An e-commerce business wants to communicate with their customers via text messaging, voice, and video calls. They want to tell customers when their order is ready, send reminders of appointments with them, or simply to get feedback about their purchase.
However, their current business model only allows customers to write emails to them.
To allow text, voice, and video calls to happen, the e-commerce business would need to either:
- hire the developers who know how to write the codes from scratch to enable those functions, test and maintain them
- acquire an existing communication business and use their voice/messaging software
- rent CPaaS over cloud
What’s CPaaS?
CPaaS stands for Communications Platform as a Service.
It is simply a type of API that allows you to embed voice and messaging functions to your website/app/business.
These APIs are created by companies that have already built functioning APIs to enable those features (or what we call Real Time Communications, RTC). They put together the APIs, code samples, guidebooks, and provide any integration support, so that you can integrate with those APIs successfully and enable those RTC features for your business.
The CPaaS vendors will (usually) provide:
- API endpoints
- Software Development Kits (SDKs, or ‘devkits’) that contains instructions, libraries and code examples for building applications on desktop/mobile
- Integrated Development Environments (IDEs) — an interface to write and test codes
- support and product documentation to help developers integrate, test and use the API
- tech support by the CPaaS provider (tutorials, guides, 24/7 chatbot)
Just like any other PaaS business model, you pay for how much you use, or how much calls you make to their server. It’s a cloud-based service, so it’s entirely accessible over the internet, and there’s no need to purchase a server, infra, or storage to start using them.
Examples of CPaaS functions:
- OTP/2FA to verify user or phone number identity during account creation or login (trigger OTP to your customer’s phones)
- inbound voice routing (call comes in, webhook is triggered, system follows a set of instructions on how to route based on responses)
- SMS API — send messages to your customers, and allow them to respond to you (confirm appointments!)
- Chatbots for real-time support using AI
A great benefit of using CPaaS is that it’s easily scalable and customizable. Without adopting a whole suite of communication tools, a business can choose which functions to embed to their service by integrating with the specific APIs.
An example of a CPaaS would be WhatsApp API. When a e-commerce business integrates with WhatsApp API, they can leverage the existing messaging, voice, and video call features of WhatsApp to talk to WhatsApp users. Instead of relying on-site chat support via the e-commerce site, their support agents reach out to customers via WhatsApp, and customers can receive those messages from their own WhatsApp and reply at their own time.
Today, there are 2.2 billion active users of WhatsApp. But these are still mostly peer-to-peer communications. Imagine the volume and type of conversations that businesses can have with their customers when they enter the space.
WhatsApp Business API integration: How to get started
The hard way — direct integration
There are a few differences integrating with the usual REST APIs vs WhatsApp APIs.
To use WhatsApp API, you need to install the WhatsApp Business API Client. This client will be used to interact with the WhatsApp server. You will send the usual REST API calls via https, and receive incoming messages via webhooks.
The WA Business API client consists of:
- WebApp node — to handle both authentication and authorisation of WA Business API Users, accepts incoming REST API calls from your business and forwards them to CoreApp nodes.
- CoreApp nodes — receive the REST API calls from WebApp node, and sends messages to WhatsApp server, receives messages from WhatsApp server and sends messages to your Webhook server
- Database — to store business’ encryption keys, and store data for the WA Business API client (messages, contacts, configurations)
- Media volume — stores media files
- Webhook server — receives HTTP messages from CoreApp nodes
Notice that unlike other API integrations, the WhatsApp Business API Client includes a database.
The WhatsApp Business On-Premises API Client requires a database to stores keys to decrypt messages sent between a business and customers. All messages on WhatsApp are encrypted with sender and receiver keys. Customer keys are stored on their mobile device and business keys are stored in the business’ database.
Alternative: The WhatsApp Business Cloud API is an alternative wherein Meta hosts a business’ database. The Cloud API allows you to implement WhatsApp Business APIs without the cost of hosting of your own servers.
The easier way — via a BSP
Currently, it’s not possible to do direct installation for new customers. Businesses need to contact a Business Service Partner (BSP). The chosen BSP provides applications and tools to help customers integrate WhatsApp.
Choose a BSP from Meta’s Partner Directory. From the BSP’s website, login with your Facebook account.Then, follow a 3 step process to set up or connect the necessary accounts. To use this function, the Facebook Business Account will be associated with your WhatsApp Business Account.
With that, you can start using the BSP’s tools to send messages to your customers. The BSP will be responsible for supporting your business with the technical integration of the WhatsApp Business Platform, and manage your WhatsApp Business Account.
The BSP may also have existing integrations with other service providers like Hubspot, Zapier, to allow you to integrate your messaging content to CRM and other providers.
At any given time, you can only have one instance of the WhatsApp Business API Client running for a single phone number. As soon as you register a second instance, your first instance will get kicked off and fail.
Closing thoughts
Customers today expect more convenient customer support platforms for them to get help, or simply to share a feedback. Gone are the days where they are happy to fill up a physical form at the shop, or send an email to the business email address and wait 3 working days for a response. The companies who can provide great customer service, or influence their purchasing decisions, need to meet where customers are.
Simply because the alternatives are too difficult, CPaaS is the most convenient way for small and medium sized businesses to rent the communication tools required to communicate to their customers. But once a company scales beyond a certain size, they might want to consider building their own communication tools especially if they have very special needs.
After gaining worldwide traction, WhatsApp API is an ingenius way for WhatsApp to start monetizing their services without actually charging the WhatsApp users for it.
From a WhatsApp business perspective, integrating via BSP does not seem ideal as the BSPs often promote their suite of communication tools, with WhatsApp being just one component of it. This means that a business that just wants to work with WhatsApp API, will be forced to adopt the other tools alongside it.
A small point to note — because of the organisation structure between Facebook and Whatsapp, there is an added complication of associating Facebook Business and WhatsApp Business accounts. The sign up process could have been simpler with either of the accounts.
