Isn’t the modern world amazing?

What really impresses me, even working in telecoms every day, is just how connected we all are. Traditional communications, like being able to video-call anyone anywhere in the world, are taken for granted. But the next generation of capabilities, the new wave of expectations from connected customers, require more impressive feats.

Today’s consumers are driven by new demands and expectations for frictionless experiences across every channel. They don’t care about what channel they interact with, they merely have expectations of what they want done.

When we consider a typical customer, we need to think about their expectations, and how we deliver.

Customer expectations and how we deliver them

• Convenience—we give them dash buttons to order products instantly.
• Speed – same-day fulfilment of whatever they need, be it a product or real-time support.
• Efficiency – voice and fingerprint recognition saves them from remembering login codes. Empowerment – that comes from having their questions and feedback answered and acted on.
• Authenticity – we aim to behave honestly, openly, and consistently in all our communication.

A massive part of how we deliver these expectations is through the use of technology powered by Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). API’s allow us to develop software more rapidly than before.

With API’s it’s feasible for development teams to be given an idea and deliver a working app in a few hours. That’s part of the speed customer expect.

We also use APIs to manage and connect with IoT devices, just like those convenient dash buttons.

The unseen security complexities of efficient login processes are easily solved with APIs such as two-factor authentication, automatic voice fraud detection and more.

They can help us build integrated contact centres that give agents the contextual information they need to delight customers. Combining all our customer service channels can help deliver with the omni-channel authentic user experience that our customers expect.

We at Tata Communications not only use our APIs to streamline internal processes and products, but deliver them to others. We can improve customer experiences on a global level by helping other providers meet these new expectations of speed, convenience, and more. We’re excited to be offering our APIs to the world and seeing what you create with them.

I’ll tell you this: it’s never too soon to get going. The speed of change I’m seeing is relentless. Customer expectations are getting higher by the hour.