RCS Business Messaging: A Practical Guide to Life After Activation

Key takeaways

Activation is a starting point. Brand recognition adds value, but richer capabilities go unused when SMS content is simply re-sent.

The biggest gains come from reducing steps, making it easier for customers to act, and automating handoffs between channels.

Conversational messaging is now simpler and more powerful for businesses to automate full customer journeys in the messaging experience.

Activation now commonly takes under two months, down from several.

Waiting delays the customer insights and operational experience that only come from running campaigns.

For a long time, getting started was the hardest part of Rich Communication Services (RCS). Brand approval could take several months, and that delay discouraged many businesses from beginning. According to Perry Claunch, Senior Director of Product Management at First Orion, activation now commonly takes less than two months, and more of the onboarding process can be automated.

That change creates a new question. Once your brand is live on RCS, what should you do with it?

What changes after you activate RCS?

Your brand identity appears in the conversation, so customers can see who is messaging them before they read a word. That recognition builds trust, and it matters in a market where customers are wary of unknown senders.

A business can turn on RCS, establish its identity, and keep sending essentially the same messages it sent over SMS. That alone can deliver value through greater recognition and trust. It also means the channel's richer features sit idle.

Why isn't an SMS-style program enough?

RCS supports rich cards, carousels, high-resolution images, and interactive elements. Customers can engage directly inside the conversation instead of leaving it to complete a task.

A program built on plain text and links does not use any of that. The goal is to pair a recognizable brand with those richer capabilities, not to recreate an SMS program in a new wrapper.

How do you rethink a workflow for RCS?

Start with the customer's path, not the message. Claunch points to four areas worth examining:

Unnecessary steps. Find where customers must tap through, copy information, or wait.

Ease of action. Look for places where one interactive element could replace a multi-step process.

Richer interactions. Decide where an image, card, or carousel explains something faster than text.

Cross-channel handoffs. Identify experiences that currently push customers from messaging to a website, app, or phone call, and see whether automation can keep them in the conversation.

Consider a delivery notification as an example. An SMS version might send a tracking link and ask the customer to visit a page to reschedule. An RCS version can show the delivery details in a card and let the customer respond within the same thread. The message goal is the same, but the customer takes fewer steps.

A practical way to begin is to choose one high-volume workflow, map every step the customer takes today, mark where they leave the conversation, and redesign that path with RCS features. Then measure the result and refine it.

Who needs to be involved?

Turning on a channel is a technical task. Redesigning how a business communicates is a different one. Teams need people who can identify the right use cases, rethink existing workflows, and keep refining those experiences as RCS evolves. Businesses should also have user experience (UX) skills now that RCS brings conversational and engaging features that allow more control over UX in the native messaging app.

That is why specialized RCS expertise matters. The goal is not only to get a business activated, but to help it change how it operates so it can use what the channel makes possible.

Where does AI fit in?

RCS is not an AI technology, but the two work well together. Rich cards and carousels can be complex to build, especially when each one needs to match an individual conversation.

Conversational AI can help generate and adapt these elements in real time. That makes it easier to use RCS's advanced capabilities instead of limiting the channel to branded messaging alone. Businesses that include AI in their broader communications plans should include RCS in them too.

What results are early RCS campaigns showing?

First Orion recently saw a retail furniture company compare its first RCS promotional campaign directly with its SMS performance. RCS generated roughly twice the website traffic. It was a first campaign, so it is an early indicator rather than a benchmark. It does show what can happen when a business gives customers a richer, more contextual way to engage.

Why start now instead of waiting?

There will always be a reason to wait. Standards will keep evolving, commercial models may change, and onboarding will keep getting more efficient. None of that changes what is available today: the technology is in place, activation is faster, and early campaigns are producing results.

Waiting also has a cost beyond the delayed investment. It postpones the customer insights, operational knowledge, and practical experience that come from running RCS campaigns. Those take time to build no matter when a business begins.

How can you start using RCS if your brand is already activated?

Pick one workflow and design it for RCS from the start. Do not copy your SMS program over as is. RCS supports rich cards, buttons, and verified branding, so a workflow built for those features performs differently than a text-only message.

You can also start testing the same day. Your brand does not need full approval to begin. Your team can learn how RCS behaves and design workflows right away, so you are ready when approval comes through.

ENRICH Branded Messaging FAQs

How is ENRICH different from traditional SMS or MMS?
While both RCS and SMS are delivered in the recipient's native messaging application, SMS is limited to 160 characters of text and relies on MMS capabilities to support picture and video. ENRICH delivers rich, interactive experiences typically reserved for third-party messaging applications and enables rich media content like high-resolution images, media attachments, and carousels.

Can I use ENRICH for two-way conversations with customers?
ENRICH provisions two-way conversational application-to-person (A2P) messaging through the RCS channel. This allows the business to send branded messages via First Orion's API and receive customer replies via First Orion's webhook.

What devices or carriers support RCS and ENRICH?
ENRICH reaches all Android and iOS devices (version 18.1 and above) across all major US carriers.

What happens if a recipient's phone does not support RCS?
RCS platforms can automatically fall back to SMS when the recipient's device lacks RCS support. This ensures your message reaches the customer regardless of device capabilities. First Orion handles this fallback routing automatically through the ENRICH platform.

What reporting is available with ENRICH? ENRICH Branded Messaging provides high-level visibility into your RCS agents from one centralized dashboard. Businesses can see: