What is in-app calling?
In-app calling is an embeddable feature that adds high-quality voice and video calling capabilities to a mobile app.
It allows users to initiate calls directly within your app, enhancing the user experience and improving engagement. In-app calling uses internet connectivity instead of traditional phone networks to enable concurrent calling between users. Typically, it relies on Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology to transmit voice and video data.
Benefits of in-app calling
Enhanced user experience: By eliminating the need for users to leave the app, in-app calling creates a seamless, streamlined communication experience. This added convenience helps to drive customer satisfaction, repeat engagement, and loyalty.
Instant connectivity: In-app calling enables users to connect with one another or businesses in real time. This enables quick, efficient interactions that facilitate support and user engagement within the app.
Enhanced customer support: In-app calling can be an additional customer support channel for businesses, an opportunity to provide personalized, immediate assistance to customers that resolves issues quickly and reduces churn.
Greater sales: Direct voice and video conversations with leads are a chance to answer queries, provide product information, and guide customers toward purchase within the app.
Integration and insights: In-app calling can be integrated with your CRM, third-party business tools, and analytics to capture call data, record interactions, and compile user profiles to be leveraged into data-driven insights and decisions.
Use cases for in-app calling
Customer support: In-app calling allows customers to receive personal support. This way, agents can address complex issues, hear customer needs verbally, offer walkthroughs, and deliver a more empathetic and expedient support experience.
Sales: Instead of using chatbots to make sales, sales teams can engage in conversations, live presentations, and video demos with prospects to better build rapport, qualify leads, and nurture relationships toward a sale.
Operations: Teams use in-app voice and video calling to enable effective collaboration, especially in remote work environments. Chat capabilities further enhance the potential for teamwork and discussion.
Marketing: In-app calling allows marketers to collect user feedback with surveys and polls, showing customers that they care while enhancing onboarding, lead qualification, and product-led growth.
Live streaming: In-app calling fosters direct audience interaction with live streams, adding a personal element where viewers share live testimonials, participate in giveaways or group challenges or activities, ask questions and get answers, and more.
User conversations: In-app calling creates a seamless, streamlined communication experience within mobile apps. It allows users to initiate one-to-one calls, group calls, and share in convenient community-building experiences at any scale.
How industries use in-app calling
Social and dating apps: In-app calling allows social network and dating apps to embed calling video and voice calling features, adding life-like conversation capabilities that build community within their platform, foster engagement, and drive retention.
Gaming: In-app calling makes online gaming feel like a team sport. Users can communicate immediately in the game to create a fun, interactive dialogue between group members. This added layer of connectivity helps platforms to drive engagement and retention.
On-demand services: Rideshare and food delivery apps use in-app calling to facilitate service deliveries and a smooth user experience. This lets users talk with service providers, coordinate pickups, and address special requests in real time.
Marketplaces: In-app video calling allows sellers to drive conversions with live interactive demos, while voice calling allows agents to address queries to support in-app transactions.
Telehealth and telemedicine: In-app voice and video calling allow patients to initiate conversations with providers to discuss symptoms, seek medical advice, and receive virtual diagnoses from the convenience and safety of their mobile device.
Education: In-app calling allows students to ask questions and get answers from educators in real time, creating a highly-engaging learning environment within virtual courses and learning platforms.
Professional services: There’s often no substitute for a human connection in professional services. In-app calling lets you nurture leads, host demos with interactive chat, and address customer concerns from anywhere.
Key features of in-app calling
Cross-device SDKs: Quickly build and integrate an on-brand, visually consistent calling experience using pre-built UI components, integration tools, documentation, and more.
Admin calls: Initiate and invite in-app calls from any CRM, support platform, or third-party tools, allowing teams to be efficient and compile valuable user call data.
1:1 and group calls: Allow users to initiate and receive direct calls or group calls for both voice and video.
Custom metadata: Add subject lines, labels, tags, or ticket numbers to any call within your dashboard so data is searchable and ready for use across teams.
Notifications: Alert users of incoming calls on their home screen with push notifications, even when the app is in the background.
Privacy and security: Ensure a safe, secure stream with user authentication and media encryption that meets the highest standards.
Call logs: View and filter information from your dashboard, supporting a personalized approach to engagement by providing ready access to customer data.
High call quality: A communications platform should offer low-latency, high-concurrency cloud infrastructure so you can provide reliable, lagless calling anywhere your users are.
In-app calling adds life-like experiences to mobile apps, helping to drive repeat user engagement and retention with deeper user connections. Leading mobile communications platforms like Sendbird and others provide Call APIs and SDKs (software development kits). These resources simplify the process of adding call capabilities to mobile apps across any device or platform.
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