Tapping Into Mobile TextTapping Into Mobile Text
For the general population, text might be a simple idea, but for businesses it’s evolving as a strategic imperative.
February 25, 2019
Texting, particularly mobile texting, has become so ubiquitous that even casual users think they understand the game. However, those of us who might be responsible for implementing text solutions for an enterprise or utilizing them as part of a business-to-consumer (B2C) application will need a more detailed and refined understanding.
In reality, enterprises have their choice among several different types of mobile text solutions with differing capabilities, and importantly, different degrees of reach. To intensify the business challenge, different classes of text applications have different requirements and constraints. That means the choice of the right vehicle for a particular application is something that should be left to professionals.
Parsing the Mobile Text Options
The main dividing line in mobile text solutions is public versus private. The most readily available public solution is the carriers’ short message service (SMS). While limited to simple text characters, the key advantage SMS provides is access to any mobile phone using its mobile telephone number for addressing; hence its moniker as the least common denominator (LCD) of mobile text.
The big news in public texting is Rich Communications Services (RCS), a new texting standard from the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP). RCS will add group text, enhanced graphics, typing indication, and other features typically found in over-the-top (OTT) premium texting services; I’ll have more to say about those premium services in a moment. Virtually all carriers have either deployed or plan to deploy RCS in the near term, but there are some serious caveats.
The biggest issue surrounding RCS is that both the carrier and the mobile device vendor must support it. Google has been a major driver for RCS adoption, and even offers a backend platform called Jibe to support it. So it’s no surprise that RCS is widely available on Android devices. However, Apple doesn’t support RCS on any of its devices, and its support doesn’t seem likely anytime soon given its penchant for proprietary solutions.
To maintain universal access, RCS messages sent to iPhones and other non-RCS phones will revert to and be defined by SMS -- again, the LCD factor comes into play.
Build a Wall and Raise the Ante
Most consumer texting has migrated from traditional SMS to premium OTT solutions like Apple Messages, WhatsApp, and Facebook Messenger. These solutions offer great integration and all the bells and whistles, but they operate as closed communities. That characteristic makes them less than ideal if you need to reach heterogeneous communities like all your customers. Some, like Apple Messages, do interoperate with SMS, but again, the SMS limitations (and Apple’s objective of making its closed solution look better) define what the user gets.
The public premium OTT services dominate this space, but some providers offer specialized solutions for particular enterprise requirements. Virtually every UC&C/team collaboration solution supports mobile text, though they all require a special client on the mobile device (a major impediment to user adoption). Some interoperate with SMS, but the disintegrated experience of a separate app to text means that most enterprise users stick with the same public platform they use for their personal texting.
And for certain enterprise environments, some specialized texting requirements preclude the use of consumer-focused services. For example, some texting solutions providers specifically target regulated industries and provide message archiving and retrieval for compliance. When an organization has mandated use of a specialized texting platform for compliance reasons, users who opt for a public service do so at the risk of severe penalties.
To round out the lot, you can include Web chat and you can add texting capability to virtually any custom app. These, too, are essentially closed solutions.
Click below to continue to Page 2: Delineating the Applications
Delineating the Applications
The choice of which mobile texting solution is best for your organization comes down to the use case and the population with which you need to connect. We’ve identified four major classes of texting applications to date.
General Texting -- Consumer and Enterprise: For your everyday texting, business or personal, the public OTT platforms dominate today. As iPhones represent the majority of enterprise devices, that typically means Apple Messages, though WhatsApp may pop into the picture if a company has a significant percentage of Androids in the mix. The public OTT platforms have become so prevalent that traditional SMS usage started to drop off after 2010.
Employee-to-Employee (E2E) Texting: As with general consumer texting, the public OTT solutions dominate in E2E texting, with some exceptions. As noted above, highly regulated industries might require archivable texting solutions, and their use is mandated, at least for business-related matters. If users are making lunch plans, they’re probably using Apple Messages. Another is found in organizations that have adopted team collaboration platforms like Microsoft Teams, Cisco Webex Teams, or any of the other myriad choices. One thing we’ve found with those solutions is that if participants start going off the reservation in their work or project-related communications, the utility of the collaboration platform plummets. User chafing at the “it all has to be done here” nature of those solutions still seems to stand as one of the major obstacles to their success.
App-Driven Texting: One of the exciting applications for text is the new wave of services that integrate text into an overall process. Companies like Twilio have driven this development, providing integrated texting capabilities that support services like Uber; the other communications platform-as-a-service (CPaaS) providers are also trying to push this idea forward. The idea is clearly spreading as users have become accustomed to getting text notifications for appointments and a whole class of suppliers has grown around the need for emergency notifications in the wake of events like mass shootings. And text-based two-factor authentication is popping up in any number of security-sensitive areas. One of the great beneficiaries of this development has been the traditional SMS service, which has seen a resurgence of traffic -- you see, that LCD status does have an upside.
Text In B2C Communications: As I’ve written previously, text has become one of the most important areas in contact centers moving from voice to omnichannel. Hoping to emulate the model pioneered by Tencent’s WeChat in China, marketers are eyeing the use of persistent chat to increase customer engagement and ultimately build customer loyalty. To that end, we now have considerable activity among the premium OTT services beefing up their B2C toolkits. Apple took the first serious step with the introduction of Apple Business Chat (ABC) in 2017. WhatsApp followed late that year with WhatsApp Business, and companies like Twilio and Amazon Web Services have moved into the contact center space with omnichannel solutions that don’t start with voice. Thus far, I’ve seen little in the way of deliverables on this front from the businesses I deal with, but the opportunities are tantalizing. However, the absence of a B2C-enhanced solution with the ability to access both the Apple iOS and Android populations (along with the marketing challenge of determining what users need, want, and will put up with) seems to have tied the industry in knots with regards to delivering on this promise.
Conclusion
It’s difficult to comprehend that the simple idea of sending a text message between two mobile devices has spawned what is now the modern texting business, but comprehend it we must. Indeed, developers and network service providers will need to come to grips with how text fits into their marketing and customer support mixes. As is often the case with mobile technologies, this is another case where the consumer tail is wagging the enterprise dog.
I’ll be looking more closely at each of these applications and delving into the relationship between applications and solutions at Enterprise Connect 2019, taking place the week of March 18 in Orlando, Fla., in my Wednesday 3:00 p.m. session, “Getting Your Arms Around Mobile Messaging Integration.” Join me and my panelists from Google, Infinite Convergence Solutions, Smooch, and Sinch. We hope to see you there.
Still haven’t registered for Enterprise Connect? When you do, use the code NJPOSTS to save $200 at checkout!
