In today’s omnichannel world, your customers expect silky smooth customer journeys across channels. And for you to come out of the pandemic stronger, you need flexible and modular technology - no more sluggish monolith IT systems.
If you’re building an ecosystem for seamless customer engagement, then video customer contact is an essential part of your CX ecosystem. To embed video or other rich interactions as smoothly as possible, you need to create integrations tailor-made to your needs and workflows.
In this blog, discover 7 ways to smoothly integrate different elements of the video call journey into your website, app, agent journeys and IT ecosystem using our flexible API.
1. Scheduling
2. Booking & Availability
3. Notification messages
4. Having an embedded (video) interaction
5. Security: login & authorization
6. Manage recordings
7. Reviews & reporting
Case study. Vattenfall's Energy Scan via video
What an API for video-first customer contact does
An API integration enables a smooth integration of technology for customer contact on your own website or app. But technology made for video customer contact shouldn’t just power the video call itself. The right technology will offer modules that cover every step of the customer journey.
You can use an API integration to embed the different components of customer contact technology in the customer journey. The API allows you to create custom integrations with the technology on your own platforms. For example - on top of embedding the video call itself on your website - you can build an integration with appointment booking forms, your CRM system or review forms. Here’s how 👇
7 ways to embed video-first interactions in your customer journey
1. Scheduling a meeting with customers
First of all, you can build an API integration with your own CRM or Contact center system, so agents can easily schedule (video) meetings with clients from the environment they’re familiar with.
For example, our client Rabobank has built an integration of 24sessions in its CRM system. This API integration allows Rabobank mortgage advisors to easily schedule client meetings themselves or for someone else - in 2 clicks, from the portal they’re already working with.
You can embed a scheduling API within any leading CRM or customer engagement platform. For example, 24sessions integrates with Amazon Connect, Genesys or Salesforce.
To see which integration of video calling in the customer journey has built with the 24sessions API, click here to download our case study with Belgian health insurer Helan >
2. Booking & Availability: have customers book an appointment with you directly
A second way to use the API of your customer contact solution, is to integrate with your appointment booking system. That way, customers can book a (video) appointment directly from your website, app or login portal.
With embedded appointment booking, you allow customers to pick the time, date and even channel they prefer themselves. And if you like, build your own front-end on top of the API, so that the entire booking module shows your branding, and looks trusted to customers.
There are 3 ways customers at 24sessions use our Booking & Availability API:
Connect the booking API to your Outlook or Google calendars. The booking form on your website will then synchronize with your agents’ availability, so it will only show times when your agents are actually available.
Plus, with the Availability integration every new video appointment is automatically added to your agents’ calendars, and automated notifications of an upcoming meeting can be sent.
b) Super smooth appointment booking
If you’d like to go one step further, integrate your own appointment booking system or CRM with the booking module of your customer engagement technology.
The booking API will be able to talk to your CRM then. So when customers book a (video) appointment with your agents, your CRM automatically updates the customer info with the new appointment. And likewise, customers don’t need to enter all their personal data in the booking form - as most data is already pre-filled with the already existing info from your CRM.
Example from our client Vattenfall: booking an Energy Scan via video on the Vattenfall website.
- All the customer has to do is (1) pick a time & date and (2) click to confirm the video appointment.
- No need for customers to re-enter their personal data. They're already logged in to their customer account, so their data can be fetched from the API.
c) Value-based routing for different meeting types
This is where the real business value of a Booking API shows. Combine the Booking & Availability API with the different meeting types your agents have with customers, to enable value-based routing through the booking forms on your website.
Learn more about using Value-based routing here >
Reserve time slots in your agents’ availability for specific meeting types - like a client meeting that asks for faster follow-up, requires a certain expert’s specialist advice, or represents higher business value. That way clients looking to schedule a high-value or urgent meeting will be able to book an appointment faster, at more convenient time slot, for example for mortgage advice.
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Example from one of our clients: the booking form for video advice on a new mortgage (= high value client meeting): customers can choose time slots at the most convenient hours and can always book an appointment within 7 days.
3. Notification messages
Once an appointment with a customer is booked, the next step in the customer journey is that the customer receives notifications about the scheduled appointment. You send them an email or SMS to confirm the time and date of the meeting, and a reminder with the link they need to join the video meeting.
You can automate these notification messages using the ‘Notifications’ API module. A notifications API will allow you to control what types of notifications you send when a customer or agent schedules an appointment via the API. And you can also configure the timing of the messages - for example, to send an extra reminder email or SMS 1 day before the video meeting starts.
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See how our client Vattenfall has built custom notifications using our API >
4. Customer interactions embedded on your own app or website
When it’s time to start the video call, the default customer journey has the customer and agent go to a separate web page. But by embedding video calls or any type of customer interaction using an API, you can start and have a video call on your own platforms - your website, app, login portal or even an open chat.
Our API integration at 24sessions allows you to embed more than just a video call, but any type of customer interaction - you can also co-browse with customers, screen share or just have an audio call.
- Offer a better UX & trusted experience: customers join the interaction in 2 steps on your branded, familiar-looking website or customer portal. Embedding means customer land on a secure-looking environment when they open the video call link - that creates trust, especially considering phishing.
- Plus, improve agent experience & agent adoption. Agents can interact with customers directly from the CRM or a Contact Center system like Genesys - or any environment that they’re already working with.
There are 4 ways to start or join a video interaction embedded in your customer journey:
Use the API integration to have scheduled (video) meetings with customers directly on your own platforms.
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Discover all 4 ways to embed video interactions in your website or app >
b) Start an instant interaction with ‘click-to-call’
Add a custom link to your website or mobile app through the API integration, so that customers can click to request an instant video call. As soon as the customer clicks the button, the API will look for an available agent and connect them.
c) Escalate from a text chat
What if a customer is already in contact with one of your agents via chat, but they have a complex question or need urgent assistance? Build an integration of your video call technology into your chat solution.
That way, agents can escalate the chat conversation to a video call in 1 click - directly from the CRM or chat solution.
Example: starting an instant video call embedded in the Genesys environment
d) Start a scheduled video call embedded in your own login portal
You could even choose to show the link to an upcoming call within the customer login portal. Customers will then only have to login and click to join the video call to the top of their account - no need to look back in their email inbox to find the link.
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Discover all 4 ways to embed video interactions in your website or app >
5. Security: fast login & authorization for your agents
Do you use SAML (Security Assertion Markup Language)? With our API you can connect your 24sessions environment to your centralised identity system via SAML. That way agents will only have to login once to get access to all customer engagement platforms at the same time.
6. Compliance: manage recordings
Video technology made for customer engagement should allow you to record your client meetings. Not only so you can share meeting recordings with your customers and agents for notes, remarks and feedback, but also for compliance.
If you’re recording your client meetings, then you also need to manage them in a secure way. You can either choose to manage recordings of client meetings on our platform (always encrypted of course).
But you can also manage meeting recordings yourself. In that case, you use our API’s Recordings module to manage your recordings.
7. Reviews & Reporting of meeting data
Technology for video customer contact should include a Reviews & insights module - that you can build an API integration with. Because the last part of the customer journey is to ask for feedback, so you can track the performance of your video meeting with clients based on KPIs like popular timeslots, duration and Customer Satisfaction.
hanks to a Reviews & Reporting API, you integrate all data on the performance of your client video calls with your own custom dashboard or reporting tool, like Tableau. That way you keep your own overview on performance, and can share your results for video interaction with customers with stakeholders throughout the business.
Hungry for more API examples?
Like to see more examples of how our customers have used our API to embed video interactions in their customer journeys?
Energy provider Vattenfall has built a smooth customer journey for energy-saving advice via video using our API integration 👉 Download the Vattenfall Energy Scan case >
View all modules of the 24sessions API documentation here
