CPaaS adoption surges in APAC: A game changer for businesses in the digital era

The accelerated adoption of Communication Platforms as a Service (CPaaS) by businesses shows that brands realize the need to adapt and engage customers in today’s fragmented digital space.

The future of work is digital, and organizations are responding to this by accelerating their digital transformation plans. For some organizations, this means turning to a CPaaS to improve operational efficiencies and customer support.

Globally, about 20% of organizations today use CPaaS Application Programming Interfaces (API) to enhance their digital competitiveness.

Synergy Research Group reported that the global CPaaS market grew by over 40% year-on-year, and this resulted in increased development of communication and software technologies used to create and enhance new customer interactions and experiences.

Globally, the APAC region saw the fastest year-on-year growth, exceeding 55% year-on-year, well above the global average of 40%. Experts also forecast that the CPaaS industry will generate more than US$34 billion in sales by 2026.

Additionally, Juniper Research saw a surge in enterprise demand for mobile channels like SMS and voice. This demonstrates customer expectations in terms of communication channel preference and expectation.

For example, in 2022, cloud contact center interactions within the Infobip CPaaS platform grew 221% compared to 2021. This shows customers have a growing appetite for digital interactions with brands, and the number of businesses utilizing digital channels and solutions has increased to meet that demand.

Other notable trends from 2022 include:

However, in first five months of 2023, WhatsApp alone experienced a surge in the total number of interactions, growing 183% in APAC, observed by Infobip. Compared with the same period in 2022, the total number of WhatsApp interactions in Indonesia, Singapore, and China with Hong Kong has increased by 265.9%, 151% and 83.4%, respectively.

Clocking the fastest growth for CPaaS adoption compared to other regions, businesses in APAC are aware of the benefits of CPaaS, including seamless and scalable customer experience, accompanied by revenue growth.

Businesses that have yet to explore CPaaS can research and understand the many transformational values it has to offer enterprises, including:

CPaaS helps enterprises perform different interactions, seamlessly – from sending customer messages, including appointment confirmations and reminders, and purchase confirmations, to order tracking.

Businesses can add layers of security with two-factor authentication, OTPs, and secure mobile payment, while customer service reps can communicate privately with customers and share confidential information.

Most CPaaS are flexible and capable of scaling for workload, regardless of whether enterprises use cloud or on-premise computing.

Enterprises can analyse large volumes of data through best-in-class reporting and data tools – such as cost-reducing predictions to make better decisions.

This helps businesses connect with customers across multiple channels while maintaining conversation context. Omnichannel messaging generally focuses on customer experience and contact center use cases.

WhatsApp, Messenger, Apple Messages for Business, and RCS Business Messaging (RBM), provide more engaging communication experiences. These tools support features like QR codes, video and images, which enable companies to support customer service, payments, and retail or food purchases through an app.

Enterprises are embedding video into their platforms rather than investing in standalone video services. The healthcare and education sectors are utilizing it for remote use cases or integrating it with online learning platforms.

Businesses are using conversational interfaces to launch self-service chatbots that can answer common customer queries, augmented by text-based, call-based, and video-based help functions within the same application so customers do not need to leave the app to talk to a customer service representative.

New and emerging trends resulting from the pandemic have also driven CPaaS to play a larger role in supporting operational needs in delivering memorable customer experiences. Trends that businesses should note are:

On the local front, businesses have experienced significant growth when deploying CPaaS to engage customers. A good example is the Segari case study.

Segari set up a single interface that unified their data and delivered end-to-end customer engagement. As a result, their customer support response time was reduced by 90%, agent efficiency increased, and they received 87% positive feedback.

The accelerated adoption of CPaaS by businesses signals that brands realize the importance of adapting digital strategies to meet the expectations of modern consumers.

The stability and maturity of CPaaS offerings helps enterprises to adopt and implement a tested and stable product to improve their operations and CX. This represents an opportunity, especially for businesses who have yet to explore CPaaS, to take advantage – or risk lagging in driving their business forward.