Subway and other global brands are set to adopt RCS Messaging as a standard for communicating with their customers, according to the GSMA, which announced the news at Mobile World Congress Americas today, currently taking place in San Francisco. Right now many top global brands are still using SMS business messaging to communicate and engage with customers, and this includes Subway, but the move to RCS Messaging, otherwise better-known as Rich Communication Services messaging, will allow these brands to tap into a more rich and capable SMS platform.
Brands besides Subway that will be making the switch over to the RCS Messaging platform are Walgreens, BMW Seattle, 1-800-Contacts, MGM Resorts, the Detroit Pistons, and others, and although it’s not entirely clear how any of these companies plan to use the new platform when engaging with consumers, RCS Messaging itself provides plenty of benefits to users in general. One of the best ways RCS Messaging is an improvement over the old standard that was being used is being able to see when messages have been read, and when someone is currently in the middle of replying to a message that has been sent. With global brands like Walgreens using RCS Messaging for engaging with consumers directly, a question about a possible pharmacy pickup could be made much simpler, as the consumer would know when the message has been seen by the brand, and when a reply is coming through, which could ultimately cut down on the amount of time the consumer would have to go in and check for a new message to know if it’s been seen or not.
As GSMA points out, the platform for RCS Messaging is clearly getting a lot of traction with brands and operators, especially with the inclusion of the listed brands in today’s announcement. GSMA notes that there are over 50 operators and brands that now support the RCS Messaging standard who have launched the use of the new platform on a global scale, including brands like Google and Microsoft, carriers like Sprint, AT&T, and other global brands like Huawei, Samsung, and LG, and the list is continually growing too, which means eventually consumers will be able to engage with brands using this new richer format on a more consistent basis.