What is WebRTC and why should I care?

Ludovic Leclerc

October 22, 2018

Customer engagement is crucial to ensure your customers are happy. WebRTC lets you interact real time to make sure they keep coming back.

It’s clear that people have changed the way they consume. That means the Internet, Web browsers, and businesses have had to adapt to keep up. Interacting with customers to deliver product promotions, close on sales, or provide after sales support requires real time communications, and is a crucial part of a digital engagement strategy to attract, and retain customers.

You know all of that really cool stuff you can do on your phone, like message your bank advisor through your mobile bank app, or connect with an agent in real-time through the hotel app when you are trying to book a room, or get in touch with the concierge when you finally get to the hotel? Well, WebRTC lets you do all that. Didn’t know that did you?

WebRTC stands for Web Real-Time Communication. It is an open-source project that provides web browsers and mobile applications with real-time communication (RTC) multimedia capabilities using simple application programming interfaces (APIs).

From a customer experience point of view, it means you can directly interact with a vendor or an institution via instant text messaging, audio and video conversation, anywhere there is an Internet connection, and from the device of your choice.

WebRTC, however, doesn’t just benefit customers. It can also provide communications and collaboration between teams in the workplace. Employees, like consumers, need modern tools to communicate in real-time from anywhere and on any device.

Many businesses, from small to large, still rely on traditional business telephony systems with phones adapted to their specific needs. These include desk phones for office workers and DECT or Wi-Fi devices for employees with on-site mobility requirements. To get the most from WebRTC and traditional business telephony systems, businesses must ensure that the existing communications server can interconnect with the platform that will provide over-the-top WebRTC real-time communications capabilities.

With decades of experience in providing business communications solutions for enterprises, ALE has adopted WebRTC as the core technology for, Rainbow™, its new cloud platform which delivers over-the-top unified communications and collaboration services to customers. Rainbow can interconnect with a customers’ existing communications server, and provides a gateway WebRTC to integrate smoothly with the fixed and mobile telephony. There is no need for an expensive and disruptive equipment rip-and-replace. Adoption is easy and it provides a path for companies looking to digitally transform.

Visit our webpage to learn more about the ALE Rainbow platform enhanced features and how they can help in your digital engagement with end-customers (http://www.openrainbow.com/).