It is hard to imagine how our lives would be without social media and messengers. The same goes for companies. But how do they effectively manage numerous conversations, comments, and replies across a multitude of platforms inside their business environment? The answer is… messaging API.
What is messaging API?
Messaging API (application programming interface) serves as a bridge between a communication channel (email, social media, SMS) and your business service. With only one API, you can utilize the functionality of several different social media and instant messaging services and communicate with customers directly from an application of your choice.
To use a messaging API, a company must first integrate it into its own application, such as customer relationship management service or help desk software. By the means of webhooks, the programming code of an API adds messaging functionality to a business platform and determines such aspects as message formatting, contact management, incoming messages processing, and so on.
Why use API for messengers?
In light of the ubiquitous adoption of digital technologies and changing customer behavior, companies seek solutions that allow them to contact and interact with their customers across different channels, such as SMS, chat, social media, and phone, which is also called omnichannel messaging. Using messaging APIs makes it possible to leverage the benefits of omnichannel messaging in the most effective manner. By providing a consistent and personalized experience across all touchpoints through a company’s business platform, messaging API helps brands to create more effective customer interactions. This results in improved customer loyalty, a higher engagement rate, and, consequently, increased revenue for the company.
Benefits of messaging API for business
Having explored the concept of messaging API, let’s see what the advantages of using it for customer communication are. Employing several APIs for customer communication increases the amount of work required from developers, while the increased chances of errors reduce the efficacy of the whole process, as well as raises concerns regarding security breaches and the theft of client data. With the help of a messaging API, businesses may approach consumers through a variety of channels, which streamlines the work of sales reps and customer service agents, ensuring that every inquiry gets a prompt and personalized response. Now is the time to view every aspect in a little bit more detail.
Easy omnichannel reach
Messaging APIs offer businesses a range of benefits, one of the most significant of them being the ability to use multiple channels, including SMS, live chat, social media, and messengers for reaching out to customers through a business platform or CRM that is already used by a company. This allows to streamline the work of sales reps and customer support specialists, avoid unnecessary switching between multiple interfaces, and provide a better communication experience for clients.
No fiddling with multiple APIs
True, a company may use a number of free messaging APIs provided by social media and messengers (such as WhatsApp API or a solution for free live chat software) to separately integrate every communication channel into its business application. However, such an approach increases the development effort and the chances of errors occurring later on. Since every API has its own peculiarities, an expected streamlined and optimized customer communication process might not be achieved because of regular issues or disconnections. Also, in general, freely available messaging APIs tend to provide fewer features and more basic functionality compared to third-party universal solutions, which can also hamper the effectiveness of customer communication.
Higher security
Using numerous APIs increases the chances of a security breach that can result in leaked personal data. Also, allowing employees to communicate with clients using their personal devices increases the risks of client details being stolen by a disgruntled worker. By using a single messaging API that uses proven security measures, a company can ensure the protection of customer data and have complete control over what data exactly is available to customer specialists and sales agents through its business platform.
Prompt support
It is a known fact that it may take a long time for developers of a freely available messenger or social media API to reply and help with an issue. Usually, these developers are busy with more pressing support tickets related to these platforms and can’t prioritize solving the difficulties encountered while using their APIs. Here, third-party API providers pay much more attention to incoming support requests and aim to solve issues or help with an integration process as soon as possible. After all, they earn money by providing APIs to businesses and keep the stability and usability of their solutions as one of their top priorities.
What messaging API to choose?
While the majority of instant messengers and social media provide their APIs for free, things can get complicated if a business decides to link many channels to its software via multiple programming interfaces. This can result in errors and issues that can be easily avoided by using a third-party solution that is universal and supports multiple customer communication channels.
Since there’s a wide choice of such third-party universal APIs, it is important to carefully review their security, features, and price/value ratio. One of the solutions that checks all of the boxes is a messaging API provided by Umnico. This single API has over 25 stable and secure integrations with popular social media and messengers, supports all features available on the messaging platforms it connects (think citations, delivery statuses of messages, group chats, etc.), and can be integrated with any popular business platform or CRM. By using it, a company can easily dive into omnichannel messaging, without the need to learn the ropes of a separate API for every channel. The best part is that the price of Umnico’s API is fully customizable too — a company pays only for the integrations it decides to use.
Is your company interested in reaching out to clients directly from its business platform or CRM system via multiple social media and messengers? Then you can try Umnico messaging API with no commitment by signing for a free trial period on the website.
Media Contact
Company Name: Umnico
Email: Send Email
Phone: +44 (20) 457-72-317
Country: United Kingdom
Website: umnico.com
