APIs, or application programming interfaces, enable disparate systems and software applications, such as your customer database and Expresso®, to connect and execute tasks or retrieve information quickly and easily. At Nordis, the most common client use cases for APIs are:
- Locating and retrieving archived documents in real-time, including electronic bill presentment into customer or payment portals such as ExpressoPay®.
- Sending data to Nordis in real-time, rather than aggregating data into a batch file, to execute a single or multiple communications. Often used for real-time emails and text messages, such as a confirmation of a vacation resort reservation, doctor’s appointment, or that a payment has been received.
Clients have migrated to APIs for a variety of reasons:
- Improved customer self-service. The ability for consumers to instantaneously access or download a complete statement, invoice or letter as they manage their accounts on your self-service website or payment portal is a valuable service and one that customers increasingly expect.
- Better customer and employee experience. Customer service representatives can enjoy the same ease of use and real-time access to archived documents and statements presented directly into the system they use to manage customers, to provide faster, better service.
- IT cost savings. APIs eliminate the need to store archived documents on company-owned servers and build ways to quickly access them. With a Nordis API, the document is instantly recreated on demand and delivered into your system of record. Providing customers with direct access also reduces the number of phone calls to your contact center.
- Flexibility. Instead of creating a batch file for many records that you send all at once, APIs let you send data that trigger print documents, email or text delivery as they happen, in virtually real-time. The API can be programmed to execute the communication immediately, especially useful for email and text when the customer expects instant gratification such as a payment reminder. Or it can keep data in a staging table to execute all printed documents at a pre-determined time or times each day. Archiving works in a similar fashion, with clients setting up API push accounts and sending client data record by record, in real time.
How it works
We build and host unique, secure APIs for our clients to consume as needed in order to have access to their documents as well as leverage some of the unique functionality in our Expresso platform.
Clients in turn develop code that triggers the appropriate API on demand, either by their employees or customers via their front end platform. In order for a client to have access to our API library, they are required to authenticate with unique credentials assigned to them by the Expresso team. It’s a request and response cycle, executed in seconds.
If you’d like to learn more about applying APIs to improve your communications and customer experience, please contact us today.