What is RCS

Watch the video for a quick primer on the future of messaging.

Brands & agents

Brand

A brand is the entity that owns an agent. Brands can have multiple agents for multiple use cases, but each agent is only owned by one brand.

One account may be the owner of several brands.

Agent

The agent is the "sender" of your RCS messages. For an end user, an agent will appear as a branded, verified sender, much like a trusted contact.

Agents are verified and highly controlled, which means no one can "spoof" your brand.

Messages

RCS for business is a messaging experience—it's a way for brands to communicate with their customers through the end user's native messaging app. But unlike traditional texting, RCS allows for rich, app-like experiences.

There are three message types: text-only message, rich card, or carousel of rich card. Toggle through the tabs below to see what each type looks like.

With RCS, you can send a text-only message that utilizes the RCS features of suggested actions and replies.

Suggestions

Suggestions are a way to automate certain tasks for the end user. There are two types of suggestions:

Suggested actions

When pressed, an action is performed on your user's device. For example, you can use a suggested action to dial a phone number in your end user's phone app. The actions currently supported by RCS protocol are:

Dial a phone number
View a location in map app
Share device location with agent
Open a URL in browser or native webview
Create a calendar event

Suggested responses

When pressed, a pre-populated response is returned to your agent, eliminating the need for your end user to type out a response. For example, you can use a suggested reply to have your end user respond "Yes" with a single tap.

Android vs. iOS

Suggestions are rendered differently depending on the end user's operating system. Expand to learn more:

Suggestions on Android

On Android, you can include up to 4 suggestions that will appear in the card, directly below the card content. These suggestions can be any suggested action or a suggested reply.

Suggestions on iOS

On iOS, suggested actions are displayed in a dropdown menu within the message, regardless of whether they are labeled as a "suggestion" or "chip." The menu is labeled Options unless there is only one action, in which case the action label will be displayed.