The International Rescue Committee (IRC), one of the largest humanitarian organizations supporting refugees, was seeking to expand its technology programs to improve how they serve the refugee community directly. The organization aimed to build an information platform that connected refugees to resources immediately over chat, particularly in the Northern Triangle of Latin America. The challenges faced by IRC included offering channels that refugees use every day, reaching more people with limited staff, and integrating its helpline into existing systems. The organization also needed to ensure that the platform was user-friendly and felt like texting with a friend rather than navigating a website.

The global pandemic has accelerated the need for digital transformation, with companies being forced to support a remote workforce for health and safety reasons. This shift towards remote work has created a demand for efficient and effective remote call center solutions. JustCall, a rapidly growing organization based in India, aims to meet this demand by helping businesses set up remote call centers from anywhere in the world without the need for extra hardware. However, they faced challenges in tracking their salespeople's phone calls and expanding their services internationally. They also needed to offer a local number feature that is cost-efficient for businesses to project a local presence within each country they operate in.

Keap, a company that provides a user-friendly customer relationship management (CRM), sales, and marketing automation solution for entrepreneurs and small businesses, was facing a challenge in optimizing its communication services. Keap's core customer base, which includes small, service-oriented businesses or sole-proprietorships, like coaches and consultants, needed a personalized platform to manage their leads, convert them into clients, and then stay in touch with them. However, many small business owners preferred to communicate with customers via text message, a feature that was missing in Keap’s automation platform. This gap in communication was causing Keap to miss out on a large segment of the small-business communication journey, forcing their customers to use multiple tools to fill that gap.

Lionbridge, a global company, was facing challenges in providing high-quality multilingual customer and workforce experiences. The company's over-the-phone interpretation (OPI) services cater to a wide range of clients, including companies, government agencies, and healthcare providers, interacting with callers in over 350 languages. However, their existing communication platform was inflexible and time-consuming when it came to making changes. This lack of flexibility was hindering Lionbridge's ability to provide the level of customization their customers expected. The company needed a solution that would allow them to easily scale with the OPI market and changing landscape, while also delivering a better customer experience for both their customers and interpreters.

Luminare, a healthcare company initially focused on sepsis detection, found itself in a unique position during the COVID-19 pandemic. The company had been using Twilio to power low volume, high-value SMS messaging to physicians and teams as part of their sepsis detection software. However, with the onset of the pandemic, Luminare saw the need to modify its platform to address COVID-19 syndromic surveillance and aid in mass vaccine administration. The challenge was particularly acute in Dallas County, Texas, where the launch of COVID-19 vaccinations in early 2021 led to overwhelmed healthcare systems. The scarcity of healthcare providers to handle appointment scheduling and administration, coupled with paper-based systems requiring a team of over 100 full-time volunteers for data entry and communications, resulted in hours-long waits and only about 2,000 shots administered per day.

The year 2020 brought unprecedented challenges for humanitarian organizations worldwide. The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), an independent humanitarian organization, was no exception. The NRC provides emergency and long-term assistance to millions of people annually in the Middle East, Central America, Asia, and Africa. However, the COVID-19 pandemic compounded the already tenuous situation for over 80 million people displaced due to violence and persecution. Global travel restrictions, shelter-in-place ordinances, and other safety measures such as social distancing prevented organizations from delivering aid in the traditional face-to-face format. These crises carried into 2021, necessitating a pivot to more digital services to continue providing healthcare, education, housing, legal assistance, counseling, food, and employment resources.

The healthcare industry is often characterized by a lack of efficient communication between providers and patients. Patients desire more clarity, access, and human connection in their healthcare experience. However, they often encounter more paperwork, more technology to forget passwords on, more time spent on hold, and more frustration. New technology, instead of simplifying the process, often creates more work for the clinician and a greater disconnect with patients. Even as new 'patient-focused' healthcare technology and telemedicine software emerges, patients are rarely consulted, resulting in a telehealth experience that is underutilized and overhyped. The challenge was to create a platform that uses communication channels patients already understand, enabling providers to offer a more meaningful care experience.

Rapidops Inc., a fast-growing digital strategy, transformation, and innovation company, was on a mission to launch the industry’s first native built-in calling and texting capabilities inside their Salesmate CRM in less than 3 months. These features would enable their customers to purchase local phone numbers, call prospects and customers, record calls, send text campaigns, and much more without needing a separate product. The challenge was to find a cloud telephony provider that could offer high performance, reliability, reasonable cost, and expert engineering and implementation services. The selection process was critical as Rapidops was looking for a long-term relationship with their potential pick. The company's CTO was directly involved from day one in evaluating the best telephony service provider.

In the fast-paced, digital economy, many buying and selling interactions have been simplified to a few taps on a phone or clicks on a screen. However, the homebuying process remains complex, involving multiple stages and parties. Realtor.com, with over 20 years in the real estate business, recognized the need for a more streamlined, user-friendly approach to home buying. Initially, the company operated as a traditional lead-generating platform, connecting prospective homebuyers with suitable agents. However, they realized the need to empower both agents and buyers with more efficient communication tools. The challenge was to create a system that would allow agents to manage leads and nurture relationships effectively, while also providing consumers with a choice of communication channels that best suited their needs.

The case study revolves around the challenge of ensuring safety in high-risk work environments, such as construction sites. The situation is exemplified by a scenario where a construction worker notices a problem with a bolt holding a beam in place, a failure of which could lead to fatal accidents. The challenge is further compounded by the fact that some workers may not fully understand or be able to accurately complete safety checklists due to literacy issues, dyslexia, or lack of training. This was a real-life problem encountered by George Bancs, the CEO and founder of Talk5, during a motorway remediation project in Sydney. Bancs used a 'take 5 safety checklist' to identify potential hazards before work began, but found that some workers were unable to complete the checklist accurately, thereby increasing the risk of workplace incidents.

Moving homes is a notoriously stressful process, with logistics planning, communication with movers, and setting up the new space being major challenges. Research indicates that one in five Americans find moving more stressful than planning a wedding, and one in 10 equate it to a week in jail. The traditional moving process is disliked by many, and with an average of 40 million Americans relocating each year, there is a high demand for innovative alternatives. The moving industry, being complicated and traditional, posed a significant challenge to Yembo's founders, Zach Rattner and Siddharth Mohan, who aimed to bring ease and transparency to the industry through cutting-edge technology. The main problem was the need for a trained expert to visually inspect the location and individual items to understand what the job entails. This visual information was traditionally collected via in-person visits that were difficult to schedule, and phone calls that required customers to spend up to two hours cataloguing the items in their home.

Zenyum, a dental consumer brand with a growing e-commerce presence across Asia, faced challenges in managing customer data as it expanded across different channels. Initially, Zenyum was using multiple customer data platforms (CDPs), which resulted in customer profiles and interactions being scattered across various platforms. This made it difficult to manage customer data and provide an optimal customer experience. As the company grew, they realized the need to consolidate all customer data into one platform to understand the customer journey better, recognize customers, and recommend other products they might be interested in. Another challenge arose when Zenyum began to expand in different regions. In one market, Zenyum’s customer service team faced a phone number problem stemming from one of their original providers, which meant current and prospective customers received calls as anonymous and weren’t answering their phones.

Reefi, a leading online retailer in Saudi Arabia, faced significant challenges in managing its rapidly expanding customer base. Having started sales through social media, the company grew to become a top destination for high-quality homewear products, boasting a loyal customer base of 700,000 and 12 multi-product concept stores across the Kingdom. However, the company's exponential growth presented a significant challenge, particularly in terms of marketing and customer service. The high volumes of requests from telephone systems and web chats were overwhelming for the customer service agents, who struggled to handle all these requests promptly and efficiently. The company recognized the need for innovative solutions to cater to its expanding customer base and enhance the engagement and interactivity of its customer communication.

Slide, a Software as a Service (SaaS) platform, was looking for a way to offer businesses a one-stop solution for social ordering via their social media accounts. The challenge was to manage the day-to-day online orders via social platforms so businesses could focus on their core strengths while leveraging the capabilities and scale of Slide. The goal was to provide a seamless and efficient end-to-end customer experience, allowing customers to view menus, order food, and chat about dietary preferences without ever leaving their preferred social media platform. The challenge also included providing a secure and convenient payment method for customers to finalize their transactions.

CodePen, a social community for front-end designers and developers, faced a challenge with their activity feed back end. The original system needed an overhaul to improve performance and to add new and expanded functionality. The team recognized an opportunity to enhance personalized content recommendations to stay competitive in the evolving social media landscape. The challenge was to upgrade the existing feeds to personalize the user experience with interesting content. The team was faced with a classic build-vs-buy decision: Use internal dev resources to rebuild activity feeds and develop content discovery algorithms from scratch, or replace the feeds back end entirely.

CollX, a sports card trading app, initially integrated Stream Chat to add a social element to its platform. However, they soon discovered that collectors were using the chat feature to negotiate and bundle deals for trading cards. To increase conversions and user engagement, CollX needed to streamline the negotiation experience within the app. The challenge was to reduce the back-and-forth messaging between collectors and make the deal-making process more efficient and user-friendly.

CollX, a sports memorabilia marketplace, experienced a significant increase in user retention rates after integrating Stream's Chat API. However, as the user base grew, so did the number of bad actors and phishing attempts. Malicious users were attempting to phish for personal and financial information of other CollX users using platform circumvention techniques. Some users reported being harassed via chat with spammy messages or NSFW content. The Director of Operations at CollX, Alexander Liriano, was manually reviewing every flagged instance of suspicious, harmful, and off-topic content and taking appropriate action against those who violated the community guidelines. However, the manual review process was time-consuming and ineffective in preventing misuse of the app.

Compass Education, Australia's leading school management software provider, faced a significant challenge in streamlining communication for its three million daily active users, including teachers, school staff, parents, and students. The company needed to build an in-app chat solution to meet the increasing user demand for a more efficient and real-time communication tool. However, building an in-house chat solution would be resource-heavy and delay its product roadmap. The company historically relied on email, third-party messengers, and phone calls, which were time-consuming for school staff and teachers and created a disjointed communication flow. The need for a native messaging solution only grew as Compass Education expanded operations into multiple countries.

Crunchbase, a leading provider of private-company prospecting and research solutions, was facing a challenge with its in-house feed solution. The existing system was only capable of sending daily updates to the platform’s registered users, who follow specific companies and whole markets. This was a disadvantage for salespeople who rely on timely updates for business opportunities. To provide their growing base of business development customers a competitive advantage, Crunchbase required a customizable, low-latency news feed that displayed important updates such as funding announcements, new hires, and IPOs in real-time.

Dealer-FX, an automotive software company, was facing a challenge with its existing SMS text messaging platform. The platform was used by service dealerships to communicate with vehicle owners. However, as the company scaled, it needed a more sophisticated communication platform with features such as 1:1 chat and automated group messaging to enhance the car maintenance experience. The existing disjointed communication tools were not sufficient to keep all dealership departments connected and updated about a customer's vehicle status. After several months of attempting to build a messaging platform in-house, Dealer-FX engineers decided to explore using a third-party chat API solution instead.

Dubsmash, a social platform that allows users to share videos via their mobile applications, faced the challenge of differentiating itself in a market dominated by competitors like TikTok. The company's unique focus on creators, rather than consumers, required a technology that could support creators in making compelling content and keeping engagement high within their followership. Dubsmash also aimed to provide a platform that valued diversity and did not censor content based on attractiveness or location. The company needed to ensure that its platform was not overcrowded by semi-pro creators and influencers, and that it provided enough visibility for lesser-known artists to be discovered. Additionally, Dubsmash needed to manage a large volume of data and ensure optimal uptime and visibility into user-based metrics.

Freeman, a global leader in the events industry, faced a significant challenge when the global pandemic forced most in-person events to transition to an online medium. The company had to quickly adapt and create a virtual event platform to serve their new user requirements. The new platform, OnlineEvent®, required a chat feature that enabled attendees to communicate with each other in specific channels during live stream presentations. The challenge was to integrate live stream chat functionality into its new virtual event platform to support thousands of concurrent users — and fast. Freeman's director of digital product management, Elissa Ewers, had to evaluate chat vendors in a short time frame, focusing on chat solutions containing must-have attributes such as rapid integration, scale to support tens of thousands of concurrent users, security, and single sign-on functionality.

Global Citizen is a community that aims to connect individuals who are passionate about making a significant impact on the world's most pressing issues. The organization's primary focus is to raise awareness and draw attention to social justice, climate change, and the eradication of extreme poverty. Their efforts have been supported by leading political figures, philanthropists, and global organizations. However, Global Citizen's advocacy efforts are not limited to the online sphere. Since 2012, they have successfully organized the Global Citizen Music Festival, bringing together activists and music fans. Despite these efforts, Global Citizen faced challenges in delivering high-quality content and connecting like-minded users in real-time. They needed a solution that could support their active network, where members share their actions to make the world a better place.

Healthline, the world's largest health information provider, faced a significant challenge in creating an online social community experience for users of its Healthline Together Apps. These apps were designed to address chronic health issues and reduce the social isolation often experienced by those living with such conditions. The company aimed to create a user-friendly, engaging, and familiar platform where users could discuss their conditions and receive relevant content. However, they needed to ensure that the technology was easy to navigate, allowing users to focus on their conversations rather than struggling with the platform. The apps also needed to be competitive with other leading social networks in terms of design and functionality. Healthline considered building an in-house solution but realized that this would require significant resources and potentially detract from their core competencies.

Hio, a software company specializing in enhancing site experiences, faced a significant challenge with its patented site engagement software, Hovr. The software required a real-time chat solution to drive community engagement. Initially, Hio integrated Sendbird Chat into Hovr. However, they soon realized that they needed a more robust messaging solution that included features such as threads, channels, URL thumbnails, AI moderation, and more. The lack of these features in Sendbird was a significant issue as they were crucial for Hovr's functionality. Furthermore, Sendbird's inability to deliver these features as per their roadmap was concerning for Hio, a rapidly evolving company that relied heavily on its component partners for success.

homeis, a digital platform for foreign-born communities, was facing a significant challenge with its chat capabilities. Despite having a full-stack development team proficient in Javascript, React-Native, React, and Node.JS, they were struggling with their existing chat provider. The provider was plagued with stability issues and was supported by a slow and inefficient team. As a startup, homeis needed to focus its resources on its own product development, making it impractical to build a chat functionality in-house. They needed a third-party SDK that was compatible with their tech stack and could provide a reliable and efficient chat service. The challenge was to find a solution that could help them avoid reinventing the wheel and focus on their core product.

Hopin, a leading shared experiences platform, was faced with the challenge of enhancing its Virtual Venue’s chat solution to ensure reliable scalability and speed. The company was experiencing a surge in demand for larger events, and it was crucial to provide a reliable and bug-free messaging system for attendees. The in-house chat solution needed to perform optimally as the company grew rapidly. Hopin’s engineering team decided that integrating a third-party in-app chat solution was the best way to meet these demands. The company was looking for a tech partner, not just a provider, to help guide the integration process and provide ongoing support.

Kiddom, an educational technology platform, experienced rapid growth following the COVID-19 pandemic as remote and hybrid learning models became the norm. The platform, which offers a range of features such as single sign-on, customizable lesson plans, and grade tracking, sought to add video chat and in-platform messaging to its suite of tools. However, building these core functions in-house was deemed difficult, expensive, and time-consuming. The company needed a reliable, scalable, and quick-to-market solution that could handle the increased user base and enhance the communication functionality of the platform.

Paired, a gamified app designed to help couples connect on a deeper level, faced a challenge in maintaining user engagement. The app's core functionality revolved around daily quizzes and questions that couples completed together. However, feedback from users, particularly those in long-distance relationships, indicated a need for a feature that would allow them to continue these conversations within the app. While some couples were able to continue these discussions outside the app, a significant number expressed a desire for a centralized platform to work on their relationships. Paired's CTO, Diego Lopez, recognized the need for a feature-rich chat solution that would encourage higher engagement among its users.

Pluang, a multi-asset investment platform, was seeking to replace its existing Telegram groups with an in-app messaging solution to create a more seamless user experience (UX) for its investment community. The company wanted to own the user experience from end to end, curating a more custom and centralized platform that investors could trust, engage, and convert within. The envisioned chat solution was also expected to integrate with Pluang's Salesforce CRM to streamline account and record creation for the business. With over one million active users, Pluang required a performant, reliable, and scalable chat API offering.