In today’s mobile, digital-focused world, companies are increasingly leveraging SMS and voice capabilities within their web and mobile applications for things like authenticating users, sending account alerts, and providing delivery notifications. Incorporating text messaging and voice can help optimize customer engagement and user experience while improving operational efficiency and security.
As demand for SMS and voice integration has increased, CPaaS providers like Plivo have launched serverless, low-code, visual workflow builders that provide out-of-the-box use case templates to enable more organizations to leverage the benefits of an API platform. You can use these visual design studios to more easily create communications workflows and reduce development times.
In other words, with a few drag-and-drop moves (similar to what you might find on a visual website development platform like Wix or Squarespace), you can create and deploy new SMS or voice integration services in far less time than you could by using the usual combination of APIs and XML.
What might these integrations look like? Consider these three use cases to see how your company could benefit from PHLO, Plivo’s visual workflow builder.
Alerts and notifications
Perhaps the most widely applicable use case for SMS and voice integration is for sending alerts and notifications, such as:
- Automated account alerts — notifying customers of account activity regarding logins, usage, etc.
- Dispatch or delivery notifications — informing customers when a shipment is en route or delivered
- Reminders — alerting customers of an upcoming appointment
One of our customers, Deckers, a footwear brand, has built SMS delivery notifications to notify partner stores of upcoming orders so they can take the necessary actions needed to fulfill those orders. The company has many brands under its corporate umbrella, and if it had to make changes to these notification workflows using a traditional development cycle, it would be a time-consuming process that required developer resources on a continuing basis. Instead, Deckers uses PHLO to quickly adjust its notification workflows by dragging and dropping modules as needed.
In addition to using SMS alerts, businesses can benefit from setting up voice delivery alerts. For example, our customer Bosch InTrack, an integrated supply chain event platform, uses PHLO to send voice alerts to security teams about incoming deliveries. Because Bosch operates in multiple markets, it needs to be able to quickly add or modify voice alerts to support different languages. PHLO makes it easy to implement these changes.
Two-factor authentication
Another common use case for integrating communications capabilities into applications is for authentication. All kinds of businesses nowadays use two-factor authentication (2FA) to verify users’ identities when they log in.
Plivo customer Bigo Technology, an innovative live streaming company, uses SMS and voice to verify signups. Bigo used PHLO to quickly build a workflow that issues a one-time password (OTP) via SMS, then fails over to voice verification if necessary to improve conversions.
Our customer Gojek, an on-demand last mile delivery marketplace service, uses voice OTP for verifying users. PHLO helps Gojek quickly add a new country and corresponding language and enable users to choose their preferred OTP format — text-to-speech, their own voice, or a combination of the two.
Using PHLO makes building these workflows simple; you can start with an existing template and easily adapt your verification or authentication requirements via drag-and-drop modules.
Call forwarding and cloud IVR
In addition to different types of alerts and verifications, companies also benefit from integrating SMS and voice capabilities into applications for customer service purposes.
Interactive voice response (IVR) systems are the backbone of customer support organizations. Companies use them to guide customers who call in to the appropriate department. (“Press 1 for sales; press 2 for technical support.”) In the past, companies used complex, on-premises infrastructure to run these systems, but now you can use scalable, cloud-based APIs to play audio and trigger call forwarding.
Nutanix Beam, a multicloud optimization service delivered as part of the Nutanix Enterprise Cloud OS, uses Plivo to power its IVR for incident response and escalation. Using PHLO’s visual builder, Nutanix can add or edit an escalation point in seconds.
Another customer, Practi, develops cloud-based software solutions to manage retail businesses. Practi uses Plivo to power IVR and call forwarding for its customers. Using PHLO’s drag-and-drop templates, Practi can quickly build IVR flows for new customers and customize recorded greetings and thank-you messages.
Instead of having to involve your developers each time you want to tweak these types of announcements and associated forwarding rules, you can use PHLO to easily make updates without having to rewrite any code, which in turn helps you serve your customers better.
Start simplifying SMS and voice integration
As people grow more used to communicating with brands digitally, the need for businesses to integrate SMS and voice capabilities into their customer experience also grows. Businesses can use PHLO to quickly build workflows that help them communicate with customers.
See how PHLO can help you take your communications to the next level. Explore more SMS API and Voice API, or jump in to start building workflows using PHLO by signing up for a free trial today.
