Building Consumer Trust into the Foundation of Rich Business Messaging

Voice calls, text messages and chatbots have made business-to-consumer (B2C) engagement more accessible, robust and efficient. Now, the next generation of business messaging with exciting new features has arrived through Rich Communication Services (RCS).

Rich Business Messaging (RBM), powered by RCS, has an opportunity to secure consumer trust right from the beginning by integrating verification capabilities into its bedrock.

At MEF Connects: Rich Communications, The Future of Business Messaging, Chris Drake, CTO at iconectiv and Cliff Holsenbeck, Senior Director of Product Management, participated in a panel entitled “Securing the Rich Experience,” which focused on building the next wave of B2C communications on a trusted foundation that will ultimately help brands better engage consumers.

The discussion revealed the keys to establishing and maintaining consumer trust towards RBM content, which will make it even more valuable as a customer engagement platform for Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) to offer to businesses.

During the discussion Holsenbeck described, “the multiple avenues in which trust gets built into an ecosystem.” One of the key factors he outlined was a solid governance model instituted through regulatory industry guidelines, as well as thorough policing of those policies.

Drake noted that this level of trust is hard-fought, but easily lost. During any RCS rollout, he claimed the necessity of maintaining balance between expediency and security. Drake told the audience that it is “critical that all the parties in the ecosystem deploy the GSMA standard for RBM the way it is designed and to keep the bad actors out.”

As an integral part of the GSMA initiative, iconectiv is one of the first Verification Authorities to support the RBM ecosystem to manage trust at scale through its TruReach Intel solution, which provides data to manage brand identities and the channels they choose to engage consumers—whether it be voice, text or data. TruReach Intel has incorporated the requirements for the RCS Verification Authority, which is a neutral, trusted component of the Rich Business Messaging ecosystem.

Interested in watching the panel? View the replay on demand on the MEF website. Want to learn more about RCS verification services? Contact us today!