What Twilio Brings You

Twilio is one of the most frequently chosen platforms that provides a simple and scalable way of customer service that suits you. Currently, it covers dozens of countries. The platform offers many tools to use in your business, but while focusing on the topic of this article, there are a few functionalities you may choose from: SMS or WhatsApp messaging, voice or video calls/conferences and emails.

Do you contact the client by phone, but also have email or chat communication inside the company? Or maybe you use all of these channels to contact a client? Twilio provides you with one solution for all your needs. You can integrate all of these tools through powerful Twilio APIs. You can manage them from one platform; the Manage console is very flexible and intuitive, and its configuration is pretty easy.

If you have questions about a tool, do not know how to configure something or are looking for the optimal solution for your company, where to look for help? Of course, Twilio has solutions in this case as well. They have extensive documentation of their products so that you understand what you can expect and what they offer, their blog regularly includes articles with topics of interest to customers, a whole set of answers to a FAQ section and a very responsive support department. It all means that you will not be left alone with your problem.

But, what can you do when having communication channels is not enough?

Laravel Comes to the Rescue

So, you are in a place where a tool for handling many more tasks turns out to be indispensable. What are your options then? To be honest, there are plenty of them. If we were to discuss at least the most important ones, we would need a few more articles. From our side of the fence, we can definitely recommend Laravel. Why can Laravel be the best option? It is a reliable basis for building flexible and fast applications that collect, process and visualize everything you care about. Here are some of its strengths:

• Outstanding security

Laravel offers some of the best security features on the market. It doesn’t allow any malware activities and completely inhibits security threats.

• Future-ready applications

In the IT world, things are changing all the time. Every year, new technologies are showing up. With more upgrades, Laravel is known to adapt to the times, so your application doesn’t have to deal with outdated practices.

• Better performance

This framework offers better overall performance through the use of a number of built-in plug-ins and tools. These are often integrated during the initial build, so they can be utilized throughout the entire development process.

• Route caching

These days, no one has the patience to sit around and wait. The route caching included in Laravel makes sure that you get the fastest site speed possible.

• Open-source platform

It is a platform that has a support system of active users and is free. It is easily customizable and can be amended at any stage of the developmental process. Open-source platforms are much better for businesses that need to adapt and change along the way.

Practical Example

Let's see how such a system can work and how it can help you. For simplicity, we will only consider an attempt to automate the voice hotline, along with the creation of a tool for monitoring the current traffic and collecting quantitative and qualitative reports. Here are a few steps showing how to create such a system:

Step 1

How to automate traffic before connecting the client to the agent? For example, we can do this in Twilio Studio. This simple tool helps us to create even a very extensive network of paths that the client can follow to obtain the expected information. At this stage, we can, for example, authorize the user in order to provide him with relevant data, create something like a FAQ or redirect the caller to the appropriate agent. Knowing the customers’ needs and possibly giving them a simple answer significantly reduces the tension on the line and enables faster customer service. An additional advantage is the possibility of redirecting such a connection to other tools or CRMs, where we already have a customer base, or can create appropriate tickets. The whole process may continue there.

Step 2

We have already created a customer service scenario, we have connected it to the appropriate telephone numbers, i.e. we have already completed the first automation process. Now, there is a need to make a transparent way to monitor current traffic and track customer choices. This will help us make the best use of human resources and optimize waiting times and customer service in general. This is where Laravel comes in. On its basis, we build a simple application that is ready for expansion. Thanks to the ease of integrating Twilio with external services, we are able to quickly incorporate it into the application. Then, in the Twilio console, we configured something called Webhooks. We directed them to our application, thanks to which we will be able to receive requests about every change that occurs in the system. This connection with the Twilio API allows us to collect data on current calls, transform or calculate them accordingly and help the application users visualize them. The visualization method is optional, depending on the investor's preferences. This is how we came to have a full, real-time view of the situation.

Step 3

Performing the above steps may take us a bit further. Since we collect data on ongoing connections, we do not need to get rid of it, we can store it for reporting. Twilio provides a lot of detailed information, so we can collect a lot of data. The data we may need is, for example: who called? What language was chosen? Which branch of the company did they contact? How much time did they spend on specific activities (listening to instructions, waiting for a connection, talking to a consultant, authorization)? There can be many more factors like these, depending on their value for a business. The previously built application can be extended with just such functionality, thanks to which we can come back and view reports from any period.

Step 4

The next stage helpful for business may be graphical imaging of specific ratios in relation to the desired periods, creating periodic reports/work results, or exporting data files necessary for the analysis of the company results or development planning.

Laravel + Twilio - Is It for You?

This is just the beginning of how the collaboration between Twilio and a Laravel-based application can automate and improve customer service. Twilio offers us a multitude of possibilities, the ease with which it can be integrated with other services or applications and the simplicity with which you can connect to the API and extract the appropriate data. Laravel gives us flexibility and freedom to build applications, speed of operation and the ability to withstand heavy loads. If you are wondering whether it can meet your expectations and your business requirements, we will be happy to talk about it some more.

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Watch the recording of our recent webinar organized together with GreenWay and Twilio! 🚀

In this webinar, we demonstrate how GreenWay improved customer engagement by implementing Twilio Studio with the assistance of our team. A sneak peek into the results reveals that end users experienced a smoother, quicker, and more efficient process when accessing GreenWay's call support.