After years of listening to “It's coming!” Rich Communication Services (RCS) is finally a reality for many consumers. Google's Android phones have it, and Samsung users have the option to use it. Apple hasn't announced plans to adopt RCS, but experts expect the move to be almost inevitable. For companies looking to deliver mobile experiences, adopting RCS is a game-changer.
What is RCS?
RCS is a communication protocol used by mobile carriers that represents the next generation of SMS messaging. Until recently, most of what happened in your phone's default messaging app was purely text-based (with a healthy dose of emojis). With RCS, your smartphone's native messaging app will support rich messaging features, making its default messaging flow much more similar to WhatsApp, Messenger, or Instagram Messages. Many Android users are already experiencing RCS. RCS features include:
- [Most importantly!] App-like functionality: Users are no longer limited to simple text-based exchanges. Share a survey or rating that can be completed in the message stream. Change reservations, book tickets, make a purchase, update privacy settings—again, all without leaving the native phone messaging app.
- Larger File Size: Consumers and businesses can send larger files, including GIFs, videos, hi-res photos, PDFs, etc.
- Send a text message! Similar to messaging apps like Messenger and WhatsApp, RCS has no character limits.
For marketing and CX leaders, this shift represents a huge shift in the mobile engagement landscape. Using RCS, companies can engage in new and interactive ways. Want to let a customer know a package is on its way? Instead of simply sending a message like "your package is arriving today," share a map that displays real-time updates and allows customers to provide specific instructions (e.g., "Please leave it on my porch!").
Five ways RCS will advance how businesses reach their customers and drive higher sales
1. Higher conversion rates
RCS offers companies the ability to deliver highly personalized messages in a much more interactive format. And a better experience means higher conversion rates. Let's look at some industry scenarios:
Voyage: A hotel chain wants to inform customers about Valentine's Day offers. Using SMS/TXT, the hotel can send a short text-only message plus a hyperlink. Using RCS, the hotel can send photos of its promotional destinations with their prices, develop insights into which promotions capture the attention of specific customers, and use the data to create a clearer 1:1 buyer journey. Once the customer has booked the deal, using RCS, the hotel can offer additional deals, from room upgrades to champagne and roses waiting in the room.
Health care: A pharmacy wants to increase loyalty by helping its customers manage their prescriptions. Using traditional text messaging, the chain reminds customers that a refill order is coming. "Want to fill your prescription for metformin?" Text Yes or no . ” Using RCS, the customer can manage all their prescriptions in the SMS flow, activate automatic refills and suspend others, and notify them when they will be present to collect the next refill.
Retail: A home improvement chain wants to develop deeper relationships with its customers. Using SMS, it sends a notification of an upcoming sale. With RCS, the retailer sends the sale prices for half a dozen products the customer is most likely to want based on an analysis of their purchase history – and offers customers the option to purchase without leaving the text message stream.
How big is the performance leap from SMS to RCS? French insurance company Macif reports that RCS click-through rates are double those of SMS and three times that of email.
2. Reduce the clutter of the channels
Sinch research shows that consumers are excited about next-generation mobile messaging, and in particular, they find the idea of aggregating ALL their messages into their phone's default inbox "extremely useful." (See table below.)
Therefore, even as brands are committed to multiplying the number of messaging channels they use to reach customers, consumers suggest they would like less channels.
Consumers want to simplify messaging
Would it be helpful if all mobile chat tools are placed using the phone's default TXT / SMS application?
3. Real-time utilities
One of the main advantages of RCS is allowing companies to provide their customers with up-to-date, real-time utilities. For example:
Changing the booking of a flight without a call center: le Inbound calls to call centers are time-consuming for customers and costly for businesses. Using RCS, customers can request changes to their itinerary and have a new copy of their ticket or boarding pass sent directly to their inbox.
Abandoned cart targeting: remind customers of incomplete checkouts by sending pictures of the items they left in their online carts, and even let them complete their purchase from their inbox.
Increase Delivery Completions: Let customers know their package is on the way and provide them with selectable options to leave it in a safe place or schedule redelivery, all without having to leave their inbox.
These types of interactions are valuable because, by their very nature, they are personalized, uniquely tailored to a single individual. As Michael Ricci, Master Principal Solutions Architect at Oracle's CX Center of Excellence, recently shared in the Sinch Mobile Consumer Engagement 2020 report:
“Without personalizing the customer experience, most consumers give up. This is the biggest challenge: helping brands understand that it's time to bring that data together so they can holistically personalize their interactions with consumers.”
4. Bypass disabled notifications
Sinch research shows that 1 in 4 consumers "often" disable notifications from apps on their phones (and the ratio rises to 1 in 3 for Gen Z). For brands that rely heavily on their apps to reach customers, this presents a problem: they may be missing time-sensitive information. Native messaging, however, is much less likely to be disabled. According to Sinch research, half of consumers have zero unread messages in the inbox and the 85% has 10 or fewer unread messages. The lesson? Native messaging achieves its goal at an incredibly high rate.
5. More in-depth metrics
With the advent of RCS, marketing and customer experience leaders have a much more robust data set at their disposal. Rather than a simple "read receipt," messages sent via RCS have the same depth of analysis available as email. For example:
- Messages sent, delivered and opened
- Click-through rate, including the best performing part of the message
- In-stream engagement and completed actions / transactions
- Call center metrics, including resolution rates and sentiment analysis. "With richer data, companies have the ability to better understand the customer to refine how they reach, engage, and convert each individual through more personalized communication."
For businesses, RCS messaging is an effective way to create conversations More engaging with customers and providing significantly higher utility value on mobile devices. And according to Sinch research, consumers are ready and willing to explore new uses for mobile messaging.
