Why Partner with a Vendor that Offers Open API
When choosing a new third-party solution, you want to ensure it can provide you with all the benefits that allow your business to function at the highest level possible. One important feature when choosing an enterprise scheduling solution is an open application programming interface, also called an API.
An API acts as a software bridge, allowing different applications to communicate with each other. When implementing a third-party solution, it is in your best interest to partner with a technology provider that offers an open API, enabling your business to build your appointment scheduling interface to match your own branding and collaborate with other applications used in your operational processes.
Benefits of an Open API
Providing an open, customizable API requires more support and configuration by the technology provider, which is why it is not offered by every vendor. The key advantages of choosing a solution with an open API is that it will greatly enhance operational processes, and allow you to tailor your new solution to meet your organization’s needs.
Eliminate duplicate data entry
An open API allows businesses to integrate their new solution with any system, including CRM and calendar applications. This will eliminate duplicate data entry, as information is now stored in one place. For example, if you implement a scheduling solution that has an open API, it can be integrated with your CRM. This will streamline the appointment booking process, and the documentation of customer information. If a customer contacts your organization to book an appointment for the first time, the information put into the calendaring system will also be saved to your organization’s CRM, eliminating the need to input the same information into another application later on. Alternatively, if an existing customer contacts your organization to schedule an appointment, all of their information is already in your CRM, eliminating the need to record their information again. This results in more streamlined reporting and back-end processes.
For example, Coconut’s open API allows customers to integrate their scheduling solution with their CRM, providing a streamlined appointment booking experience. When customers contact your organization to schedule an appointment, Coconut’s platform will pull customer information from your CRM to gather the necessary insight to book the appointment. Alternatively, if they are a new customer, your CRM will be able to capture the personal information that is inputted into the Coconut platform. This saves your employees time, eliminating the need for them to input the same information into different platforms, and ensures that your staff are equipped with updated customer information.
What you could miss out on without an Open API
Choosing with a solution that does not offer an open API will prevent you from configuring your new solution to your other applications. This means you will lose out on features such as integrating your CRM with your appointment scheduling application to ensure customer-facing staff have the information they need to provide your customers with a premium experience. Additionally, working with an application that has a closed API prevents you from sharing data between applications, leading to inefficient back-end processes like having to manually enter data into multiple applications.
Customizable experience
Many open APIs offer the ability to customize how the new solution functions with your organization’s current workflow. This allows you to tailor the solution in a way that works best for your organization’s operational processes and your existing customer journey.
For example, your organization is implementing a new scheduling solution and you want to integrate it into your website and your contact center. By partnering with a solution that offers an open API, you can configure the application through those different channels in a way that is easy for your customers, while improving your back-end processes.
Whether you would like to implement an online scheduling solution, or a call center scheduling solution (or both!), Coconut’s open API allows you to tailor the application to fit the needs of each channel. On the front-end, creating a customer-facing, online portal may require more basic integration abilities. While on the back-end, you may want to configure the application in your contact center differently as it will be primarily by internal staff and needs to match their workflow.
The troubles you could face with a Closed API
By partnering with a solution that uses a closed API, you risk making it harder for your team to adopt the new system that doesn’t fit with the way they are used to doing things and providing a front-end solution that does not flow nicely with the rest of the customer journey you offer. Your solution could end up causing a bigger issue than the one you were trying to solve!
What Coconut’s Open API Can Do For Your Organization
The Coconut API is used to build custom client views and integrates with other solutions, including proprietary systems. Our open API allows for two-way calendar sync with Outlook, Google and Office 365, allowing you to streamline the appointment booking process. In Salesforce, our flexible integration also enables appointment data to flow into Leads, Contacts, Activities, and Campaigns. Plus, it provides full support for mapping custom questions from forms to custom fields in the SFDC application. Coconut’s open API allows for your organization to customize the experience that you would like to provide your customers in their appointment booking journey while improving back-end processes with your ability to integrate it with the other applications you use within your organization. Here are some of the other applications we currently integrate with …
By partnering with a third party provider that offers a powerful and open API, your organization will experience the maximum benefits of your new solution. You will get the best return on investment through enhanced back-end processes and a streamlined customer journey. For more information about how you can experience the benefits of an appointment scheduling solution with an open API, schedule a consultation today!
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