Where to start with cloud communication?
Cloud communication can mean a vast range of things.
To help clear things up for you, we’re going to break cloud communication up into a series of use cases and provide a recommended tool for each.
In this Telerivet article, we’ll cover:
- What do you need from cloud communication software?
- Cloud communication command center: Telerivet
- Done-for-you cloud communication: Teams
- Customer service cloud communications: Zendesk
- Identity verification API: Telesign
- Cloud communications tools for sales: Gong
- Telerivet: Messaging when it matters
What do you need from cloud communication software?
Everyone’s needs from cloud communication software are going to be different.
In this article, I’ve tried to list out a number of my preferred tools across a range of use cases.
"Cloud communication" is a really broad term, but it generally refers to using third-party tools with their own cloud-based services to enable you to speak to someone else or to connect people so they can speak or message with each other.
There are also a series of secondary or support use cases.
These might include specific tools or software designed to make certain use cases more efficient, to make workflows smoother, or to connect different pieces of software together.
They could also involve other tools that help improve reporting around cloud communications, rather than providing the communication itself.
The use of cloud communication software is an essential part of day-to-day business activities, and you'll find very common use cases for both internal and external business communication. You will also see these capabilities across a huge array of social platforms and peer-to-peer tools.
The options for cloud communications now are broader than ever before, and there are solutions for pretty much any use case you can think of.
Cloud communication command center: Telerivet
Telerivet is a cloud communication all-rounder.
Telerivet is both a connectivity provider and a connectivity command center.
You can use Telerivet as a provider for adding messaging to what you are building, where Telerivet functions as a dev tool and connectivity source.
Alternatively, Telerivet can connect to your third-party connectivity relationships, where you bring connectivity in from outside—from a platform like Telesign or Twilio, or providers local to you—and plug their routes and channels into Telerivet, so you can manage it from this unified central location.
This dual threat makes Telerivet stand out from the field.
If you’re a large company operating across time zones, across countries, and across languages, then you already know how much of a challenge connectivity can be.
You’ll know the difficulties of providing cloud communications when you need to do it via different channels and work with different local providers.
This challenge becomes even more pronounced as you try to deliver a consistent, uniform service across these different channels and providers. For example, you might be attempting to provide the same kind of workflows via SMS in one location as you are trying to provide via WhatsApp in another.
And replicating those workflows via interactive voice calls that allow a person to go through a series of questions and answers, much like they would via text, adds another layer of complexity.
Telerivet brings all of this into one place by centralizing that connectivity and letting you plug everything in.
This means, yes, you can set up simple messaging campaigns and voice calling. You can do the basic dev tool functions of cloud communication. But you can also integrate all these other products, channels, providers, and services—and control them all from a single location—so that you don’t have to build and rebuild every campaign 10 times over, or more.
With Telerivet, you can manage campaigns and configure connectivity while expending fewer resources, less time, and providing a better experience for the end user. All while having optionality that helps you optimize your connectivity spends.
Done-for-you cloud communication: Teams
Sometimes you don’t need cloud communication that you can configure and customize. Sometimes you need cloud communication for an internal use case or to collaborate easily with clients or other stakeholders. A really easy example here is Teams.
Now, most people reading this will have some experience with either Teams or Slack or similar platforms from different companies they’ve worked at.
Honestly, my personal preference is Slack over Teams.
However, in many ways, Teams offers more than Slack when it comes to communication and being a one-size-fits-all platform. Teams is both a direct competitor to Slack and a direct competitor to Zoom, while Slack competes with Zoom but hasn’t taken as much of its market share.
How often does someone invite you to a meeting with their organization and send you a link to Slack? It’s not very common.
Much more common is being sent a link to Teams, Zoom, or Google Meet.
Teams is the closest the cloud communication world has to a single, unified offering. It provides voice calling, video calling, messaging, voice notes, file sharing, and more.
A lot of organizations are also already within the Microsoft ecosystem, and this makes Teams an easier choice.
So, for internal communications and communication with external stakeholders, Teams ticks quite a few boxes.
One of my favorite little features that Teams offers is the ability to send and receive emails from within your Teams environment. This feels like a more modern way to engage with email.
That said, I use Slack daily, and it’s still my preferred platform of choice.
Customer service cloud communications: Zendesk
One of the biggest cloud communications use cases that we can’t go without addressing is customer service.
Customer service typically works on a tiered basis.
How those tiers work exactly depends on the organization in question, but the first tier of support might be given, for example, to non-paying users if we’re talking about a SaaS product. The type of support provided to those non-paying users will likely be text-based and may utilize templates and saved replies.
As you move up the support tiers, you're likely to access more information-dense forms of communication, such as video calls, screen sharing, and even remote desktop control.
These forms of communication help you provide the best customer service possible and ensure a quality experience for each and every customer.
In terms of money spent on cloud communications, customer service is likely second only to sales in how much companies choose to invest in their communications for this use case.
My choice of tool for this is Zendesk.
Zendesk is a good choice for the parameters we’ve laid out in this conversation because Zendesk is an all-in-one tool and provides a complete platform for your support and success needs.
Other tools I’ve given a shoutout to in this category before include Intercom, which I’ve used many times at different companies (and which we use here at Telerivet), and Help Scout—a simpler, cheaper, and more streamlined support solution for those a little earlier in their startup journey.
Zendesk provides all the communication features you’d like to have, and it’s one of the market leaders in the customer support and success space.
Identity verification API: Telesign
As cloud communications become ubiquitous on the internet, solutions are needed to protect us from ourselves.
The internet has many wonderful elements, but it is also open to malicious users and the exploitation of trust.
One way we can try to make a safer and more trustworthy online space is by having stronger identification and verification processes.
You can see this movement within many online technological shifts. We saw it, for example, in efforts to productize the Blockchain, with the promise of creating zero-trust flows where verification occurred at every step of the journey.
These haven’t proven to be as successful as hoped, but that doesn’t mean more traditional approaches aren’t both popular and successful.
Attempts at verification range from very simple to very complicated.
For example, the dating app Bumble offers users the ability to upload a photo of themselves holding up a specified number of fingers. That photo is then verified by a real person to ensure it matches the photos on their dating app profile.
This is a very low-tech form of verification, but a very effective one.
Here, however, we’re offering you a much more sophisticated solution for identity verification. The Telesign API can be plugged into your product and used to scan and verify IDs from a huge number of countries across the world.
The data that Telesign can extract is then verified across vast databases and other public information to confirm that a person is who they say they are.
If you're going to offer communication within your platform, the responsible thing to do is check whether you need to ensure safety through verification.
If so, check out Telesign—it might be a good option for you.
Cloud communications tools for sales: Gong
Finally, I thought we’d add a supplementary tool.
As we mentioned earlier in the article, a high-value use case for cloud communications is sales.
People love to hop on sales calls, create sales videos, lead sales presentations, and host webinars. Connectivity and communication software are necessary to make all of this happen.
Sales is also an area where you can yield a lot of benefit and value from optimizing the process.
If you can optimize the calls in a sales process and increase the number of calls by 10%, then you may well directly increase deal flow by 10%, increase the pipeline by 10%, and the end result that brings in revenue could be significant.
This is a really important area to optimize, and a lot of money is spent on it for that reason.
This tool, Gong, is one such optimizer.
I’ve been at multiple companies that have used Gong, and everyone always likes it.
Gong records your sales calls and analyzes them. It provides you with a transcript so you can see what was said and what points you made. It can provide feedback, sentiment analysis, and allow you to assess and analyze that data in aggregate later on.
So, if I want to do some customer research and I want to know how many customers are saying they can’t afford the price during sales calls, or how many want to hear about the next pricing tier up, Gong can provide me with the answers to these questions.
I can also go into each sales call to find the relevant part of the conversation for each instance, giving me both the quantitative data and the qualitative data to assess and understand customer or prospect perspectives on the price points we offer, for example.
This is also great for sales training and for optimizing your messaging.
Gong is easy to use and very popular among tech startups.
Give it a try and see how it works for your business.
Telerivet: Messaging when it matters
Trusted by Fortune 500 companies, NGOs, governments, cutting-edge tech firms, and universities in 150+ countries, Telerivet's cloud-based platform makes it reliable, resilient, and flexible to communicate at scale via text and voice.
Engage your audience anywhere
Ensure complete global service reach that supports large-scale communication via text, voice, chat, and micropayments.
Trust our tech when you need it
High reliability for essential communication needs.
Tailored solutions for your needs
Create engagements and workflows that fit your needs with our solutioning engine, APIs and campaign builder.
“Our lives are a million times easier because of Telerivet. We're growing exponentially, doubling our reach every year... and it's Telerivet's technology that makes this all possible.” - MyAgro
Sign up now or contact us to chat about how we can help you implement reliable, resilient, and flexible communications.