How to make business messaging superior with RCS

The way we communicate with each other has evolved to drastic measures over the past few years of the internet coming into being. Right from the boomers to the Gen Zs, there is no stone left unturned with the newly formed habits of using instant messaging. Millions of people interact daily by exchanging videos, photos, sounds, voice messages,music, or just your go-to text messaging. People started to make a variety of friendships and relationships online and expect the same convenient relationships with their favorite brands. 

Rich Communication Services (RCS) is a cellular communication protocol program created by the GSMA consortium to offer SMS (Short Message Services) features with an intuitive user experience identical to instant texting applications such as Whatsapp Messenger,Instagram, or iMessage.

But apart from just being mass-oriented, Google RCS is an excellent future tool for brands in B2C(business to consumer) aspects. Telecom is an ultra-wide sector, in both economic and technological terms. This connection between billions of us human beings has been used for marketing and promotion for decades on the go. Such marketing pitches were forced on telecom users via SMS and push notifications.

In this article, we are going to discover what RCS is and how to use it in your very own business to create a trust worthy and profitable relationship with your customers.

RCSas the engagement driver for brands

As we all know, mobile marketing has always helped various companies and businesses to reach out to the right target audience. And as being the future of good old messaging services, RCS can help your business grow regardless of the industry of interest. In today's date, all companies can flourish by mobile marketing as it's made it easier to target any audience.

Some perks of RCS over SMS are as below:

  • Exchange of links.
  • Supports various multimedia files such as video, audio, gif, pdf, other document files, etc. 
  • Group conversation.
  • No character limits on messages.
  • Location sharing.

And many more.

RCS can be used in various ways effectively in a business. 

For example:

  • Display catalog, portfolio, or product list,   like in an e-commerce website. 
  • Facilitate order management.
  • Carry out customer surveys.
  • Customer engagement   and valued customer experience.
  • Better security possibilities for the banking     sector.
  • Establish a direct connection between  company and customer. 
  • Marketing a discount season.

With the help of RCS, mobile marketing is growing as a target place for advertisement and looks equally effective to email marketing. Maybe it can replace email marketing too. Once the customer has given permission, the company can start sending them offers, vouchers, product promotions, etc.

Use cases

GSMA 2020 stated that RCS is estimated and graphed to be usable on 85% of smartphones by the year 2022.There are various ways to use RCS in any given categorized industry; it opens the opportunity of push promotion, but with consent. 

As the title suggests, Google RCS is and will act like a shark in this tank of the telecom industry. Walking towards dominance of the B2C marketing section, RCS will work more effectively than email marketing.

Uses of RCS in Ecommerce

One of the major use cases of RCS in eCommerce is enhancing the customer experience with the use of chatbots in customer support operations. RCS chatbots can be integrated into messaging apps to provide information to the customers in a better, engaging,and informed way. The chatbots can provide real-time updates about product ordering, packaging, delivery, and other aspects in a fast and easy way. It also enables two-way communication, which is missing with standard automated SMS and emails.

Uses of RCS in Hospitality

RCS helps the players involved in the hospitality industry provide an app-like experience right in the customer's text messages. This helps enhance customer engagement, customer experience, and eventually business growth.

For example, hotels can provide booking information, map directions, contact details, and let customers change their stay preferences or even cancel it, right through the RCS system. All this can be done through the native text application.

Uses of RCS in Logistics

Similar to the hospitality industry, the logistics sector can use RCS to provide continuous, real-time updates to customers regarding their shipments. This helps improve transparency and improves the customer experience.

Uses of RCS in Airlines

RCS can become the one-stop destination for airline companies to provide all the information regarding the flight to their customers. This can simplify air travel and improve the customer experience significantly.

For example, an RCS message can contain the passenger details, the scheduled time of flight, the boarding time, gate number, seat, and terminal number. Similarly, a QR code can be provided in the message to help with check-in purposes.

Uses of RCS in the telecom industry

Every cellular phone on this planet receives some or other promotional SMS every day. The same old bot-generated SMS with a link to put forward their products, but it's never too compelling enough. Nobody wants to click on shady promotions with a lack of info and data about the product being promoted, and most of the time, those promotional SMS esare entirely unsolicited. But on the other hand, RCS is completely taking over by taking required measures on each and every problem faced with the SMS system. 

Unsolicited marketing mostly goes unnoticed as it was unasked for. With RCS, it's all completely organized. The company can only send promotional messages via RCS if the customer accepts the request to share deals and offers. Consent is being prioritized in this service, which eventually filters the audience and acts more effectively than SMS marketing or push notifications. When the customer signs up for something themselves, the customer engagement grows, which keeps increasing the efficiency depending on the customer experience.

From e-commerce to banking, RCS has made every process easier for an entertaining and interactive customer experience. From launching a restaurant menu, catalog, product list, pricing list for any e-commerce website and then accepting orders, to travel booking for airlines. RCS can be used to send all the text, link, QR code, and multimedia files to support the marketing campaign for the business and boost the service or sales. RCS can be used by companies to push the boundaries of customer care services. In such cases, RCS saves time and increases customer engagement

So, RCS is truly a successful future replacement for SMS in terms of mobile marketing and pushing and brands. Consent is what makes the most significant difference, but why won't businesses use communication modes like WhatsApp, Telegram, and Viber? As the B2C module looks for the most effective paths with minor hurdles, messaging services like WhatsApp and viper have detailed additional agreements, which is not required with an RCS campaign.

Conclusion

Google RCS is the future of mobile marketing and an actual shark of the telecom tank. With pushing boundaries and solving limiting problems of SMS and constant customer engagement and interactive experience, RCS can be used by any brand of any sector or industry to push their product and services directly to the customer.

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