Rich communications services, or RCS, are flooding messaging, with early adopters of the side of the brand including the NBA's Sacramento Kings, Virgin Trains in the UK, and French football club Paris St.-Germain.
At the same time, over-the-top (OTT) providers are starting to roll out similar business services. Whatsapp has WhatsApp Business and Apple has Apple Business Chat, for example. In RCS alone, Juniper Research predicts the market will exceed $ 9 billion in value by 2022, so it's not hard to see why OTT vendors are viewing corporate messaging as a reward worth pursuing.
Just like RCS, OTT offerings promise an app-like user experience that is entirely more engaging than what's available via SMS. However, four key differences set them apart.
1. Cover -
Oggi, i fornitori di OTT hanno un’ottima copertura. Whatsapp, ad esempio, rivendica 1,5 miliardi di utenti consumer attivi mensili. L’utilizzo di RCS in confronto è relativamente piccolo, ma sta crescendo rapidamente con il supporto di Google; Microsoft; Samsung e altri OEM; operatori mobili; fornitori di piattaforme di comunicazione come servizio; e fornitori di servizi di messaggistica. RCS sarà una funzionalità nativa su tutti i telefoni e le reti che la supportano, vale a dire che gli abbonati non dovranno scaricare un’app.
Circa 60 operatori di telefonia mobile in 45 paesi hanno adottato le caratteristiche di Messaging-as-a-Platform (MaaP) e profili universali di GSMA all’interno delle loro reti, in modo che RCS sia abilitato. È importante sottolineare che MaaP non solo crea le basi per l’interoperabilità di RCS, ma rende anche possibili servizi basati su chatbot o artificial intelligence (AI) per offerte come il personal banking e il trasferimento di denaro in una sessione RCS.
At the operating system level, Android and Microsoft support RCS. According to the latest IDC data, Android has an 85% market share of the 1.5 billion new smartphones shipped in 2018. Basically, Android OEMs like Samsung, LG and Huawei support RCS, so through the usual two-year renewal cycle. of RCS smartphones will grow significantly as a native feature of nearly all new Android devices, an installed user base of approximately five billion globally.
Notably, Apple has yet to come on board, but it is rumored to be in discussion with Google, the GSMA, etc. Meanwhile, any RCS message sent to an iOS phone is replaced with an SMS message.
2. Personalization:
when interacting with businesses, consumers no longer accept a one-way dialogue, for example by requesting a bank balance by text. Rather, they now expect to be able to interact with businesses, in time of need, on the platform of their choice via a two-way conversation.
The ability to deliver such interaction, in a personalized way, where and on which platform the consumer desires, is increasingly critical to business success.
To give that extra context, in a recent GSMA RCS lab in London, a Google spokesperson predicted that over the next five years, $ 800 billion will move from companies' 85% to the remaining 15% to get the right personalization.
Le imprese stanno rispondendo. Una recente ricerca di Adobe mostra che i marchi europei stanno investendo nell’artificial intelligence per offrire esperienze più personalizzate ai consumatori; L’89% degli intervistati ha dichiarato di vedere la personalizzazione come una chiave per il successo.
Le app RCS e di chat sono progettate per soddisfare la personalizzazione direttamente. Questi nuovi ricchi canali di messaggistica aziendale, se combinati con una profilazione dei clienti ben progettata e sistemi di artificial intelligence, offrono ai marchi l’opportunità di ottenere un modo molto più naturale di interagire e condividere informazioni ricche con i propri consumatori.
3. Personal data and trust:
la fiducia dei consumatori è fondamentale per la gestione di qualsiasi tipo di servizio online. Aziende come Whatsapp e Facebook basano i loro modelli commerciali sulla monetizzazione dei dati degli utenti, consentendo la pubblicità mirata. Lo stesso non vale per gli operatori di telefonia mobile. Sebbene possano analizzare e aggregare i dati degli utenti per informare le decisioni di marketing, non li vendono a fini pubblicitari.
The General Data Protection Regulation in Europe, as well as the patchwork of industry-specific privacy rules in the United States, have increased consumer sensitivity to the use of their personal data, placing transparency and informed consent as key principles in the its use.
And for businesses to be compliant, messaging network traffic and data can't be routed through countries outside of regulatory jurisdiction. Compliance must be examined at every stage of the journey.
4. Prices: direct or indirect? -
Point four is directly related to point three. OTTs take a mixed approach to monetize their services by extracting value from user data and charging companies for use.
L’approccio di Whatsapp è un esempio emblematico. Le aziende possono rispondere ai messaggi dei clienti gratuitamente per un massimo di 24 ore, ma vengono addebitate una tariffa fissa per paese e per messaggio per le comunicazioni inviate successivamente. Vengono inoltre addebitati quando avviano le comunicazioni.
RCS, on the other hand, does not extract any values from user data. Like SMS, it is charged by the carrier to the company (often via an aggregator). Unlike SMS, the payload per message is much higher (images, audio, video, etc.). While RCS is relatively new and players are investigating how to charge it fairly, a likely model will involve a per-transaction fee integrated with a per-session fee to support more interactive use cases. With buy-in by everyone in the value chain, there is expected to be between 10% and 15% higher than SMS.
Overall, the real advantage of RCS is that in many ways it is an open standard supported by a complex ecosystem, which is both cooperative and competitive. Ultimately, this will increase the availability of features to consumers and enable businesses to bring the next level of engagement into customer interactions.
It also means that RCS has the same important guarantees as SMS. That is, guaranteed message delivery, secure connection, zero-to-zero latency, regulatory compliance, and more.
With RCS
Messaging experiences can be customized, branded and built using an evolving toolkit of functionality and, in an improvement over SMS, the sender is verified. Chat app providers, on the other hand, operate within a walled garden where the messaging experience looks like the app owner. This might be OK for small businesses who are happy to prioritize function over form, but large businesses are likely to demand the more sophisticated options RCS offers.
