Communication remains a top priority for most industries. While businesses benefit from an omnichannel approach to communicating, voice calling is still a preferred method among demographics. According to CMS Wire, 42% of consumers prefer to call a business to resolve issues.
Integrating voice into your client or company’s applications can help them provide a better customer experience, allowing users to call the business for support and inquiries. A voice API is a simple method of implementing voice calling services into your organization’s software and systems.
Voice APIs are offered by cloud-based communication providers and allow you to implement calling in a simple solution. When you work with a modern Communications Platform as a Service (CPaaS) provider, you can deliver reliable and scalable calling to your client or company with an API. Finding an ideal partner is essential to ensuring a seamless and tailored solution.
What Is a Voice API, and How Can It Enhance Business Communications?
An application programming interface (API) is a piece of software that allows two separate systems to connect and share features and functions. A voice API lets you integrate voice calling solutions from a cloud-based communication provider into your client or company’s system.
You can implement calling into apps, websites, and customer relationship management (CRM) systems and build automated solutions like IVRs using a voice API. Voice calls are made using a Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) network or Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) trunk on a cloud-based platform.
VoIP delivers digital calling over the internet, allowing callers to communicate with other VoIP phone systems and public switched telephone networks (PSTNs). A programmable voice API lets your client or company make and receive calls from within an app, website, or another piece of software. For example, if your organization has an e-commerce website, users can interact with a click-to-call button to contact the business with questions or requests. Since VoIP is hosted in the cloud, it reduces the cost of calling and offers reliable and scalable service with various enterprise-grade features.
What Are the Benefits and Features of a Voice API?
A voice API from a cloud-based communication platform can offer various business-enhancing features. Cloud-based voice also provides several advantages over traditional carriers, namely scalability, reliability, flexibility, and cost-effectiveness, to help you deliver a seamless solution.
Scalability
A voice API using a VoIP solution offers exceptional scalability. The inherent elasticity of the cloud ensures your client or company has the calling capacity it needs to receive incoming calls. Since VoIP solutions dynamically scale in the cloud, your business won’t need to invest in onsite infrastructure and hardware to handle high call volumes. As long as it has enough bandwidth, its voice services can scale up to meet demands.
Reliability
Reliability is essential in maintaining your company or client’s critical voice applications. An API provider that offers 24/7 availability and uptime exceeding 99.99% will ensure your applications are accessible from anywhere with an internet connection. Resilient VoIP platforms use dynamic routing with physical failover to guarantee delivery of voice calls by failing over to another physical network when there is an outage or interruption.
Related: Custom Voice Solutions: The Role of Voice API for Developers
While APIs are a simple way to connect two pieces of software over the internet, they can also expose your client or company’s systems to malicious actors. A survey in Security Intelligence found that outdated APIs are a primary concern for more than half of the respondents. An up-to-date and secure API can reduce your organization’s vulnerability to API-based cyberattacks.
Voice API providers can ensure the security of your company’s communications. Reputable service providers maintain their APIs and microservices using version-control systems like GitHub repositories or Docker containers. An up-to-date and secure API will harden your business or client’s communications.
Flexibility and Mobility
Voice APIs offer the flexibility needed to deliver a seamless solution to your company or client. When you implement a voice API into your organization’s software or systems, authorized users can access the service remotely. Cloud-based VoIP allows users to connect from anywhere with a stable internet connection and provides a consistent calling experience. It offers a solution for distributed workforces and businesses serving a national or international market.
Cost-Effectiveness
In addition to reducing your investment in costly onsite infrastructure and equipment, such as private branch exchange (PBX) systems, a voice API can also deliver affordable calling. VoIP requires less costly installation and maintenance, and calls can be made at a fraction of the cost of traditional carriers.
VoIP calling can deliver significant savings for companies making international and long-distance calls too. Since calls are made over the Internet, your organization can interact with customers and business partners as normal with fewer long-distance and international charges.
Business-Enhancing Features
While a scalable, reliable, and cost-effective option is essential in delivering a voice solution for your company or client, advanced features can help you deliver a tailored solution. A voice API from a reputable platform provides enterprise-grade features. Voice calling features your organization might be considering include the following:
- E911
- Direct inward dialing (DID)
- Dynamic call routing
- Remote call forwarding
- CNAM caller ID
- Phone number masking
- Click to call
Using a programmable voice API, you can create a tailored solution with the features your client or company needs and wants. Voice service providers can also offer security-enhancing features like live network monitoring, destination restriction, rate limiting, and toll-fraud monitoring to help prevent issues due to suspicious activity.
How Can an API Make Your Voice Integration Seamless?
An API can minimize the hours spent coding and testing an application or feature, offering simple implementation in a few lines of code and a solution that is ready in minutes. You can use microservices to integrate additional features like phone number masking and click-to-call functions.
Related: Building Voice Solutions: The Power of Programmable Voice APIs
A reputable service provider will keep the API and microservices secure and up to date, enhancing the security of your application and your company’s communications when you use the latest versions.
What to Look for in an API Provider
When delivering voice solutions, working with a reputable API provider is crucial to implementing a reliable application. An excellent cloud-based voice platform will provide a secure, easy-to-implement API that offers scalable, reliable, and cost-effective calling.
Scalability and Reliability
A reliable and scalable cloud communications partner ensures that critical voice applications are available 24/7 and have the calling capacity to handle high volumes of traffic. You can reduce downtime and interruptions, providing business continuity to your client. A scalable voice service allows your organization to gain the full advantages of a cloud-based platform.
Affordability
While a VoIP platform is typically more affordable than traditional carriers and has a smaller initial investment, it’s wise to partner with a service provider offering flexible metered calling. A metered pricing plan ensures your client or company only pays for the calls made during a billing cycle.
Instead of being tied to a flat-rate plan that offers a limited number of calls at a fixed price, your organization can make as few or as many calls as it requires with minimal financial consequences. A flexible metered plan also allows you to evaluate and test the voice API without high initial startup costs.
Ease of Implementation
One of the primary advantages of a voice API is ease of implementation. APIs can be integrated into your organization or client’s systems in a few lines of code. However, finding an API partner that offers documentation in popular programming languages, such as PHP, .NET, and Python, is critical.
Documentation will help you implement a tailored solution for your client or company. Reputable cloud-based communication platforms provide software development kits (SDKs), use cases, and quickstarts to help you implement an ideal voice solution.
A representational state transfer (REST) architecture can create lightweight, resource-friendly APIs. Voice APIs written in the REST architecture are highly compatible and easy to implement. They use common HTTP commands like GET and PUT and popular data types like HTML, plain text, and PHP.
API communication between the client and server is stateless, meaning no information will be stored between requests, and interactions are streamlined with cached data. A REST API is an ideal solution for implementing seamless voice communications.
Integrate Seamless Voice Solutions With a Reputable Voice Platform
As a developer, seamlessly implementing voice into your organization’s applications doesn’t have to be a full-blown project. With the right APIs from a reputable provider, you can integrate all the calling features your client wants without the hassle of coding and development.
Flowroute is a CPaaS provider that offers flexible voice APIs for simple integrations with your client or company’s applications. Our voice network is built on our resilient and scalable HyperNetwork™, providing dynamic call routing with physical failover, near-unlimited scalability, and security features to protect your client or organization’s communications. We offer documentation and version-controlled systems to help you implement the services and features your organization needs in your preferred programming languages. Get started today with a flexible voice API from Flowroute.
