The Next Wave of Customer Conversations: Introducing Google RCS For Business on MoEngage

Reading Time: 5 minutes

Remember the simple days of SMS? A quick text, maybe an emoji if you were feeling fancy. For years, SMS and its slightly more colorful cousin, MMS, were the mainstays of mobile messaging from brands.

But let’s be honest, in today’s world of instant, interactive, and visual communication, they feel a bit… dated.

Customers now expect more. They want conversations, rich experiences, and the ability to interact with brands seamlessly.

For Marketers – while SMS reached many, engagement often plateaued.

Promoting products or services with just 160 characters and no visuals is tough.

Plus, the rise of spam messages eroded trust in the channel, making customers wary of promotional texts unless they were for essential updates like transactions.

While other messaging apps like WhatsApp, Viber, or Line offered richer features, they came with their own hurdles – users needed to download specific apps, adoption varied greatly by region, they could be expensive for brands, and sometimes required specific opt-ins.

The market clearly needed an evolved messaging solution – a messaging channel that combined the reach and native feel of SMS with the rich, interactive capabilities modern users and marketers demand.

Enter Google RCS For Business: What Is It and Why Does It Matter?

Meet Google Rich Communication Services (RCS).

Think of it as an evolution of SMS and MMS, built for the way we communicate today.

Integrated directly into the default messaging app on mobile phones, RCS transforms basic texting into a vibrant, conversational experience.

So, what makes RCS different?

• Verified Branding & Trust: Build confidence instantly. RCS messages display your brand name and logo, and crucially, feature a verification checkmark from Google. This tells customers the message is genuinely from your brand, tackling the spam problem head-on.
• Rich Media: Forget plain text. RCS lets brands send high-resolution images, videos, GIFs, and even carousels (think scrolling product galleries!) directly in the message.
  
• Interactivity: RCS supports interactive buttons and suggested replies. Buttons like “Shop Now,” “Track Order,” “Add to Calendar,” “Call Us,” “View Location,” or even quick replies like “Yes, I’m interested” or “Remind me later”. Customers can take action right within the message.
• Better Insights with Campaign metrics: Understand how your messages perform with delivery metrics and read receipts.

This frictionless experience, combined with its powerful features, is why Google RCS is rapidly gaining traction. Currently, over 1 billion people use it actively every month worldwide, with projections reaching nearly 1.9 billion by 2027.

Native Google RCS: Elevating Omnichannel Engagement with Google RCS For Business on MoEngage

At MoEngage, our mission is to help brands build meaningful relationships with their customers through personalized, omnichannel engagement.

With growing demand for richer, more trustworthy mobile conversations we are enabling Google RCS For Business for brands.

By bringing RCS For Business into MoEngage, we empower marketers to:

• Expand their omnichannel strategy: RCS becomes another powerful tool alongside push notifications, email, in-app messages, SMS, and WhatsApp, all managed from one platform.
  
• Leverage rich features easily: Create engaging RCS campaigns with ready-to-use Templates that showcase rich cards, carousels, videos, and interactive buttons directly within the familiar MoEngage campaign creation flow.
• Ensure reliable delivery: Combine the richness of RCS with the reach of SMS. Our intelligent fallback system automatically sends an SMS if an end user’s device doesn’t support RCS, ensuring your message always gets through.
• Personalization at scale: Leverage deep segmentation and customer insights, to send highly relevant and contextual RCS messages to your customers.

Google RCS is offered as part of our SMS suite, allowing brands to craft a flexible messaging strategy – using SMS for broad, cost-effective reach and RCS for high-impact, interactive campaigns.

What’s in It for Brands?

Integrating Google RCS via MoEngage isn’t just about new features; it’s about driving real business value.

Here’s how:

• Dramatically Enhance Customer Engagement: Move beyond static text. Use images, videos, carousels, and buttons to create captivating messages that customers like to interact with, leading to significantly higher engagement rates.
• Boost Trust and Brand Recognition: Verified sender profiles with your logo build immediate credibility, differentiating your messages from potential spam and strengthening brand recall. When customers trust the sender, they’re more likely to engage.
• Maximize Reach with Reliable Delivery: Our intelligent SMS fallback ensures you connect with your entire audience segment, whether they have RCS-enabled devices or not. You get the best of both worlds: rich interaction where possible, universal reach guaranteed.
• Streamline Campaign Management: Manage RCS campaigns seamlessly within the MoEngage platform you already know. Create content, define target segments using rich customer data, schedule sends (one-time, recurring, or triggered by events), and analyze results – all in one place.
• Gain Deeper Performance Insights: Go beyond basic delivery reports. Track delivery rates, read receipts (where supported), click-through rates on specific buttons, and conversions driven by your RCS messages. Use these actionable insights to optimize your campaigns for better results.

Putting RCS into Action across Industries

The versatility of RCS makes it valuable across many sectors. Here are just a few ideas:

Retail & E-commerce:

• Send stunning promotional offers with product images/videos and “Shop Now” buttons.
• Use carousels to showcase new collections or related items based on customer preferences or interests.
• Recover abandoned carts with images of the items left behind and a direct “Checkout” link.
• Share order confirmations, shipping updates, back-in-stock alerts, and collect feedback with interactive surveys.

Banking & Finance (BFSI):

• Deliver verified OTPs, transaction alerts, and balance updates securely with branded messages.
• Send real-time fraud alerts with “Secure Account” or “Report Issue” buttons.
• Streamline loan applications or updates, potentially allowing document sharing within the RCS Chat.
• Remind customers about bill payments with an integrated “Pay Now” button.

Travel & Hospitality:

• Travel and Hospitality brands can engage their customers via RCS and Send flight/train updates with options like “Check-In,” “Change Seat,” or “View Boarding Pass”.
• Confirm bookings with details and perhaps “Add to Calendar” or “Get Directions” buttons.
• Offer room upgrades or ancillary services (like meal selection) through interactive messages.

These are just starting points – the possibilities for creating engaging, efficient, and trustworthy customer interactions with RCS are vast.

Conclusion: The Future of Conversational Engagement is Here

By integrating Google RCS natively into our platform, MoEngage provides brands with a powerful tool to enhance customer experience, build stronger relationships, improve conversion rates, and strengthen brand trust. Combining the versatile, rich media capabilities of RCS with segmentation, personalization, and omnichannel orchestration, you now have the perfect combination to future-proof your mobile messaging strategy.

Embrace the evolution of mobile engagement with Google RCS on MoEngage.