THE FUTURE OF MOBILE MESSAGING:

How RCS is Redefining Business Communications

Welcoming a New Era of Communications

The next generation of SMS is here. Rich Communication Services (RCS) is becoming the go-to messaging technology for enterprises who are looking for the most effective touch points to engage customers and promote their brands.
RCS is a new, visually appealing messaging channel that offers rich functionalities to enable more engaging customer journeys. Businesses are using RCS to build strong relationships with their customers through branded two-way communication.
Retailers, major airlines, and ride-sharing services are just a few of the industries already using RCS and garnering impressive results for customer experience.
This white paper will help you get started on maximizing RCS opportunities for your brand by answering the following questions:


• What is Rich Communication Services (RCS)?
• What new functionalities are available with RCS and how do they impact
customer experience?
• What are the benefits of RCS in comparison to other communication channels?
• How are companies across a wide variety of industries already using RCS to enhance their communications?
• How can you get started with RCS for your brand?

A 2019 survey conducted by Harvard Business Review found that nearly half of the enterprise marketers surveyed rated mobile messaging as highly important today, and this response rate climbs to more than two-thirds when asked about its importance in the next five years. The survey also showed that enterprise marketers rely more on messaging apps over mobile apps in every communication category including:

The study also found that the capabilities that enterprise marketers value most with advanced messaging apps are:

Short introduction into RCS

RCS is an IP-based messaging service provided to mobile phone users through mobile operator networks. It is used for both Person to Person (P2P) and Application to Person (A2P) communications and incorporates the global reach of SMS with the rich features of chat apps (such as WhatsApp, Viber, and Facebook Messenger) to deliver more interactive, compelling experiences to users.

RCS-enabled A2P communication is known as RCS business messaging, and it’s used to deliver branded, interactive mobile experiences that improve and empower how people and businesses communicate. For the remainder of this paper, when we refer to RCS, we mean RCS business messaging.
Through a rich feature set that allows the creation of branded messages incorporating multimedia, suggested reply buttons, barcode delivery, click-through options and more, brands now have a new way to develop relationships through two-way communication.

RCS Functionality

Let’s take a closer look at the unique features that businesses are using to improve customer experience.

1. Rich Features

Rich features make it easy for companies to create app-like experiences within a native mobile messaging application. This allows brands to create a more memorable experience and build a deeper emotional connection with customers through:

• Rich media – upload photographs, video and audio files, rich cards, or carousels that feature multiple rich cards that users can swipe through

• Improved location functionality – location sharing, view map, etc.

• Configurable buttons – embed clickable, customized buttons that will enrich your
communications and make it easy for your customers to respond – such as suggested
replies and suggested actions

• Open URL button – opens the link in a web browser or inside an app

• Create calendar event – uses pre-specified details to populate a message template

• Longer messages – RCS is not limited to 160 characters, enabling the message content to
be more robust

2. Branding Opportunities

With RCS, communications can be branded. You can use your company name, logo, and colors to brand your messages and keep them aligned with the rest of your marketing efforts. This makes your messages much more visually appealing, and something customers are likely to notice, as seeing their favorite brands right there on the screen generates greater trust in the message.

3. Chatbot Feature

Great customer support is the key to building long-lasting relationships with your customers and increasing their loyalty to your company. Through RCS-enabled chatbots, you can use conversation automation to give your customers relevant and timely notifications and digitalize repetitive communication patterns:
Chatbots make it possible for you to have meaningful conversations with customers, anywhere, any time.
They can clarify any doubts customers may have during the buying process and also effectively resolve complaints.
However, for more detailed customer queries, always make sure there is a click2call button available so customers can choose to talk to a real person.

Additionally, operators are introducing chatbot directories that list the chatbots of different
companies by category. This adds value for Consumer-to-Business communications in that customers can be proactive in reaching out to their favorite brands – when it’s convenient for them, and when the need is immediate.

4. Real-time Analytics

What if you could have a better understanding of what messages are working to reach your audience?
With RCS, you can get detailed information about how your customers behave so you can tailor your campaigns to achieve better results.


RCS technology provides access to real-time analytics such as ”messages delivered” and “messages seen” reports, and on-screen event tracking, giving you insight into exactly how consumers are interacting with your messages and which communications are effective. This can help you to improve conversion rates over time and optimize future communications.

5.Trustworthy Channel

How secure is RCS? According to Universal Profile standard (see “Important Facts about RCS”), all senders need to be registered and verified by the RCS service provider assuring authentication, fraud prevention and reliable communication for brands and their customers.

This makes RCS an attractive alternative for industries that send a lot of documentation to their customers, such as legal firms, banks, and travel companies.


For example, people are more comfortable exchanging their confidential banking information over their mobile devices due to stringent security standards they know are
in place.

RCS in Practice

With RCS, you can get detailed information about how your customers behave so you can tailor your campaigns to achieve better results.

1.Rich Features

Rich features make it easy for companies to create app-like experiences within a native mobile messaging application. This allows brands to create a more memorable experience and build a deeper emotional connection with customers through:

  • Rich media – upload photographs, video and audio files, rich cards, or carousels that feature multiple rich cards that users can swipe through
  • Improved location functionality – location sharing, view map, etc.
  • Configurable buttons – embed clickable, customized buttons that will enrich your communications and make it easy for your customers to respond – such as suggested replies and suggested actions
  • Open URL button – opens the link in a web browser or inside an app
  • Create calendar event – uses pre-specified details to populate a message template
  • Longer messages – RCS is not limited to 160 characters, enabling the message content to be more robust
2.Branding Opportunities

With RCS, communications can be branded. You can use your company name, logo, and colors to brand your messages and keep them aligned with the rest of your marketing efforts. This makes your messages much more visually appealing, and something customers are likely to notice, as seeing their favorite brands right there on the screen generates greater trust in the message.

3.Chatbot Feature

Great customer support is the key to building long-lasting
relationships with your customers and increasing their loyalty to your company. Through RCS-enabled chatbots, you can use conversation automation to give your customers relevant and timely notifications and digitalize repetitive communication patterns:

Chatbots make it possible for you to have meaningful conversations with customers, anywhere, any time.

They can clarify any doubts customers may have during the buying process and also effectively resolve complaints. However, for more detailed customer queries, always make sure there is a click2call button available so customers can choose to talk to a real person.

Additionally, operators are introducing chatbot directories that list the chatbots of different
companies by category. This adds value for Consumer-to-Business communications in that customers can be proactive in reaching out to their favorite brands – when it’s convenient for them, and when the need is immediate.

4.Real-time Analytics

What if you could have a better understanding of what messages are working to reach your audience?

With RCS, you can get detailed information about how your customers behave so you can tailor your campaigns to achieve better results.

RCS technology provides access to real-time analytics such as ”messages delivered” and “messages seen” reports, and on-screen event tracking, giving you insight into exactly how consumers are interacting with your messages and which communications are effective. This can help you to improve conversion rates over time and optimize future communications.

Ways to Use RCS to Reach Customers

NotifyEngage
• Purchase confirmations
• Delivery notifications and updates
• Contract expiration reminders
• Changes in service terms and conditions
• New product offerings
• Sales or discounts, especially to loyal
customers
• Product and/or service ratings
SupportSecure
• Interaction with an agent about products
or services (real time or interactive)
• Automatic replies to customer queries
• One-time PINs to authenticate users
• Password reset flow
• Suspicious account activity notifications
How Can RCS Work With Other Communication Channels

There are plenty of options available for reaching customers, and in many cases, RCS can complement your existing efforts.

RCS and SMS

RCS is sometimes called “SMS 2.0.”. It takes everything that users and companies already love about SMS – 100% reach, reliability, ease, security – and builds on this to create an even better method of communication. RCS takes SMS to the next level by providing richer communications, longer message lengths, usage analytics, chatbot features, customizable branding and the ability to verify the sender of the message – a key differentiator in an age of consumer distrust.
RCS provides a universal messaging ecosystem in which it’s possible to send a message to any user as long as they have a mobile phone number.
This is important during the transition phase from SMS to RCS, when not all users will have a phone enabled with the RCS native app.
Native messaging applications that come preinstalled on all new Android phones, or can be downloaded from Google Play store, have one shared inbox for both RCS and SMS messages.
Therefore, both RCS and SMS are supported, easing messaging communication in case of fallback from RCS to SMS.

In accordance with the Universal Profile established by the GSMA , all new devices will contain one native messaging app that will support RCS. However, in communications where one phone is RCS-enabled, and another isn’t, messages will default to SMS.

RCS and Chat Apps

Even though chat apps also deliver rich content capabilities, RCS comes natively installed on users’ devices (as opposed to an app they have to download). Also, not all chat app providers allow promotional traffic, while RCS is being used by marketers to engage users using their own branding.
Like SMS, RCS can work with chat apps when defining fallback options if the recipient of the message is not able to receive it as RCS.

RCS and Voice

Voice is a complimentary service to RCS in a range of use cases. As part of an RCS flow, users can have the option of a click-to-call button to initiate a call with a live agent.
Still, messaging is one of the preferred communication channels across virtually every generation.
Laws are going into effect globally to limit people’s use of their smartphones while driving or crossing the street, and what are they using them for? Messaging. According to Flurry Analytics (as reported by Salesforce), messaging and social media apps have been the leading uses of smartphones in recent years.

RCS and Mobile Applications

RCS technology is accessed through a native app for smartphone users, which can take the place of proprietary smartphone apps, making it more accessible to customers. Having all communication in one app is convenient for customers, as it makes messaging with brands as comfortable and familiar as messaging with friends.
Customers are fickle, and they have high expectations of apps. One native app, as opposed to several downloaded apps, helps to make applications easier to manage and save storage, which is becoming increasingly important to users.
RCS is opening opportunities for small and medium enterprises who can now engage in an “app-like” user experiences, without the development time or investment required to build their own proprietary app. Similarly, larger enterprises can also benefit from adding this channel to their existing efforts, and lower the maintenance costs involved in frequently updating their own apps.

Coverage, Reach and Global Rollout

Mobile operators have to enable RCS technology in their networks in order to offer RCS to their subscribers. Global RCS rollout is gaining traction with many operators already live with RCS on all continents, while others are engaging on RCS enablement projects. As of November 2019, RCS is available through 81 operators in 55 countries, and this number is projected to increase to well over 100 by the first quarter of 2020.

Country-wide and global technology adoption is key to the success of this new messaging channel. In addition to manufacturers of telecom equipment making RCS possible, Google is also offering RCS enablement in the cloud as a quick go-to-market option, which will speed up RCS technology uptake.
According to MobileSquared, the total volume of A2P and P2A RCS messages sent by brands and businesses is forecast at 16.31 billion for 2019, rising to 80.61 billion in 2020, and 1.55 trillion in 2023.
With regards to devices, only Androids are currently supporting RCS. According to Mobilesquared, there are around 1.4 billion Android devices that are capable of receiving RCS messaging, and Samsung alone is shipping approximately 300 million new devices each year.

To be reachable to brands for RCS business messaging, a subscriber needs to have their Android device equipped with an RCS enabled messaging application. This application can either be preinstalled (native messaging app) or downloaded from the Play Store. The most widely used messaging applications with RCS capabilities are Android messages and Samsung messages, whereas some MNOs provide their own applications that even have the iPhone version, which is available at the Apple Store.
At the beginning of this process, certain device interoperability challenges arose as not all
stakeholders were aligned on the same version of the Universal Profile Standard. Thanks to joint efforts between GSMA, Google, Samsung, and other players, an agreement was achieved, and the device challenges are being resolved with a software upgrade; which will significantly increase the number of users that can be reached by RCS in specific countries and mobile networks.
The industry is watching very closely to see what role Apple will play in the evolution of RCS.

Pricing

Like the platform itself, RCS pricing models are evolving based on the assumption that pricing should be reflective of the value brands receive from its use, as well as how and to what degree the technology can be integrated for each use case. Multiple pricing options are being considered including per message, per session, per monthly active user, per click, and per impression.

Regulation

GDPR and other recent legislation have placed privacy restrictions on how businesses can
communicate with customers and prospects.
Mobile users need to opt in to allow messaging from businesses. Android customers who have already opted in to SMS messages from a business will automatically get the upgraded experience of RCS.
So there is no further consent required, other than to receive SMS messages. However, the final word on this is expected to come from national regulatory authorities.

Conclusion

Customers have come to expect genuine, personalized, meaningful, and transparent communications from companies. With RCS, you can develop stronger relationships with your customers through branded, engaging two-way conversations.
Early RCS case studies suggest that sales results (as measured by conversion rates or revenue) can more than double with relevant, visual, and engaging communication over RCS as a channel.
The GSMA has seen RCS generate increased market potential with a significant number of consumers being exposed to what RCS Business Messaging has to offer.

As RCS evolves, businesses should keep track of feature developments, pricing models, and consumer usage trends to ensure they take advantage of all the rich opportunities available for communicating with their consumers.

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