How RCS Takes the Restaurant Experience to New Heights

If you're reading this, it means you’re interested in this highly valuable use case for RCS for the restaurant industry and we can’t wait to demo it for you.

My name is Mara Miller, I’m the Director of Marketing at Vibes I’m going to be walking you through our RCS demo and how it can drive immense value for restaurant brands.

What is RCS and how is it primed to benefit restaurants?

RCS stands for rich communication services - a new messaging protocol like SMS and MMS, but with many more interactive features, and a more exciting visual experience overall.

RCS looks and feels like an actual conversation between you and your guests, providing you with even more opportunities to showcase your brand voice and create engaging, memorable customer experiences.

At Vibes, we’re committed to paving the way for RCS adoption in the U.S. We’re focusing on testing and learning about the efficacy of this emerging channel, and working closely with our customers to set up agents to then validate some of the end-user reactions on the use cases that we believe will drive the most value.

What does an RCS conversation look like?

Here is a set of rich cards, called a carousel, that guests can scroll through.

Unlike an SMS or MMS where your guests must click a link to get more details, RCS allows you to include product images coupled with relevant information about the items like ingredients and offer details. The visual elements make it more enticing to interact with and serve as helpful reminders of the available offers, mirroring what your guests are more familiar with experiencing directly on your website or in your mobile app. And, the suggested action buttons make it super easy for your guests to take the next step to add the offers they want to their digital wallet on their phone.

The interactive, conversational nature of RCS provides a superior consumer experience that consumers expect from a mobile app today, but this experience is through the messaging app they already have and use – no additional downloads required.

A key benefit for brands is that, since RCS is built into smartphones via the native messaging app, the development resources you need to support a mobile app are no longer required, enabling you to focus on other aspects of your business while having this engaging channel at your fingertips.

"Share your location" is one of several built-in suggested action buttons that RCS offers.

Another example is ‘View a location’, which is integrated with the phone’s maps application making it easy for guests to get directions to the location they’ve chosen to pick up from or eat at. 

There’s also ‘Dial a number’, which is nice in case a guest has a question about the restaurant’s menu or their existing order or reservation.

‘Add to calendar’ is another option, which makes it easy for guests to add their upcoming reservation to their calendar. It’s also a good action to consider if you’re having a grand opening of a new location or an onsite event.

The ‘make a reservation’ message is another great example of how RCS improves the customer servicing experience, a guest-driven action that restaurants would typically redirect to a separate app to handle.

Restaurants can opt to use RCS to help solve issues faster for things like updating an existing reservation or checking on an order status.

The online ordering process seen here demonstrates the transformation of what RCS can do for your guests. Similar to the experience of browsing available offers, this is another example of how RCS merges key features from SMS, MMS and mobile apps into a unified channel experience.

From the eye-catching images to the suggested reply buttons that replace someone typing out their responses this results in a more streamlined communication experience that keeps your guests highly engaged.

Ready to get started on the next wave of messaging? Get in touch with us today!