Two-way communication is a conversation between two parties – people between themselves or people and chatbots. As simple as that. It is not a one-way street as both parties need to be involved in the conversation passing on the message or sharing the information. As bilateral communication has always been an integral part of our society, it has also become an integral part of business strategies when experienced professionals realized that building a strong relationship with their customers, rather than having one-way communication with them, is a foundation of a successful business.

Over the past few decades, marketing has evolved from the simple act of notifying prospective customers about a particular product or service to a much more sophisticated and complex act of interaction with potential customers via various channels. SMS marketing is an important strategy in today’s marketing industry as the vast majority of people all over the world own a mobile phone of some kind.

As technology advances every day, customer expectations rise so businesses face new challenges in their marketing approach. Knowing the fact that exceptional customer experience is essential for the long-term success of a business, marketers underline the importance of consistent experience in every interaction with customers across multiple channels.

The extensive use of technology tools in everyday business has significantly improved business performance and increased efficiency in all industry sectors. It has also changed the way of interaction between businesses and their customers emphasizing the importance of additional marketing efforts to enhance customer experience. This customer-centric prospect guarantees companies a huge advantage over their competition and leads to successful business performance.

With the integration of technology into modern business, companies striving to stay highly competitive in the market have to think of new and innovative ways to adapt to market changes as well as to changes in customers’ demands. In order to do so, most enterprises decide to invest in innovative tools to improve efficiency and profitability.  With Covid-19 pandemic-influenced lockdowns in 2020 and 2021, the importance of cloud-based communication platforms became even more apparent since businesses were struggling to maintain continuous contact with their customers. The need for cloud-based communication platforms that improve connectivity between companies, customers as well as applications, increased drastically in this period.

More and more businesses in all industry verticals have started employing SMS messaging for their customer relationship management. From two-factor authentication (2FA), high-volume alerts, notifications, appointment reminders, to all sorts of SMS marketing campaigns, SMS has become the most popular way to reach out to customers and gain their attention. This messaging is also known as application-to-person, or A2P messaging. Others call it enterprise or business messaging. No matter how you name it, what is important here is that SMS is now the most desired communication channel among brands. Industries such as banking, financial institutions, e-commerce, healthcare, and entertainment are widely using A2P SMS.

As technology continues to advance and with OTT players constantly on the rise, certain services and software inevitably become obsolete. How should telco businesses and service providers evolve to stay relevant and cope with the ever-changing trends? What are the market gaps that will surface when 5G and giant cloud techs finally hit the trade? The editorial team at Telecoms World Asia had the opportunity to interview Fabrizio Salanitri, the CEO of HORISEN. He will be sharing about the evolution of the telco industry, the challenges that communication service providers face today, and what to look forward to at Telecoms World Asia 2020.

On June 17 this year Google announced it is officially rolling out its RCS Chat in the UK and France. In the UK, the service officially became available on 28 June for some users. After this news broke, RCS became the main buzz word. However, RCS or Rich Communication Services is not a novelty. RCS protocol dates back to 2007. In 2008 GCM Association took it over, while in 2016 it became an agreed standard when GCMA published the Universal Profile on RCS. The Universal Profile is a set of features and technical enablers built to facilitate global operator deployment of RCS. RCS is a new messaging standard aimed to enable the industry to deliver a consistent and more advanced texting experience for billions of consumers worldwide. The goal is to have most smartphones with a built-in advanced messaging that features read receipts, the capability to send high-resolution images and videos, typing indicators, animated stickers, better group texting, etc. Similar to popular chat apps like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Signal, and others. In other words, RCS is the protocol intended to supersede the SMS. This protocol should provide improved messaging. To put it simply, RCS is enriched SMS.

Operators’ core revenues have been shrinking since 2012. Voice margins are decreasing, and SMS messaging has also suffered an impact from OTT messaging apps. SMS market has survived the initial shock caused by IM applications. Moreover, SMS traffic is now growing because the use of SMS has become very popular among enterprises. A2P messaging market is booming and is estimated to be worth $70.32 billion by 2020.

A2P SMS Messaging (application to person messaging), or enterprise 2-way SMS, is an ideal way to maintain consistent and timely communication with your customers. In a world where everything is so fast, it is essential to have quality communication with your audience and clients because people don’t want to wait. For anything, anymore. Customers expect fast if possible immediate responses from companies and brands.