Strategies for Cloud Contact Center Platform API Management
Cloud contact centers connect agents with customers across multiple channels, including voice, email, SMS, social media, live chat, and more. Cloud contact center platform API management plays a vital role in maintaining all these channels.
Unlike traditional on-premises phone systems and hosted contact center solutions, cloud contact centers are not tied to physical locations or servers. Instead, all of your reps can access the software they need from anywhere via computer, smartphone or other VoIP-enabled device.
When implemented and managed correctly, APIs improve customer personalization, ensure anytime access to agents, boost agent productivity, and provide real-time data for better analytics.
Cloud contact center APIs ultimately integrate communication channels with other business-critical tools. This allows you to provide better support through custom applications so you can future-proof your contact center extensively.
Overview of API management in cloud contact centers
Contents
APIs connect two or more applications, extending the functionality of one or both systems. In many cases, an API sends data from one program to another or embeds the functionality of one application in another.
In the context of cloud contact centers, APIs extend communication methods to other parts of the software. For example, you can add calling capabilities to Microsoft Teams.
You can also use the API to enable inbound and outbound texting, chat, and calling directly within your CRM. This integration gives agents the ability to communicate without having to switch back and forth between solutions. This also means agents can see the caller’s information while they’re talking to them.
This can work the other way too – you can pull CRM data into your VoIP solution, allowing agents to see important details about the caller before answering.
The API is commonly used to automate outbound text or email reminders for things like upcoming appointments, balances due, and order status updates through rule-based triggers and custom settings.
Another popular way to use cloud contact center APIs is to centralize social media communications. You integrate different platforms into a single solution so your agents can manage all the messages coming from Facebook, X, Instagram, WhatsApp, LinkedIn, and others without having to navigate to each platform.
With API access, modern contact centers can truly customize the way agents interact with customers and each other.
See: Learn How to use the APIvarious types of apiand about everything api security,
Strategies for the Cloud Contact Center Platform API Management Cycle
Cloud contact center APIs are not plug-and-play, one-click setups that you can configure once and move on. They require ongoing developer support and IT resources for deployment and routine maintenance.
Think about the resources you would need to create and maintain another type of software, such as a mobile app or web application.
The same applies here because you are essentially creating custom software that requires constant attention.
This is especially important for you because a disruption or outage will have an immediate impact on many people on your team or even your customers. For example, if agents are no longer able to receive calls in Salesforce, everything will pause until it is fixed.
The following cloud contact center platform API management strategies can help you avoid these problems and ensure everything runs as smoothly as possible.
Development
Before anything else, you’ll need to define the scope of your project and get a team of developers to help you meet your goals.
Large organizations setting up complex integrations may require multiple developers working simultaneously on it. It should be treated like any other software development project run by a project manager with sprint planning and other agile project management practices.
Your developers will probably need to use the documentation provided by each piece of software you want to connect.
They usually provide developer guides that explain what you can do with their API and how to do it. They can also provide your team with sample code to get started, as well as resources for different programming languages (JavaScript, Java, Python, PHP, C#, Ruby, etc.).
The best vendors also offer a complete SDK (software development kit) that includes more than basic instructions. These include a complete collection of tools, libraries, and documentation to simplify the development process. The SDK ultimately makes it easier for your team to access and use the API for the specific functionality you’re looking for.
see: see Best API Management Tools To manage APIs at scale.
tests
Next, you need to ensure that the API works as intended. To do this, you’ll run various API calls to verify everything. You should also test more complex scenarios and situations in which the API fails to verify that it works.
For example, you might have one of your agents answer a call, send a text message, and set an automated text reminder from your CRM.
You can also test more complex workflows like real-time escalation to a manager, call transfers, handling duplicate contacts, screen pops, and more.
Apart from functionality, you also need to test performance. At this stage, you should simulate high call volumes to ensure that your setup can handle peak traffic. Many APIs have per-minute, hourly or simultaneous limits that you must adhere to – this is often overlooked and can have frustrating results.
If something isn’t working properly or your team finds bugs, they should be fixed before rolling out the new solution to your entire team.
See: Learn about Common API Issues And how to fix them.
deployment
If everything goes well then you can start it. Depending on complexity, this may take from a few minutes to several hours.
Even if you think this will be a relatively quick deployment, I suggest doing this when most of your team is not using any part of the software. If you can’t avoid it, try to choose a timeline that has historically had low volume.
You can look at historical data to determine specific days of the week and times of your lowest usage. This will probably happen in the middle of the night, on the weekend, or on a holiday.
Ideally, the issues should have been resolved during the testing phase. But things don’t always go according to plan. Leave yourself enough room to identify and fix problems that arise before your team starts using it.
Supervision
API monitoring should be 24/7 whenever possible.
Developers and quality assurance agents can do this by using third-party tools to gather data and analyze performance in real time. These are built to track various metrics, such as API response time, error rates, availability, downtime, and more.
You can also set up automated alerts and ask your team or customers to let you know as soon as they notice something that isn’t working as expected.
Automated alerts can help you stay ahead of potential problems before they interfere with communications, so they should be your first line of defense.
version
It’s important to track and manage changes to your cloud contact center API over time. There are many benefits to doing this, but the most common for contact centers is backward compatibility.
Cloud-based software can update at any time, and these updates can cause major problems with your API.
When updates occur, it is important for your APIs to continue working as best they can until you resolve any unexpected issues.
Versioning also helps your development team work on new features without affecting the version actively used by your agents and customers. This lets you test and make sure everything is working without affecting anyone else.
Developers can release a beta or V1 so that your team has something to work on while they focus on introducing more features and offering a more robust solution.
Check out our guide on versioning best practices to learn more.
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