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Reminder: The world is reopening (again)

Appointment reminders provide a crucial service in the healthcare industry, find out how Aculab Cloud can help alleviate stress and take your communication to another level.

Appointment reminders are critical to many industries around the world, now more than ever. From the crucial services to the downright fun, in the new world emerging from lockdown, we all need a little certainty in our lives.

CPaaS (Communications Platform as a Service) has been somewhat of an unsung hero during the pandemic, working behind the scenes to aid with delivering our food, keeping in contact with our loved ones and broadcasting pivotal healthcare messaging. However, its use is far from over. As we all start to surface from our social hibernation, many industries that have clung on through the past year are now facing new problems that CPaaS can be an integral tool in helping to solve.

Reopening Anxiety

A recent survey undertaken by Anxiety UK showed while 37% of respondents are looking forward to returning to normal life, nearly an equal percentage (36%) are worried about post lockdown life. Of those who were feeling anxious about the lifting of restrictions, nearly half cited the pressures of socialising generally as their biggest concern.

Any type of life change is associated with stress and anxiety," said Marney White , a clinical psychologist at the Yale School of Public Health. "Even if the change is exciting.

As a large part of anxiety stems from the unknown, appointment reminders/ confirmations can be a huge help in combatting the worries of venturing out into public settings, especially high-risk environments such as health centres. With CPaaS, your patients could book a consultation in advance and receive multiple reminders in the days or even hours before the booking, with the ability to reply to the service to confirm their attendance.

Speaking from experience, this control over the situation is a great tool in helping to take the first steps in approaching anxiety-inducing situations.

Healthcare

We all know what our healthcare providers have done for us over the past year, and how different the world may have looked without them. From the ICU saving countless lives to a record breaking vaccination rollout, we can now start to, cautiously but optimistically, look towards the future.

As we do, we believe that our healthcare providers need a bit of respite care of their own. With CPaaS being a secure, HIPAA compliant platform, medical staff can utilise many of its features to take some pressure off where possible.

Automated appointment reminders are useful, but when combined with two-way communication become instrumental to an up-to-date healthcare solution. Allow patients to be in control of their appointments, reducing no-shows and boosting the patient experience.

In today’s world, it feels like everyone and their Grandmother has a mobile phone. However this isn’t the case in all areas of the globe. Surprisingly, 25% of Canadians do not use a mobile (cellular) device. This is due to many areas of the country being very remote with no cell service, a pattern shown in other countries with large areas of wilderness. In these instances, SMS appointment reminders are of little use. Thankfully Aculab has an alternative solution, enabling automated reminders to be sent via voice channels allowing residents to enjoy the tranquillity of the wilderness with the convenience of modern healthcare providers.

With the UK’s NHS facing a waitlist of 5.1 million people awaiting routine survey (the largest number since records began), these additional services are now more crucial than ever. Of course this issue is not just UK-specific, as many countries around the world are facing similar delays that CPaaS could aid in alleviating.

But wait, there’s more

Appointment reminders are just the tip of the iceberg of Aculab Cloud’s features. Other powerful, programmable APIs include:

• Answering Machine Detection- The ability to detect whether a human or their voicemail picked up the call, quicker and more accurately than the competition
• Interactive Voice Response (IVR)- Develop custom IVR systems to create a seamless call experience for your customers
• TTS/Speech Recognition- Automate your voice applications with Amazon Polly TTS and Google Speech Recognition
• Click to call- Convert web traffic into paying customers by building voice capability into your website
• Broadcast messaging- Send mass voice and SMS notifications to thousands of recipients, fast

Get in touch

As the pandemic continues to evolve in nature, more and more businesses are having to adapt alongside in order to stay relevant in the ever changing ecosystem. If you think CPaaS could be the missing link in your healthcare model, contact Aculab to find out more.

How to choose a CPaaS Solution

Identify your CPaaS needs in 3 simple steps using this simple guide, mistakes to avoid when choosing a CPaaS solution and why you need CPaaS for your business

As working remotely has become more common during the pandemic, it comes as no surprise that in the ever-evolving business landscape, more organisations are considering implementing cloud-based communications to support their staff and increase workplace efficiency. In this article, we will introduce CPaaS, as well as the necessary steps to select the right platform for you and your business.

What is CPaaS?

Firstly, CPaaS, short for Communications Platform as a Service, is a cloud-based technology that allows real-time communication applications such as voice, video, SMS, and fax to be integrated into your business solutions using a number of different APIs (Application Programming Interfaces). It is widely used today in a variety of business sectors due to the ease of implementation and deployment, as well as being easily customisable.

Do I need it?

Using a CPaaS platform for your business can be very beneficial, to say the least, especially if your business is centred on customer interactions. CPaaS is currently used heavily in retail for example, to help process orders, gather feedback, promote goods, or handle enquiries.

CPaaS is also used heavily in the finance sector. From placing secure WebRTC calls to sending reminders for payment collections, CPaaS is freeing up resources and streamlining customer interactions. Below are just a few of the many benefits it is renowned for:

CPaaS selection for your business

Step 1: Identify your needs

To find the right CPaaS solution, you need to identify your business needs and consider your daily activities as well as the marketing processes. Then, highlight important steps and types of customer interactions. By listing out communication lags and issues within your business that you want to solve, you can determine which CPaaS features will be helpful to you.

It is vital for your communications platform to be compliant with the relevant regulations, both international and region-specific such as ISO 27001 (security), GDPR (data protection) & HIPAA (healthcare). Ensure your provider meets the necessary regulations by asking for compliance documents.

Ask your potential provider about their support in case of an outage or service interruption. Most top market CPaaS providers like Aculab offer a range of technical support contracts with a variety of service levels to suit the needs of all customers, as well as optional extras like 24/7 support coverage in case of emergencies.

A CPaaS can help your business become more successful and boost engagement, but first you need to be clear about your business goals.

Step 2: Check CPaaS Features and Tools

APIs function as the backbone of any CPaaS solution. Two important factors to keep in mind when considering a provider are scalability and customisation. You may look at a set of APIs from a provider and think it’s perfect for your current needs, but what about when your business grows and you need to make changes? Whether it’s voice, video, WebRTC, or SMS, your potential provider needs to be able to cater for your current and future plans, as well as make custom changes, specific to your business needs.

CPaaS providers tend to charge on a “pay as you go” basis, meaning you only pay for what you use. The ability to add additional functionality and upgrades down the line, whether it’s new communication components, APIs, security, or additional support coverage, combined with the “pay-as-you-go” model, ensures your CPaaS can evolve alongside your business, and allows you to scale your communications platform to your needs.

When dealing with cloud services and sensitive customer data, high security is a must to ensure peace of mind for your business and end-users. CPaaS providers should deliver high levels of security, for example encryption of media files at rest, crisp explanations of the locations where your data is being stored, and compliance to standards such as ISO 27001. Some also offer additional user authentication, such as voice biometrics - for example, Aculab’s VoiSentry.

If you’re placing outbound calls, for example to remind patients of medical appointments, issue test results, or notify utility customers of up-coming outages, ensure the CPaaS provider has highly accurate Answering Machine Detection (AMD). A good example of this is Aculab’s AI AMD which, with over 99% accuracy, has around one fifth the error rate of the industry norm.

If you’re considering using the CPaaS for voice calls, look at its support for Text-To-Speech and Speech Recognition, along with how easy it would be to integrate a dialog engine such as Google Dialogflow. The powerful and flexible dialogs we’re used to having with devices in the home, such as our smartphones or Amazon Alexa, are fast coming to voice calls - your CPaaS needs to support them.

For your business to use CPaaS for voice calls and SMS, your provider should be able to provide you with reliable service in the country/region of your choice. It is recommended that you look for a CPaaS provider with proven expertise in telecommunications, preferably one that is partnered with multiple carriers in the regions where you need to operate. This provides a more reliable service, as well as allowing quicker responses to carrier-related support tickets. Ask the provider what strategies they have in place in the event of an outage as well as what different levels of support coverage they offer.

Step 3: Test drive the CPaaS before choosing

You can always ask for a live demo or request to talk to an expert for answers to your questions about CPaaS. Opt for a free trial to test drive the CPaaS functionality and user experience. This trial period enables your management team and other team members to examine the CPaaS user-friendliness as well as its support.

Pay-as-you-go pricing, the industry norm for CPaaS, means that you only pay for what you use. However, you also only get what you pay for so, as well as price, look out for the vendor relationship, their quality of support, the platform’s features and, if you're placing automated outbound calls, its AMD accuracy.

Mistakes to avoid when choosing CPaaS

Summary

While there are numerous CPaaS which offer apparently similar features, not all CPaaS are equal. Aculab, one of the top CPaaS providers in the American healthcare sector, allows you to build HIPAA and HITECH compliant solutions. Our CPaaS technology is scalable and easy to use with powerful, programmable APIs, offering high levels of security and encryption, and a clear statement about where your data is stored. These, allied with leading-edge Voice Biometrics, AI-driven AMD, Text-To-Speech and Speech Recognition set Aculab apart from other cloud providers.

Learn More

For more information on CPaaS, please see our pages:

https://www.aculab.com/cpaas/

https://www.aculab.com/get-in-touch/