Now is a great time to be providing communications services in the cloud – especially unified communications (UCaaS).
Although 2020 was a real outlier in the speed at which it drove communications online, it was simply an acceleration of a process already occurring. For example, prior to 2020, the global UCaaS market was projected to grow at about 9% per year to $24.8 billion by 2024. More recent projections show it hitting $112.6 billion in the same time frame – absolutely phenomenal growth, particularly among small and medium businesses that might have waited in a more normal market.
The drawback of this meteoric growth, though, is major price hikes that can’t easily be predicted, as scaling needs to happen in real-time to meet user demand.
So how do UCaaS companies manage costs during a period of such high growth? The cloud is wonderful for scaling, but it needs to be combined with other cost control and deliverability measures. Below are what UCaaS businesses need to look for in a voice and messaging provider.
Scalability
In order to live up to your customers’ expectations of instant, perfect communications, you need to be able to meet the heavy demand for voice and SMS. When using a legacy on-premise communications platform, scalability to meet rising demand is hard. It takes time to get new equipment purchased and installed. That new equipment can be quite costly, especially if you will be planning to move away from that outdated system in the near future – it makes nearly new equipment obsolete before it’s even fully depreciated.
That is why the cloud offers the most scalable option. UCaaS and CPaaS providers can use the resources they need and upgrade easily to more capacity, while matching their clients’ demand quickly.
Control
As voice, video, and SMS capacity increases to meet consumer demand, UCaaS and CPaaS companies need to look for providers that allow them to see how calls and messages are routed – and to step in immediately to fix delivery problems.
When choosing a voice and SMS provider for your communications solution, look for an easy-to-use backend that allows full transparency from call origin to receipt.
Reduced Costs
The final – and possibly most important – thing to look for is control and transparency when it comes to costs. Rapid scaling can be costly, so your company needs to use a voice and SMS provider that offers transparent pricing so you’ll know exactly what it will cost you to provide these services to your clients. That will allow you to be clear on the costs you will need to absorb and open with your clients about costs that will transfer to them.
One way to ensure that costs are open is to use intelligence call routing to ensure that voice calls use the best and most cost-effective route – sometimes called intelligent call routing, or LCR. Also, look for providers that use 10-digit numbers to receive and deliver SMS. These options cost less and allow more messages to be sent per second.
How Does Commio Stack Up on These Criteria?
With a cloud-based solution and a network of 40+ voice carriers, Commio scales at the lowest price points available. We offer one-of-a-kind intelligent call routing to make cost-saving decisions within a second, so calls don’t slow down. We also offer a fully transparent system that allows you to monitor voice and text campaigns – and solve issues within minutes, not days. And the best thing? thinQ adds into any existing tech system within minutes.
Ready to see how Commio can improve your service and lower your costs? Contact us for a 15-minute demo.
