2020 is just around the corner – an outlook

Rich Communication Services, RCS for short, has been considered the “next level” of text messaging for several years. Simply put, RCS is a hybrid of SMS and messenger apps like Whatsapp. For years, there have been various approaches to making this new standard widely available. However, most of them failed due to a lack of coordination. In June, Google announced that it wanted to push the implementation of RCS itself from now on. This didn’t seem to please some network operators who would like to develop their own apps for it. In October the situation became more complicated again.

Basically, the forecast that Harvard Business Review makes is an outlook in itself: The Era of Loyalty in marketing is coming to an end, as the Era of Relevance begins with the new decade. For us as CPaaS, this is of course good news: relevance also means that customers want personal contact and personalized offers in 2020. To this day, there is no generally accepted communication channel that can compete with the “good old” SMS in this respect. Accordingly, SMS is as popular as ever in marketing. New developments, especially in the area of RCS, naturally also play a major role in relevance marketing.

The trend that has been emerging since around 2017 continued this year. After a period of stagnation, SMS is growing primarily in the A2P segment and will continue to do so in 2020. In addition, there are ever new studies that show that customers prefer text messages when in contact with companies. In the context of relevance this means: Write SMS to your customers and make it as personal as possible. While in private messaging the focus is mainly on Whatsapp and Co., SMS is still worthwhile, especially wherever automated messages are to be sent – and where the message is to reach the recipient regardless of the Internet connection.

There are still some things to be sorted out until it really starts, but the first frequencies are auctioned off and the plans to build new radio masts are gradually taking shape. Super-fast mobile Internet will of course be really exciting when RCS is no longer just a poorly coordinated gimmick, but a true new communication standard. And while we’re on the subject…

Whether we can look forward to RCS news in 2020 depends on how the situation develops. Coordination between different parties would be desirable, especially between Google and the network operators. A joint approach would be optimal. And then, of course, there’s the question of whether Apple will make its iMessage compatible with RCS. That alone can decide the success or failure of RCS. We should therefore remain interested.

As mentioned above, the Era of Relevance in marketing has begun. Especially in connection with the (possibly) wider availability of RCS, this can be exciting. RCS makes it possible to send customized and truly personal messages that offer the recipient real added value. An example would be to display the weather data for the destination directly in the message instead of just confirming the booking of a flight.

More and more smart devices in our lives want to communicate with us or with each other. This is one of the reasons why the 5G development is being pushed forward. According to some experts, there could be up to 100 billion smart devices by the end of 2020. For us at seven, the IoT is particularly interesting when these devices communicate with their users via A2P SMS.