More interactive, more conversational but also transactional, the RCS promises to revolutionise mobile interaction with the customer. Between promises and prospects, we take a look at a technology that is enriching (or complicating!) the omnichannel customer relationship.
RCS stands for Rich Communication Services and has been supported by Google since 2016. The promise: to bring to mobile messaging a richness comparable to that provided by messaging solutions like WhatsApp or Messenger. If messaging services are becoming a growth channel for brands, it is because they induce a notion of immediacy, very much in line with customer expectations. An immediacy that cannot be separated from another major expectation: personalisation. Brand communication has been part of this personalisation dimension for a long time," observes Hugues Trogan, Director of Infobip France and Belgium. We have entered the era of the one-to-one. Conversational marketing is based on a key issue: delivering the right message to the right person at the right time and on the right channel. With nearly 39 million daily smartphone users in France (compared to 21 million for computers), according to Médiamétrie, the prospect of having a new, enhanced interaction channel with the RCS is stirring brands. Will 2022 be the year of the RCS? It is difficult to say at this time. However, the technology is benefiting from an unprecedented planetary alliance.
RCS: the big winner at COVID19?
For Jérôme Bouteiller, editorial consultant for the MMA (Mobile Marketing Association France), the observation is quite clear: "as far as customer relations are concerned, the web and e-mail pairing has clearly dominated for almost 20 years. But, under the effect of the digitalisation of consumer behaviour, new channels have appeared". And if the transformation was already well underway, the health crisis has literally turned customer habits upside down and redefined the scope of the use of the mobile for conversational purposes. The development of e-commerce, bots, and customer autonomy have taught consumers to interact differently with brands. "Communication campaigns, sharing of promotional offers, transactional dimension, customer relations, with the RCS the field of applications is considerably enlarged, and it is up to brands and advertisers to be imaginative", continues Jérôme Bouteiller.
The RCS is positioned as the worthy heir of SMS marketing. If the latter can be considered as the most universal channel, almost one promotional SMS out of two stays unanswered. SMS is generally satisfactory, but it is above all part of a world of notification. The great innovation with the RCS is the conversational logic that it allows to create. But all devices are still far from being compatible at this time. According to Juniper Research, RCS could reach more than 1.2 billion users by the end of 2022, and 3.8 billion users by 2026, representing 40% of global mobile subscribers. These estimates place RCS as an exceptional interaction channel, far outperforming WhatsApp and its 2 billion active users.
"The main hindrance to the adoption of RCS to date is that of the Reach," says Hugues Trogan (see our box). Indeed, although in France the introduction of RCS was made official last October by Orange, SFR and Bouygues Telecom, united within the AF2M association (French association for the development of multi-operator multimedia services and uses), the number of Android devices does not exceed 70% of the market. And not all of these devices are compatible with the RCS. And Apple, on the other hand, is still standing on its head and refusing to integrate RCS technology into its iPhones (preferring iMessage). "There are approximately 20 million RCS-compatible customers on the market," says Renan Abgrall, president of AF2M (see our box).
While waiting for all devices to be compatible with RCS, one must remain cautious, despite the potential and the attraction of the new feature. The mistake would be to consider RCS as an exclusive channel," says Pierre Garrigues, country manager for CM. com. Brands must, in a way, be channel agnostic to reach a maximum audience. This vision is shared by Infobip, which ensures that any RCS message that cannot be delivered due to a lack of compatible terminals is automatically switched to SMS.
Getting rid of third-party applications
OTT (Over the Top) messengers such as WhatsApp and Messenger are compatible with almost all mobile phones. But for brands, the difficulty lies in the need to download and install a third-party application. RCS removes this difficulty and expands the range of possibilities in terms of direct marketing or customer relations. It also spares brands a certain dependence on the publishers of these applications. Meta (ex-Facebook) has the right to control the campaigns that brands can run. While the RCS frees brands from the burden of OTT, on the customer side it has another advantage. It avoids the feeling that brands are intruding on messaging systems associated with personal or family use.
Joining a conversational logic: not so simple!
In concrete terms, the RCS opens the way to new interactions between brands and their customers. Among the features natively available with RCS are messaging, the possibility of setting up a face-to-face or group chat, file transfer of all types, VoIP calls, video calls, or notification of contact availability... From sending simple advertising messages enriched with photos or video, to sending informative messages including, for example, point-of-sale guidance data, the possibilities are numerous. "With RCS, brands will create the conditions for richer communication with their customers and truly engage in a dialogue," says Thomas Fauq,
Opportunity's Deputy Managing Director. Images, QR Code, interaction buttons, carousel... The RCS also makes it possible to deploy chatbots to automate part of the customer relationship and promote considerably enriched self-service uses. These enhancements are linked to mobile operating systems and make it possible to take advantage of functionalities such as geolocation or mobile payment. The first RCS campaigns that have already been carried out have already yielded some lessons. The coupling of an RCS message with a bot offers excellent results and the conversion rates of certain brands have exceeded all expectations," notes Pierre Garrigues. A client in the media sector that we supported at the end of 2021 reported an effectiveness for an RCS campaign that was 112% higher than that of an SMS campaign.
Between cost and ROI...
However, the RCS forces us to question the new mechanisms to propose to the recipient. It is a different way of managing campaigns because if the message invites interaction, to enter into a conversation, this means that the back office must be organised accordingly to respond to customers, either with humans or with a chatbot. "One of the unknowns at the moment is the extra cost of an RCS campaign compared to an SMS marketing or e-mail campaign," comments Jérôme Bouteiller.
The creation of an RCS campaign automatically costs more than an SMS campaign. "Because of its nature, its richness and its technical design, RCS is about twice as expensive as a simple SMS. But, behind the cost, it is the creation of value that should be questioned. Because it is as much conversational as transactional or relational, RCS offers a much higher ROI perspective," comments Pierre Garrigues. Because RCS is an entire field to be explored, it is particularly interesting for brands with a large portfolio of customers to launch test campaigns in order to evaluate different mechanisms. It's a return to test and learn that will eventually identify the most effective mechanisms and strategies!
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