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June 27, 2013

Happy Shopping Ahead with TokBox's OpenTok for Customer Service


It's hard to imagine a business out there that doesn't need customer service in some way. The better customer service a business can provide, the more likely those customers are to return later and continue making purchases. TokBox, meanwhile, was looking to please its own users by allowing companies to pass on the happy to customers with TokBox's new OpenTok for Customer Service.

OpenTok for Customer Service joins several other updates for OpenTok, and focuses on the use of Web-based real time communications (WebRTC) in a bid to provide a whole new avenue for customers to make contact with businesses. Not only can the tools found in OpenTok for Customer Service, at last report, be easily added to current call center solutions, but it also allows for the future potential to have customer service agents call in an expert to help answer customer questions.

The potential to go beyond the call center is also a possibility, as schedule booking services and the like find useful possibilities in OpenTok for Customer Service. It's even been suggested that developers could take this technology and use it in the creation of a small call center operation right in-house, which in turn can provide further augmentation for customer service operations.

As much potential as OpenTok for Customer Service has, it wasn't the only thing that TokBox, a presenter at WebRTC Conference & Expo this week in Atlanta, had to bring out. There were updates to the regular OpenTok system—including the ability to “shape” audio and video traffic so as to better work with the vagaries of different networks to make sure everyone on the call has the best experience that can be had—as well as a new introduction, the Cloud Raptor software development kit (SDK). Cloud Raptor can allow for a whole new set of tools, like a real-time feed of events for things like joining calls, interrupted connections, and changes in signal. This information in turn can allow developers to bring in some previously unrealizable changes, like the ability to track how long a WebRTC call ran, and not just from the client side. However, Cloud Raptor is only offering tools for event data, not for content; developers won't be able to listen in on a WebRTC call.

The clear major development here, however, is in OpenTok for Customer Service. Being able to improve on a field that both offers rewards for success and punishes for failure—a bad experience can do untold damage in terms of word of mouth, often amplified by the effects of social media—is the kind of thing that many businesses will likely have a hard time easily turning away. Especially given the state of the larger economy right now; businesses can scarcely afford an offended customer in an environment that's a buyer's market for virtually everything.

OpenTok for Customer Service, meanwhile, will likely prove one more valuable tool in the toolbox for businesses eager to close any potential gaps between customers and sales. Showing clearly the power of WebRTC in business—not to mention the potential for developers thanks to the steadily growing number of endpoints that can use the platform—TokBox is positioning itself very well as a provider of this new technology, though it will likely have plenty of competition before much longer.




Edited by Alisen Downey
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