The global situation today has truly transformed how we communicate with each other. While we woke up one day and the world was different, business hasn’t stopped. Customers are still needing to connect with businesses. Whether it’s providing real-time virtual assistance or enabling curb side pickup we’ve had to rethink how we engage without physical interactions.
In this remote-first world, businesses are looking to quickly adapt to customers’ needs and connect with them through engaging communication experiences. Building new communication solutions or integrating them into existing applications can be complex and time-consuming. Often requiring considerable investment and specialized expertise. That’s why we’re excited to announce, Azure Communication Services, the first fully managed communication platform offering from a major cloud provider.
Azure Communication Services is built natively on top a global, reliable cloud—Azure. Businesses can confidently build and deploy on the same low latency global communication network used by Microsoft Teams to support over 5 billion meeting minutes in a single day. It also enables developers to easily tap into other Azure services, such as Azure Cognitive Services for translation, sentiment analysis and more. Additionally, companies benefit from all communications being encrypted to meet privacy and compliance needs, such as HIPAA and GDPR.
“One of our customers in the construction industry was looking for a solution that would give project managers more visibility and communication with people on site. Using Azure Communication Services we were able to get a proof of concept deployed in days vs. weeks, easily integrating voice, video and messaging for our customers in a secure way.” –Erik Lagerway, Founder Snapsonic
Azure Communication Services makes it easy to add voice and video calling, chat, and SMS text message capabilities to mobile apps, desktop applications, and websites with just a few lines of code. While developer friendly APIs and SDKs make it easy to create personalized communication experiences quickly, without having to worry about complex integrations. These capabilities can be used on virtually any platform and device.
Azure Communication Services capabilities
One example of how we see Azure Communication Services come to life in this remote-first world is customer service. Imagine a maintenance or installation call right now. There’s a problem but a technician is unable to go to the customers’ home. While some problems can be addressed remotely, troubleshooting over the phone can be a challenge. There aren’t many tools, that are easy to use and deploy, which connect a service rep and end user over video especially built right into a company’s app or home page. With Azure Communication Services, integrating voice and video calling into a multichannel communication experience is simple.
Every day, we find a new challenge that changes customer, developer, and business needs. Our goal is to meet businesses where they are and provide solutions to help them be resilient and move their business forward in today’s market. We see rich communication experiences—enabled by voice, video, chat, and SMS—continuing to be an integral part in how businesses connect with their customers across devices and platforms. Azure Communication Services brings together the best of communication technology, development efficiency, cloud scale, and enterprise-grade security. So, businesses can start creating more meaningful customer interactions on a secure, global platform in days, not months.
Get started today:
- Visit the Azure Communication Services website
- Attend the Microsoft Ignite session on Azure Communication Services
- See how it works in my Mechanics show with Jeremy Chapman
- Try the APIs on GitHub
Azure. Invent with purpose.