What is Twilio Flex, its Key Features, and Pricing Plans?
Twilio Flex is a contact center application but unlike traditional on-premise systems, it can be accessed over the internet. More precisely, it is a cloud-based contact center application, designed and developed on the Twilio cloud-communication platform. Since it is a web-based service, it is quick and easy to access as compared to other applications. A cloud-based contact center has many benefits like you can scale it whenever you want and you only need to pay for what you use, which saves a lot of upfront costs and operating costs for a company. Learn more about this platform further in this blog.
Twilio Flex Features and Supported Channels
Twilio Flex lets you create one omnichannel contact center that can manage all necessary communication channels for customers, agents, and supervisors. Whether you want inbound/customer-initiated calls or various SMS communication channels like messenger, live chat, chatbot, In Flex you are allowed to do everything. Furthermore, if you are willing to integrate custom channels like in-app chat, the video then you can do it as well.
There is another advanced feature called native dial-pad, which is for outbound calls or agent-initiated calls. However, it is still in the public beta stage, it is showing some promising results.
The thing that makes Twilio Flex outstanding among other platforms is its programmability. Below are some examples showing how to utilize it.
- As we mentioned earlier, users can add their own custom communication channels, and not only this but they can also easily manage, route, and report them with the help of flex. This saves a lot of user’s time while enhancing productivity.
- The React-based frontend of Flex is very user-friendly. Moreover, the user can also customize the UI (User Interface) to a great extent. For example, they can add widgets, make it more brand-oriented, and even change the look and feel of the UI.
- You can also integrate other applications like SugarCRM to Flex, which will provide more useful insights to the agents and supervisors.
- There is a drag and drop functionality also available in the Studio that allows you to control the call flow programmatically.
If you will be using the Flex for the first time then you can have a trial period. After creating a Flex account, you will get 5000 free flex active hours and after that, you can purchase the plan based on your requirements. There are two Twilio Flex Pricing models i.e. Named User Pricing and Active User Pricing.
How to Access Twilio Flex?
For using Flex, you need to create a new Twilio project. You can’t access it via using the existing project or through a sub-account. The good thing is all new Twilio projects are created for free and you also get a separate balance. Follow the steps below to create a free Twilio Flex account.
Open the Twilio Console and go to the Flex overview.
On the next page, click on the Create My Flex Project button.
Provide an appropriate name to your Flex project and click on the verify button.
After that, you need to verify the email address and phone number that you entered.
Here, you need to wait until your new flex instance is being created. Once done, you’ll be automatically redirected to the Flex page.
Twilio Flex Hosting
As we said earlier, Twilio Flex is developed by keeping customization in mind. So the first step of customizing is hosting i.e. you are allowed to choose how you want to host Twilio Flex. There are three options available for you.
Host your Flex UI on your infrastructure. This might be the safest but also the most expensive option.
The second option is to host Flex on your own cloud. This way you can easily scale it whenever you want.
If you don’t want to face such hassle then you can use Twilio cloud infrastructure for hosting your personalized Flex UI.
Flex is all about customers and how they can customize it to best suit their needs. You can even integrate it with existing cloud engagement APIs like Voice, messaging, TaskRouters, etc.
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