables not just contextual conversations, but also personalised interactions and the capability to deliver extremely targeted marketing as a result of richer data sets aggregated from customer interaction across multiple channels and devices.

Chat bots are increasingly becoming relevant to this consideration as they are only as powerful as the data they have access to, which crucially must be in-sync with the present reality. With the ability to work 365 days a year with no sick pay or benefits such as holiday entitlement, many businesses are realising the strength and value of chat bots in their communication model. But much like an omnichannel strategy that provides superior customer experience, chat bots are only an option with flexible, intuitive and powerful APIs from the right provider.

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Achieving the technical architecture needed for an effective omnichannel strategy The way to achieve an effective omnichannel strategy that works with your existing systems, now and in the future, is to build a structure that sits a centralised omnichannel API on top of an orchestration layer and on the base of your legacy architecture. This architecture will provide omnichannel reach across all your business systems whilst ensuring all data is synchronised, and removes a network of disparate apps or web services. The real-time data constantly evolving will mimic more true-to-life conversations, future-proof against future integrations (whether they are anticipated or not) and immediately create a more efficient and customer-friendly business.

There are three common problems that businesses face when considering this restructure.

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Industries subject to strict regulation, or low margins The reality is that these businesses cannot afford not to adapt. Persevering with A-to-B reactionary connectivity will continue to increase work load, heighten security issues and create inefficiency for the entire company slowly resigning the business to an ultimate conclusion of failure to provide any kind of product or service that is either relevant or cost-efficient to produce. A holistic change with the right API provider can alternatively immediately provide resolution, reduce operating costs and increase revenue.

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The company is only looking for a specific channel for a specific use right now It is, to a certain extent, irrelevant that the business is currently only ready for a single channel adoption or strategy. With flexible APIs from the right provider, channels can be deployed for a specific use case that fits the business’ present-day needs, but they will also anticipate the needs of the business in the future effortlessly with the ability to be adapted and built-on quickly. In order to achieve this, the APIs must be well designed and the vendor must be looking ahead to anticipate the future needs of the business.

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The integration is too much work to implement With a vendor who has developer-friendly APIs, an expert knowledge base, and who is highly experienced with advanced integrations, the amount of work it will take to implement will be minimal, whereas the rewards the business will reap as a result will be significant.

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Further considerations of an API vendor In addition to these common problems businesses face, there are many more considerations that companies must deliberate upon before making a decision on their API vendor.

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What is their experience level and diversity of clients?

Is the vendor experienced at handling a company of my size? Do they have similar clients, who would have had similar challenges they helped with, to overcome?

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Are they ready for the future?

One of the reasons for using an API vendor as opposed to developing in-house is so that your business has outsourced the research and anticipation that is required to remain relevant. Your vendor should have its finger on the pulse and know what is coming next in the world of tech communication and offer a single integration process so that when the next channel is adopted (which, as we discussed, will be, quickly), there is no lag time between common adoption and the business’ capability to offer the channel.

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Are they built on scalable web technology?

When it comes to the future of your business, there’s no telling what will happen. As is commonly the case, the purpose and needs of the business from inception to present day will undoubtedly vary for the majority of businesses. Considering this, your API vendor will need to be able to scale to continue to be a good fit for the future. The last thing you want to discover is that you have reached the ceiling on your integrations capability and it can no longer handle your required volumes.

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Is your API vendor bot-compatible?

One thing to certainly start thinking about for the future now is the increasing importance of bots. Especially since Gartner reported that in 2020, the average person will have more conversations with bots than with their spouse. Needless to say this reflects how commonplace they will be, and while they seem like the stuff of science fiction, they are already a reality for many companies and will quickly become as much as a baseline as broadband for businesses. Does your preferred API vendor integrate with any bot platform? Can your bot handle inbound and outbound communication across multiple channels? Do your APIs enable conversations to be easily passed from bots to agents? These are just a few of the considerations to make when choosing your vendor.

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Do they have global reach?

Some channels, such as SMS, can be complicated to navigate with regional restrictions and disparate operations causing several layers of intricacy in order to implement in certain countries. Your API vendor should not only be knowledgeable in these intricacies, but also experienced at handling them and able to facilitate reach in any country that you require. Even if globalreach isn’t something you presently require, there is no telling what you will need to survive in the future.

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One vendor, One API Comapi are a leading omnichannel solutions provider, empowering businesses of any size to deliver holistic messaging experience to their customers. Connect to Hub and integrate the most powerful omnichannel messaging API on the market (the One API) to your existing system and instantly unlock your omnichannel potential.

We are experienced With over 16 years’ experience in delivering superior customer experiences with business communications, we are home to some of the world’s most informed experts when it comes to A2P. We’re real people, with you every step of the way, from integration to implementation. With a proven track record of delivering exceptional experiences to over 10,000 customers, and millions of messages sent every month, we’re confident we can help you achieve omnichannel success.

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We are global Whether you want to send or receive one message, or millions, to one territory, or hundreds, with global access without ties to specific providers, we can intelligently route messages to the highest quality networks ensuring your messages are always received.

We are resilient and secure At Comapi, we understand the importance of security and resilience to your business, which is why we pride ourselves on adopting not just cloud architecture, but multi-cloud architecture (Azure, and Google) to ensure our systems never go down. We take rigorous steps to ensure our services are secure by minimising surface attack areas, only communicating over 2048-bit TLS encryption to protect against man-in-the-middle attacks and snooping, as well as being ISO 27001 accredited, ensuring all aspects of our business are secure.

We are ready for the future With the simplicity of our One API, you’ll only ever have to integrate once to access all of our current channel offerings, but also any future channels, such as RCS and WhatsApp. If you’re already integrated with a single channel from us, all others will be available to you either as soon as you require them, or as soon as they are released. We even support custom body in your send so that as channels evolves, you’ll be able to instantly access any new features or message types. This single integration feature also makes us bot-ready, and our bot-partner Meya.ai can provide your customers and prospects with either fully bot-based conversations, or communications that can be handled by both agents and AI, as your bot acts as the first-port of call before funnelling enquiries to the correct department if necessary.

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Want to learn more about how our APIs can achieve your goals? Arrange a free consultation with one of our experts or start a free trial at www.comapi.com +44 333 344 8880 sales@comapi.com www.comapi.com Twitter

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