CPaaS Poised for Significant Growth in 2024

By all accounts, in 2023, communications platform as a service (CPaaS) had a significant year. Companies in the arena such as Twilio, Avaya, Vonage, and MessageBird saw sizable gains in their CPaaS businesses. 

Bandwidth said it's doing so well in the CPaaS space that it decided to launch a formal partner program to boost sales in the area. RingCentral chose to bring its CEO back into the fold, wanting to continue progress it made since it dipped its toes into the CPaaS pool, although not wholly turning its back on residential phone service.

The research team at Metrigy predict that growth to continue.

Beth Schultz, the firm's vice president of research and principal analyst, cited a 2023 MetriCast report.

"Already, 62% of 1,695 companies in Metrigy’s Customer Experience MetriCast 2023 global research study have either adopted a CPaaS platform (38.5%) or plan to do so by year’s end (23.5%)."

The report noted that an additional 22% see CPaaS as a road map they will deliver on as soon as this year. They also said they evaluate the use of CPaaS for their customer experience (CX) purposes.

CPaaS in 2024 Will Offer a Lot to the Enterprise

With most experts in agreement that CPaaS will make big strides in 2024, Shultz notes that the technology is much more than simple APIs, writing that it offers "an attractive proposition" because it extends "all the tools and services they need to customize their CX offerings and layer real-time, cloud-based communications capabilities on top of existing business applications, websites or communications platforms." 

Related:The CF List: 2023's 20 Top CPaaS Providers You Should Know

One of those experts is Brian Gilman, chief marketing officer at IntelePeer, which pairs no-code solutions with an expertise in communications automation for the midmarket enterprise.

IntelePeer's Brian Gilman

"Medical offices wanting SMS for appointment reminders; even retailers looking to track packages can do so with CPaaS," Gilman told Channel Futures, adding that is merely the tip of the iceberg of what CPaaS can and will do for businesses in 2024.

CPaaS in 2024 will come down to more than APIs, he shared.

"It's more about automation," he said, noting that CPaaS is a developer-led motion with a lot of code and a "heavier build process." 

CPaaS in 2024 should consist of elegant visual design and automation tools that enable companies to reduce their reliance on developers, which are costly. According to FullStack Labs, developers can fetch a pretty penny, commanding between $385 and $850 per hour, depending on their experience.

Generative AI Will Impact CPaaS in 2024

Gilman reminds us that we recently celebrated one year since the original iteration of ChatGPT, "and that has greatly impacted customer interactions," he said.

With bots playing a noteworthy part in CPaaS, he does not expect it to stall. What Gilman does anticipate is that generative AI will bring a fresh set of capabilities to the world of automation.

"It can already handle things like empathy, multi-language discussions, and understands the nuance between 'yes' and 'sure,'" Gilman said.

A conversational AI model, Gilman claims, is not that advanced yet, and it might transfer customers to an agent even if they wish not to be. All this, he says, makes a case for generative AI becoming even more prominent in CPaaS in 2024.

"The percentage of use cases generative AI offers will all but transform the world in 2024," asserted Gilman.