RCS is Here
Happy RCS day! If you’re reading this it’s NOT too late. The Telesign RCS API is now available and life as we know it will never be the same. As we discussed here RCS is the evolution of P2P and A2P messaging. Think of it as SMS supercharged with dozens of new features that will help you reach and engage with your users, increasing value during the entire customer lifecycle.
To celebrate our RCS launch we are going to focus on some of the more common use cases for RCS to help you get as excited as we are and give you some good ideas for your implementation.
The most critical and common advantage of RCS is in the alerts, reminders and notifications space. While SMS could deliver useful information, RCS can now do that in an attractive, interactive way that has proven to drive user engagement. In fact, GSMA has reported that utilizing RCS for ARN messaging brands have seen up to an 800% lift in click through rates, and customers are 60% more likely to engage with the content.
Let’s talk about some of the options in the ARN space. RCS now allows for picture, video and file messages. These files could be gifs or a carousel rich card and now with RCS; MMS incompatibility is solved for once and for all. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, let’s look at one of the most common use case examples, the airline ticket.
In this one message, the passenger is told his flight #, boarding and departure time, terminal, gate and seat. He also has a QR barcode that he can scan at security and boarding. There is further built in logic such as the Ôconfirm’ or Ôcontact airline’ options. Once could further integrate with a chatbot if they wanted to provide some light AI customer support.
ALL IN ONE RCS MESSAGE. Imagine how many SMS it would have taken to convey the exact same information in a far less pleasing way from a UX standpoint.Another great example of the power of RCS lies within the carousel rich card. Imagine you are a large enterprise running a flash sale on *looks at image* party supplies! Everyone loves a good party, balloons, streamers, candy and a funfetti cake!
This particular example could be used as an outbound ad by a company or the result of engagement with a chatbot. You see there are several different cakes that a user could scroll through. They could then do things like call the store to make sure the bakery has enough time to bake the cake directly from the RCS message.
Obviously, RCS provides extremely powerful engagement opportunities, but what else? What about better metrics? With click through options and different levels of engagement, every RCS message returns advanced statistics that can help marketers optimize their outbound campaigns, far more in depth than a standard read receipt.
Lastly, don’t forget about 2fa. One time passcode two factor authentication is great, albeit a little boring. You receive the 6 digit code, enter it in your device and you’re on your way. Despite this, we’ve seen low levels of friction with SMS 2fa. RCS offers this experience to be slightly more engaging, add some color, some branding, even some more information to the traditional OTP.
These are clearly not the only use cases for RCS, but hopefully these get the wheels in your brain spinning on some exciting ways to use an emergent technology to create more value during the customer lifecycle of your users.
For more information on RCS and its current available availability, click here. “
