When a kid scrapes their knee on the playground, you don't cry out for an 'adhesive medical strip'. You look for a Band-Aid. Positioning, as Al Ries and Jack Trout famously established, relies on finding a place in the consumer's mind that relates to something they already intuitively understand.
Talking of messaging, SMS is something everyone understands. It is more than a technology; it is a medium of communication. WhatsApp successfully piggybacked on this by positioning itself as "free SMS" in markets where text messages cost money, driving explosive global adoption. Over on iOS, iMessage seamlessly filled the rich messenger niche.
RCS did none of this.
Instead, it was introduced to the world as "Rich Communication Services". It is an acronym and a technical specification, offering absolutely nothing for a consumer to hold onto. If the industry had named it "SecureSMS," "Next-Gen SMS," or even positioned it as "SMS 2.0," we would have a simple, consumer-friendly upgrade narrative: "SMS is insecure. Ask your bank to send your one-time passwords via SecureSMS instead". That is a story people understand, much like moving from 4G to 5G.
Instead, the channel hides behind meaningless letters. Every downstream effort like branded messaging, rich cards, and carousels is fighting an uphill battle against a name that creates zero mental model. That is a fundamental positioning problem, and frankly, it cannot be fixed now.
The End-to-End Encryption Game Changer
History is history, and the name is locked in. The question for CX teams today isn't how to fix RCS's marketing problem, but whether the channel actually makes sense for their business right now.
After all, the infrastructure is no longer the bottleneck. The fact that Apple added native RCS support is old news. The real game-changer arrived alongside WWDC 2026 and the rollout of iOS 26.5, which finally brought end-to-end encryption (E2EE) to cross-platform RCS messaging. By adopting the RCS Universal Profile 3.0 in partnership with Google and the GSMA, the ecosystem effectively closed the long-standing security gap between iPhone and Android devices. Messages can no longer be intercepted in transit by intermediaries. The reach exists, and the baseline cross-platform security exists. By ensuring that conversation content remains inaccessible to network operators and intermediaries, this encryption provides brands with a powerful layer of trust, enabling them to handle sensitive customer data—from loyalty account details to private service inquiries—with significantly reduced risk of data exposure.
The real question is where it delivers tangible value.
The OTP Illusion: Why SMS Persists Despite the Danger
Let's look at authentication first. For organizations with a massive customer base, the sheer volume of SMS OTPs represents a substantial, ongoing operational cost. Beyond the financial burden, SMS is notoriously susceptible to severe security vulnerabilities, most notably SIM swap attacks. Because of these inherent flaws, brands are already actively trying to move away from SMS. The market is exploring and adopting far more robust security options, including app-based Push Notifications, dedicated Authentication Apps (like Google Authenticator and Duo), biometric-based logins, and passkeys.
RCS enters this shifting landscape with a mixed value proposition. On one hand, it can absolutely help safeguard against certain kinds of fraud. For example, a verified RCS sender profile makes it incredibly difficult for a fraudster to spoof an OTP message and falsely claim to be an established brand. However, RCS is not a silver bullet; it is not an answer for deeper device-level vulnerabilities such as SIM swap attacks.
In that backdrop, the lack of consumer awareness is a glaring missed opportunity. If consumers understood RCS as "SecureSMS" or "Next-Gen SMS," they might actively demand the channel for their own peace of mind. Instead, the confusing "RCS" positioning leaves the technology lingering in the background. Further complicating matters is the pricing model. Keeping RCS costs similar to, or even higher than, SMS does not help incentivize a mass migration. A quick view of publicly listed messaging pricing on major platforms like Twilio and Vonage indicates that, as of today, RCS pricing is generally higher than or similar to standard SMS rates.
This is not to say brands shouldn't consider moving their authentication traffic to RCS. They absolutely should, provided the costs can be negotiated to be more or less similar to their current SMS spend. The underlying reality is that the opportunity to upgrade authentication messaging is massive, but adoption has been sluggish precisely due to these cost and security considerations.
The Marketer's Dilemma: Massive ROI Potential vs. Abysmal Adoption
Marketing is a different story. RCS offers rich features that SMS simply cannot match, and when brands properly leverage carousels, rich cards, and interactive elements, the channel can drive serious engagement. Plus, RCS offers native read receipts. That is a massive, fundamental benefit over SMS, allowing you to measure the actual effectiveness of your campaigns at a much deeper level.
Yet, adoption lags behind potential. To put this in perspective, out of the 50+ brands I receive marketing messages from, less than 10%, including names like United Airlines, BestBuy, and Saks, utilize RCS messaging. The rest all continue to send standard SMS. Furthermore, amongst the ones who are using RCS messaging, less than fifty percent use any proprietary RCS features like suggested responses. Because sender branding is default, everyone uses that, but the interactive elements remain largely ignored. Too often, brands that do adopt RCS default to sending basic text and a link, entirely missing the point of the channel.
This reality gap exists because of three major hurdles:
Implementation Complexity: Setup requires brand verification, compliance checks, and carrier relationship management that take weeks. Add in asset optimization and template testing, and it becomes clear this is far from a self-service workflow.
Platform Fragmentation: A carousel that looks flawless on Android might render completely differently on iOS. This complicates A/B testing when platform behaviors diverge.
Vendor Maturity: While major CPaaS vendors offer RCS, their interfaces still demand technical knowledge. We aren't yet at a place where a marketing manager can effortlessly drag-and-drop a rich media carousel in minutes.
The Customer Service Disconnect: The "Discoverability" Problem
Customer service and support should theoretically be the killer use case for RCS. The ability to seamlessly share high-resolution media, like a photo of a broken product or a video of a blinking router light, directly within a native messaging app is an incredibly powerful tool for resolving complex issues. Yet, here again, the channel falls short.
The most established pattern in mobile communication is simple: you type a phone number, and you send a message. Going back to our earlier point about piggybacking on what consumers already understand, retaining basic constructs is of massive importance in UX and implementation. WhatsApp nailed this. Consumers know exactly how to text a business's support number. RCS missed this opportunity entirely. There is no universally frictionless option for a consumer to type a business's number or username and instantly initiate an RCS conversation. Instead, discoverability is broken. Brands are forced to use deflection tactics like "click this link" or "scan this QR code" to route a customer into an RCS chat.
This creates a strategic dilemma for consumer brands.
If an organization has to go through the effort of redirecting a frustrated customer from Channel A (like an IVR or a website) to Channel B, why would they choose a third-party messaging protocol? Channel B might as well be their own proprietary mobile app or authenticated web portal, where they completely control the experience and own the data.
If RCS had allowed for simple username or phone number initiation, it would have come in handy for driving massive adoption in support contexts. Instead, the friction of entry makes it a tough sell over owned properties.
The 2026 CX Playbook: What You Should Actually Do Now
For Marketing
If you are a marketing manager who has relied mostly on SMS, you must give serious consideration to RCS, even if you only start with simple upgrades to get the branding benefit. At the very least, you should explore rich messaging features like suggested responses. These are far less complicated to implement than full interactive carousels, avoiding many of the OS parity issues between Android and iOS. If you have the resources to support the channel in its full capacity, do it anyway.
The return on investment makes a compelling case. According to recent benchmark data from Sinch, RCS campaigns frequently see click-through rates three to seven times higher than standard SMS. Similarly, Infobip's market analysis reports that brands using RCS rich cards experience 60-70% higher conversion rates compared to traditional channels, resulting in a cost-per-click that is up to 14 times lower than SMS. Furthermore, Webex Connect's public case studies show staggering returns, with brands experiencing up to a 500% uplift in customer engagement compared to single-channel messaging, and a 25% response rate for RCS compared to just 1% for SMS. And as mentioned earlier, the native support for read receipts fundamentally changes the game, allowing you to measure the true engagement and effectiveness of your campaigns far more deeply than SMS ever could.
For Authentication (OTP)
When it comes to two-factor authentication, RCS is inherently more secure than SMS. If you plan to keep SMS in your 2FA mix as a universal fallback, you should actively work toward replacing your primary OTP traffic with RCS. While there might not be a massive overall cost advantage for a large B2C enterprise, RCS does eliminate the monthly rental fees associated with vanity shortcodes, providing some operational savings.
However, the key to a successful transition is consistency. You should strive to shift your entire OTP traffic across all departments, functions, and product lines to RCS. Upgrading to RCS for only half of your products under the guise of security, while leaving the rest on traditional shortcodes or 10DLC numbers, creates a fractured and confusing experience for consumers. While you obviously cannot execute a complete migration on day one, you need a strategic plan to get there within a reasonable timeframe.
For Customer Service and Support
If you are operating in the US within an industry where frequent media exchanges are critical, and standard SMS/MMS simply cannot handle your use cases, RCS is absolutely worth considering. However, if your customer service model is currently centered on web chat, email, and in-app messaging, and those channels serve your requirements well, the business case for RCS may not be strong enough, especially given the higher per-message costs.
Finally, your customer service implementation of RCS should never be disconnected from your outbound messaging strategy. It is incredibly jarring for a consumer to receive appointment reminders and order confirmations via basic SMS, only to be pushed into an RCS thread for customer support.
Unify the experience, or wait until you can.
