How RCS Transforms the Retail Experience

If you're reading this, it means you’re interested in this highly valuable use case for RCS for the retail industry and we can’t wait to demo it for you.

My name is Mara Miller, I’m the Director of Marketing at Vibes I’m going to be walking you through our RCS demo and how it can drive immense value for retail brands.

What is RCS and how is it primed to benefit retailers?

RCS stands for rich communication services - a new messaging protocol like SMS and MMS, but with many more interactive features, and a more exciting visual experience overall. 

RCS looks and feels like an actual conversation between your brand and your customers, providing you with even more opportunities to showcase your brand voice and create engaging, memorable customer experiences.

At Vibes, we’re committed to paving the way for RCS adoption in the U.S. We’re focusing on testing and learning about the efficacy of this emerging channel, and working closely with our customers to set up agents to then validate some of the end-user reactions on the use cases that we believe will drive the most value.

What does an RCS conversation look like?

‍Here is a rich card, which allows you to attach images, gifs or videos along with more detailed descriptions. But what’s particularly unique about this RCS feature is the ability to add a menu with suggested actions that can generate user engagement with just one tap instead of typing.

If you think about collecting subscriber preferences in the SMS world, they might be asked to reply 1 for male, reply 2 for female, or you might link them out to a web form, which disrupts the messaging experience by taking your subscribers out of their messaging app.

RCS makes data collection feel more natural for your customers who just have to click on the button that resonates most with them, and it feels more authentic that you, the brand, want to genuinely get to know your subscribers.

RCS allows you to include a carousel of up to 10 rich cards that your customers can scroll through. Unlike an SMS where you can only send text and a related URL, RCS allows you to include product images coupled with relevant information about the products, like color and price. The visual elements make it more enticing to interact with, and serve as helpful reminders of the products your customers looked at. 

This interaction mirrors what your customers are more familiar with experiencing on social media, directly on your website or in your mobile app, but now it’s happening directly in their native messaging app.

The suggested reply buttons - which are customizable to best fit the user flow you're building - make it super simple for your customers to take the nextstep, like adding browsed products to a shopping cart.

Additionally, there are a number of built-in suggested action buttons RCS offers, such as:

• Dial a number. Users can tap this button to initiate a phone call if, for example, your customer wants to call into a store to inquire about a certain item being in stock.
• ‍Share my location. This allows your customers to share their exact location to get a response with the store locations nearest them.
• View location. An option to include if you want to show directions to any of your stores on a map for your customers who want to shop in person.
• Add to calendar. Let's say you're having a store opening or in-store event, you can give your customers the option to easily add it to their calendar.

RCS also offers an improved customer servicing experience for helping solve issues for things like order exchanges or returns – something brands previously would often redirect to a separate app to handle.

While cart recovery is a use case that you can do with SMS today, it’s an improved experience via RCS because you can present visuals of the items your customers previously looked at within the conversation vs. having to link out to a web browser or mobile app to provide the full details. Your customers can pick up right where they left off in their shopping journey in a single channel – they can begin the checkout process, or they can opt to browse recommended items that go along with the items in their cart to complete the look, and they will only be redirected out of their messaging app to your website to complete payment for their order.

Ready to get started on the next wave of messaging? Get in touch with us today!