In today’s competitive business landscape, convenient and personalized solutions are vital to growing the company, generating leads, and maintaining customers. According to a survey by the National Retail Federation, about 9 out of 10 consumers have held off on a purchase due to inconvenience.
As a developer, you are in a position to improve the convenience of critical voice applications by creating a seamless solution. A voice API for developers allows you to create voice applications and integrations that enhance your client or organization’s business capabilities and customer experience. Companies use voice APIs in various ways and derive several benefits from the technology through cloud-based calling.
What Can a Voice API for Developers Help You Achieve?
A voice API makes it possible for developers to implement voice-calling solutions into a client or company’s systems and software. An API, or application programming interface, is an interface that allows multiple distinct pieces of software to communicate over the internet. It enables software or systems to accomplish tasks, such as making a call from an app that does not initially have calling capabilities. APIs save the developer time coding and testing the function. Often, you can implement an API into your software in just a few lines of code.
By using a voice API for developers, you can implement voice calling and voice automation into various systems and software for your business or client.
- Integrate voice calling into an app or customer relationship management (CRM) system
- Build an automated answering or interactive voice response (IVR) system
- Implement enterprise-grade features into a business phone system.
A voice API can also be used to build a digital voice assistant, similar to Siri, Alexa, or Google Assistant for business purposes. You can provide business-enhancing benefits to your client or company while making your job as a developer easy.
How Businesses Use Voice APIs
Businesses rely on voice APIs to develop mission-critical voice applications that enhance communications and the customer experience. Voice APIs are highly configurable and easy to implement, making them an ideal choice for businesses looking to add voice calling or features to their existing systems.
Implement Voice Calling into a CRM
Using a voice API for developers, you can make customer interactions seamless. Integrating voice calling into a CRM allows a business to receive and make voice calls within the system. It can be a game changer for organizations with high call volumes, allowing a representative to take the call, record the customer’s information within the CRM, and call customers back from their profile.
Automate Receiving Incoming Calls With an IVR
An IVR is an automated voice system that receives incoming calls and provides prompts for the customer to ask a question, complete a simple transaction, or contact a representative. For instance, a financial institution may request an IVR that greets callers and provides the option to request bank hours or locations. It can allow callers to complete simple transactions, such as locking a debit card, requesting a new PIN, or checking an account balance. If the IVR cannot assist the caller, they can choose to speak with a representative for more personalized service.
Related: Programmable SIP: What You Need to Know When Getting Started
A voice API allows a developer to create an IVR to receive calls, reducing high volumes of repetitive calls and allowing representatives to focus on more complex operations. A cloud-based calling solution with direct inward dialing (DID) routes calls directly to the intended recipient without an IVR, operator, or extension. It can help businesses provide fast and efficient customer support.
Integrate Voice Calling into an App
Various types of apps benefit from calling and messaging within the app. For instance, ride-sharing and delivery apps can make pickup and delivery of passengers or goods a more seamless experience with voice calling. The driver can call the rider or recipient to confirm the location or inform them of a delay. With a voice API, you can implement calling into the app in addition to features like phone number masking to protect the user’s identity.
Automated voice assistants can also be integrated into apps, adding a convenient option for users to interact with the business while diverting resources from answering phone calls. Users can complete simple transactions and ask questions from within the app, much like a user would use an automated voice assistant like Siri or Alexa to play a song in their library. Financial institutions can use voice assistants in banking apps to make it easy for clients to ask questions about their accounts and accomplish tasks like ordering checks or opening a dispute. According to Forbes, banks can save an estimated 90 to 95% by implementing their current IVR functions into an in-app voice assistant.
What Are the Benefits of Implementing Voice Using an API?
Voice APIs with cloud-based calling solutions, such as Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) or Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), deliver various benefits that enhance business communication and customer service. As the developer, you can easily implement and maintain the software while your company or client gets the solution they need to grow their business.
Simplified Integration
As mentioned above, a voice API for developers simplifies integration into software or systems. In a few lines of code, you can have a functional app with voice calling. It can reduce hours of coding and testing to a few minutes of work, and when you choose a reputable voice platform, you’ll have a tested API ready for seamless implementation. A reputable API provider will also maintain the software and offer microservices that you can drop in to add features and functions to your solution from a version-controlled repository like GitHub or Docker containers.
Near Limitless Scalability
A cloud-based voice service, such as VoIP or SIP, provides the scalability and elasticity of the cloud. Calls are made over the internet from an Ethernet, wireless, LTE, or 5G connection. Voice instances can be added dynamically to accommodate increased traffic and reduced when the business no longer requires the elevated voice service without a significant investment in infrastructure.
Reduced Calling Costs
When you work with a flexible voice provider, your increased scalability does not come at a cost. A metered or per-minute voice service allows the organization to pay for only the voice service it uses in a billing period. It provides significant savings for small and medium-sized businesses that are not ready to commit to a large amount of calling time on a flat-rate plan and eliminates wasted minutes at the end of a billing period. As a developer, this means you don’t have to invest a significant amount in a voice service to test the API and evaluate the service for your company or client.
VoIP and SIP calling is typically less expensive than investing in primary rate interface (PRI) lines from carriers. Traditional options provide a copper line that includes 23 simultaneous voice calling channels and requires an additional PRI line to increase calling capacity. A SIP trunk offers near limitless calling from a stable internet connection.
The organization may also require a private branch exchange (PBX) to meet its needs with a traditional solution. Cloud-based solutions, on the other hand, provide access to carrier-grade capabilities with or without a PBX. They are compatible with many devices and existing IP-PBX and virtual PBX systems to reduce the investment in infrastructure and devices. Your client or company can also make or receive calls from a mobile device or software-based phone.
Reliability and Resilience
Since VoIP and SIP are cloud-based solutions, they provide inherent reliability. Incoming voice calls are dynamically routed, and when you choose a quality voice partner, your company or client can benefit from physical failover. When a network fails, the calls will be routed to a new physical network to ensure delivery. In the past, a business would have to port the number to another carrier to navigate a network outage.
The API platform can also provide services like toll fraud protection, real-time monitoring, and restriction of unwanted destinations to boost the organization’s security.
Related: Uninterrupted Communication: How Voice Resiliency Is Vital to Business Success
Cloud-based voice solutions allow users to connect to the VoIP or SIP trunk service from a stable internet connection anywhere in the world. They provide consistent calling experiences, improving the user’s ability to work remotely. Cloud-based solutions enable your client or business to work offsite in the event of a power outage, natural disaster, or emergency to ensure operations can continue uninterrupted.
Business Enhancing Capabilities
In addition to scalability, cost-efficiency, and resilience, the API provides several business-enhancing capabilities. Some features you may wish to implement for your organization or client include:
- e911
- Phone number masking
- Remote call forwarding
- Call transferring
- Recording and transcribing calls
- Direct inward dialing (DID)
A cloud-based voice solution makes it easy to provision business phone numbers and view call detail records (CDRs) for analysis from a web portal by an administrator. You can also port existing numbers to the VoIP or SIP service from traditional carriers.
Create a Seamless Solution With a Voice API for Developers
Selecting a platform for your cloud-based calling service and voice API is critical to successful implementation. Flowroute provides SIP trunking and VoIP services on a scalable and reliable network with an easy-to-implement and configure API. The Flowroute HyperNetwork™ provides resiliency for your critical voice applications with dynamic physical failover, and you can scale your services with a flexible metered voice plan. Get started with Flowroute to build your business voice solution.
