Twilio, the renowned cloud communication platform, has announced the addition of a developer toolkit to its customer data platform Segment. Claiming to supply users with state-of-the-art data collection and integration capabilities, Twilio aims to give businesses the fluidity to customize their customer data stack and provide personalized customer experiences.
“Every company is investing and innovating in digital customer engagement in order to compete. The trouble is, you can’t buy a one-size-fits-all SaaS software and expect to deliver a differentiated experience — if you can buy it off the shelf, so can your competitors. You need the tools to build something unique that is true to your brand and customers,” said Peter Reinhardt, CEO of Twilio Segment, in a press release. “In this race for differentiation, software developers are a company’s most valuable asset. That’s why we’ve created this new Developer Toolkit. The companies who figure out how to empower their developers to create amazing customer experiences will thrive, while those who do not will fail.”
In the rush to capitalize off the boom of the software as a service (SaaS) industry when it initially took off, businesses were quick to purchase premade solutions instead of building their own. However, what companies were able to save in the development effort, they lost in distinction and versatility. When a multitude of companies relied on the same one-size-fits-all solution, it became hard for businesses to distinguish themselves from the competition. This dilema drove companies with customer-centric services back to creating solutions based on the needs of their businesses; however, this too came with its own set of problems.
The Martech 5000’s 2020 edition of the marketing technology landscape reported that by April 2020, there were already over 8,000 marketing tools for a business to choose from. Inundated with options, it can be difficult to find the best fit for one’s business. Rather than make companies debate the benefits and drawbacks of both options, Twilio’s Development Toolkit seeks to give businesses the best of both worlds.
The toolkit allows developers to merge new solutions with existing ones. This “building blocks approach” lets companies have customization needed to meet their customers’ unique needs, but also avoid the thousands of hours required to build and maintain a data infrastructure from the ground up.
Some of the toolkit’s features include unparalleled flexibility with Destination Actions, infinite integrations with Functions, and a universal data set with Multi-Instance Destinations.
“Twilio Segment CDP offers developers the valuable tools they need to build and maintain a modern data framework without requiring extensive time from engineers, allowing resources to be more effectively deployed to support customer experience efforts.” said Daniel Newman, Principal Analyst and Founding Partner at Futurum Research.
“Building the basic infrastructure needed to collect and unify customer data in-house is costly and requires constant support from engineers,” added Jane Kelly, Head of Growth at Retool, the development platform for building internal tools. “With Twilio Segment as our CDP, our developers are building on top of a strong data infrastructure from day one. Empowered by data they can trust, they have the freedom to develop new features and deliver world-class experiences that put our customers first.”
