Derek: Hello, everyone, Derek Johnson went tatango.com.
We're at the GSMA Innovation City at Mobile World Congress 2019.
I'm here with Chris from 3C.
First, Chris, what is 3C?
Chris: Hi, Derek, 3C a mobile marketing company.
We have an RCS engagement platform we've used to help build some of the demos you've seen
throughout the week.
We also have a services layer on top of that to help brands bring these to life.
Derek: Perfect.
And right now as you can see on the screen, you're going to walk us through an RCS demo
from Express, and for the people maybe not in the United States they are a large retailer
in the United States, I think do they have outside the country?
Chris: I believe they're primarily US.
Derek: Okay, so this is a mass message that was just received on this phone, essentially.
And you're going to walk us through kind of all the functionality.
Chris: Sure, yeah.
So how this experience differs from some of the other demos you might have seen.
This is actually a broadcast message, as you said.
So you can see here that Express has full control over the branding and the appearance
of their logo.
This is a verified message so consumers know that this is coming from the brand itself.
We allow for, I believe, over 120 characters to have a brief intro about your company,
a brief bio.
And so essentially what this broadcast was, is a decision tree helping customers find
their new favorite pair of pants.
So we start off with being able to shop for men and for women.
Derek: And you're kind of going through this right now with the swiping.
Chris: Sure.
Derek: That's a huge feature and a huge upgrade over SMS and even MMS.
Chris: Yeah, it really is.
We're bringing app like functionality right into the messaging stream, which is fantastic.
So you as you said these rich cards here, in addition to the rich images that you're
able to send that aren't compressed as they would be over SMS or MMS.
And so we can actually scroll through this carousel horizontally.
And now I'm going to select menswear, looking for a new pair of pants.
Derek: And what's interesting about that is when you clicked it, it looked like a button.
But then it created a brand new kind of text message with the content from the button which
what does that do?
Does it makes it easier for the customer?
Chris: Absolutely, yeah.
So no longer you're going to sit there struggling trying to type different words or understand
if you're typing the right words, the right keywords into there, you're actually guiding
the user through the experience, which is great.
And so then once I hit menswear, and replies with the next set of rich cards here, I'm
either going to pick the clean white shirt or the floral shirt with the skinny tie.
I'm feeling a little saucy.
So I'll go with the floral shirt.
That brings up the next set of answers that I can go through here.
Whether I want to pick the 50 style or the '90s.
Derek: One thing I was just talking about earlier today is with MMS they...the brand
has to actually send the file, the image, the video to the actual phone.
These right here they're loading kind of like a website, almost.
Can you explain the difference between sending an MMS and sending an RCS in terms of the
media content?
Chris: Sure, I just believe that the capacity is probably a little bit higher with RCS,
a little more bandwidth for those pictures to come through.
You know, with MMS, you also have the sometimes you struggle sending from certain carriers,
right, the reach of MMS can sometimes be difficult.
But yeah, we're getting basically high-resolution files that are being transferred through here.
Derek: And you can actually click on those and expand them if you want, right?
Chris: Sure.
Yeah, and that will pop up just similar to how an MMS would.
Derek: But they're high definition, they're not kind of the, you know, MMS quality version
of the image or the video.
If it was a video, it'd be a beautiful video.
Chris: It would be and that's actually a great point that you bring up because brands are
able to embed videos into these rich cards here.
So as you see these images here we could easily put a video in here as well.
And so now I'm picking my style, my style range here.
I'm going to go with the '50s.
This brings up the next step.
I'm kind of a cardigan guy so I'll pick the cardigan.
Derek: It really feels app like, do you think that eventually RCS could maybe even replace
apps or really take a huge chunk out of that market?
Chris: Yeah, I think it'll be a balance to find.
I certainly think there are certain things you can accomplish with RCS that won't require
an app necessarily, but there are certain things that apps are going to do that are
going to be difficult at least for a while in the near future with RCS.
So certainly simple things like transactions, transactional messages, receipts, pick-up
notifications, that sort of thing, RCS is a great tool for that.
There are certain functionalities I think that will be best suited for an application
though.
Derek: Now you deal with these brands, Express, what has been their reaction number one and
then number two, what has been the customer reaction, the Express customer reaction to
this kind of these advanced messages that they're now receiving?
Chris: Sure.
I'd hate to speak on behalf of Express.
I believe they're very happy with the results they've seen so far.
And one of the first things we did with Express was actually the first retailer in North America
to leverage RCS.
What we did is after the first experience, we sent the consumer a survey to find out
what they thought about the experience, we found that 60% of the consumers said that
they would shop more because of an experience like this.
And 80% found it much easier than SMS to use.
Derek: I would almost think it's 100% because look at this compared to like an SMS with
a link.
And also, like at the very top left, you don't have a shortcode there.
It says the brand name.
It feels like the branding is just so much better than kind of the shortcode SMS experience.
Maybe talk about that, are brands really excited that they can really splash their colors,
their brand, verification, those kind of things all over this message?
Chris: Oh, absolutely, they're very excited about that.
That was something you have very little control over with SMS.
I mean, not only are you getting the logos and these rich images here, but you also have
the colors too, those things are important.
When you shop at Express, you know the brand, you know the color scheme.
So seeing it here makes people very familiar.
You know, I did want to touch on the fact that, as you mentioned with...
Sorry, I forgot your previous question about...
Derek: The branding.
Chris: Yeah, the...prior to that we were just we were talking about the...
Derek: So if somebody wants to, like let's say, build their own chatbot you know, they're
obviously new, you guys have built a bunch of RCS chatbots.
What is something that you've learned by building maybe for Express or for all the other brands
that you represent that maybe could help save some of the brands out there a little bit
of time?
Chris: Sure.
Start with a goal for the customer experience.
Really focus on the customer experience, and tailor it the way you want it.
Having a clear objective in mind and focus on the customer experience.
Derek: And would that be more planning up front rather than just kind of starting building
a chatbot, like really planning out the entire experience and then putting like an objective
in place?
Chris: Correct.
Yeah, you know, you have very powerful functionality here.
Make sure you use it the right way and help the customer have an experience with your
brand.
Derek: What was the sales process like?
I know Express, they use SMS, MMS, they use a lot of messaging channels.
Was it pretty easy to get them to buy into this once they saw it?
Chris: Once they saw it, certainly, certainly.
You know, and Express is a very innovative brand.
They're always willing to try new technology.
And so we're very happy that we could work with them, because no one was really certain,
they were the first retailer to try this.
But once they see the live demos, most people take to it very nicely, yeah.
Derek: That's perfect.
Anything else you want to add about 3C, about RCS, or kind of where RCS is going?
Chris: Sure.
If you're a brand out there and you're looking for a platform to get started, visit 3c.com.
Derek: Perfect.
We've heard it from Chris at 3C, this is Express, one...it actually the first retailer in the
United States that launched an RCS campaign so very special here at the GSMA Innovation
Center, Innovation City, at Mobile Congress 2019 in Barcelona.