How to increase customer success with third-party integrations - Saasler - Saasler

Have you ever wondered how websites are able to capture share price from NYSE? Or how Dropbox is able to feed your files to another service? The answer can only be found in third-party integrations.

So, what are some solid advantages of third-party integrations for a customer?

Third-party integrations take user experience to the next level and help boost app loyalty and decrease churn rates.

Imagine you are running a holiday company website. You will have a well-maintained website that has some exquisite pictures and relevant data of the tour package to attract customers. However, your website might not provide information like average temperature in a month, currency details, etc. In some cases, customers might go back to Google and check for that information. However, chances are that you have lost a potential customer. Here comes the relevance of third-party integrations. By incorporating them, users can gather all the information they were looking for, without leaving your app.

Additionally, integrations help with a faster setup and onboarding process, as they provide users with a more seamless experience. In fact, integrations increase app functionality giving new users a faster, better experience. The easier it becomes for them to get started, the less amount of work it will take for them to enjoy the benefits, and the internal teams to continue the process.

Furthermore, integrations are a great way to build social proof, leverage positive brand associations, and provide customers with added value faster and over longer periods of time, by allowing them to import data from their other apps to test the wheels on yours without considerable delays. And, as a result, there is a considerable decrease in churn.

Here are a few ways integrations can help you increase customer success:

• Automation of workflows

The automation of workflows through integrations with in-house or other SaaS solutions is key for business success. That’s why third-party integrations not only help update the workflows smoothly and efficiently, but they can also place your app at the center of your users’ workflows.
They provide great benefits, because they help centralize key processes crucial to achieving business success.

• Smarter growth processes

With real-time, up-to-date data about leads, clients, and deals being exchanged from one application to another, third-party integrations are smart solutions for marketing and sales. Particularly now that the IoT is bringing digitization to all kinds of products and services, third-party integrations are allowing firms to expand into new and surprising markets.

Take the case of IBM’s Watson, a cognitive-computing technology that allows humans to make sense of large volumes of data. After IBM made its API public, Watson rapidly created growth opportunities and ecosystems in a variety of industries, like healthcare, shopping, and travel.

• Zero error

Third-party integrations can bring down the errors to zero. For instance, consumer loyalty will fall if the system keeps on sending notification messages to clients for an item they have already purchased. However, a well-managed API can unsubscribe clients (who bought an item) from an email list and prevent this error. Small, yet very critical feature.

• Better, more efficient tools

Integrations allow programmers to develop tools that perform tasks more efficiently than ever. For example, Google’s search API is used by a galore of applications to retrieve keywords. This means that developers can build tools by extracting data from open APIs, which in turn helps streamline business processes.

• Wider reach

Your services and other information relevant to your business can reach new audiences through integrations. People who aren’t regular users of your app can gain access to your services through other apps they use or test. Basically, integrations work as a growth engine by leveraging existing platforms of customer bases, allowing imports from existing apps (including your competitors), building microapps to increase brand awareness, etc.

For example, take companies like Hubspot or AppSumo, they create microapps, connect them to other apps with much larger user bases, like Salesforce, and take advantage of these micro tools to increase exposure and brand awareness.

• Customizability

One of the key advantages of an application integration is its capacity to give product makers and entrepreneurs more control over their applications. With a boundless number of potential mixes between cloud-based business applications, and the capacity to join them into an enhanced service, the sky’s the limit for your business and customers.

• Remote storage facilities for your business

Third-party integrations also facilitate cloud storage of your files in a reliable and secure manner. Leading applications like Google and Microsoft render consumer level file storage with file hosting services like Dropbox. If your business counts on storing files or offering users an exclusive area for documents, an integration may be the answer.

• Create lightweight solutions with more features

Developers can create lightweight mobile apps without compromising the strategic features of your business. For example, developers can integrate the app with a remote service to retrieve information or to deal with computations.

• Customer is able to reap benefits faster

By introducing your application faster into the global app market, you get the edge over your rivals. Moreover, developers are also able to ascertain if there are any gaps in the system and test the application proactively.

For example, several photo apps like Printicular, are taking advantage of Walgreens photo printing capabilities, by integrating their app with Walgreens API. This way, both smaller and more established companies, are able to offer added value to their users in a much quicker and effective way. In fact, by allowing third-party developers to use its API, Walgreens was able to enhance overall customer engagement with its retail stores.

Bottom line, application programming interfaces guarantee lower internal costs and help businesses save valuable time and resources by letting them focus on their core product features and services. The recent burgeoning of integration solutions point to the fact that integrations are here to stay. By closely following these technologies, organizations can relish enhanced customer service and better their growth business engines. Through integrations, they are able to provide a continuous realization of product functionality and increase customer success.