Rich Communication Services (RCS), is one way that the standard text message can be far more media-rich, and Google has been working on adopting the service for quite some time.
In the United States, Google has been already working with Sprint to support RCS for those subscribers, and other companies, including AT&T and Verizon, have also announced their own planned support for the feature. However, the support for RCS has to go beyond just Google and carriers, and that’s where the other big businesses come into play.
Today, Google announced that it now supports RCS multimedia messaging from a handful of companies. As of right now, those are: Subway, DHL, 1-800-flowers, 1-800-contacts, Booking.com, and some others. Google also confirmed that RCS support will be extending to Mexico in the near future.
“With RCS, businesses can send more useful and interactive messages to their customers. This means, for example, that a retailer can send beautiful images of their products, rather than a text message, and even let the customer select and buy something, all without leaving the messaging app. Best of all, customers who have already opted in to SMS messages from a business get this upgraded experience automatically in Android Messages.’
With RCS support, businesses will be able to send more than just a string of text that confirms an order or something similar. For Booking.com, or Subway, an order can now show an address for the store, an image of the booked room or ordered sandwich, and much more.
RCS support has been a big goal for Google for quite some time, and it looks like it’s slowly turning into a reality.
[via Google Blog]