Verified SMS - Take control of your brand.

Do you text your customers? If you do, have you thought about the impression your brand leaves when the message is delivered?  

Think about this for a second. Are you building relationships with your customers on their mobile devices that drive engagement and loyalty to your brand? …or is someone else texting your customers using your brand and making you look bad? (aka Gone Phishin’? ??) 

Fear not, friend. Verified SMS is here. 

With Verified SMS, businesses are putting their brand front and center in the most engaging channel. SMS 2.0 is here and it’s on Android. According to statcounter at the time of writing (July 2020) the Android operating system has 74.14% of the global market share for smartphones. Further research tells us that India is now the #1 market for smartphone sales in the world, with that market only now adopting smartphones with more affordable and capable Android devices provided by rising players like VIVO and OPPO (aka OnePlus who's been making some popular devices lately). While smartphone sales globally declined Q1 2020 (Gartner, 2020) because of the COVID-19 pandemic, consumers have a wider variety of options in Android devices, and global sales show Apple with just 13.7% of total global sales in the first quarter of this year.

The latest data from BankMyCell (via Statista) notes 3.5 Billion active smartphones in 2020 of a total of 4.8 Billion mobile phones, with smartphone sales outpacing feature phones in developing markets as they become more affordable and capable, and as 5G begins to launch in some markets. This means that roughly 2.6 Billion people have an Android device in their hands at the time of writing, and many more are going to buy one in the next year. With Verified SMS, Sinch, and a simple and free registration process, brands can now use their name and logo which is “Verified by Google” in the SMS channel. It even enables a short description, so your customers remember why they love your brand! Graphic from BankMyCell.com:

Sinch has partnered with Google to bring Verified SMS to the world, and together we’re enabling brands of all sizes to improve trust and enhance customer experiences in their customer’s channel of choice.

In 2020 we’ve seen an accelerated move to digital transformation by many major enterprises. This has made it even more important for Sinch to work closely with Google to offer easier solutions for businesses to operate in the digital realm. Verified SMS is a natural step in the inevitable future of a significant share of customer interactions being driven in rich messaging channels with app-like self-service capabilities. Typically, this would enable on-demand business transactions or services which both enhance customer service experiences and provide efficient ways for brands to scale interactions that drive the bottom line. What's even better, is that to enable Verified SMS for the globe (those ~2.6 billion Android users we discussed earlier), it's a simple registration process with no technical work needed to turn it on. This is an exciting opportunity that many brands are still unaware of.

Pictured below are screenshots showing what a Verified vs. Unverified sender looks like in the Android Messages app. Notice the far left image has a name above the SMS shortcode "Your Bank" ?? (example), a custom image (We chose a piggy bank, how appropriate), 2 lines of custom text for a description, and the "Verified by Google" checkmark ? and shield in the top right corner.

Now take a look at the far right screenshot. Notice the security measures Android has to protect end-users from spam or phishing scams with the warning pop-up. This feature is one of my favorite features of the Android operating system since I sign up for everything (comes with the job ???♂?), so I have no idea when someone is trying to reach me or if I might be getting scammed. Be careful out there!

It’s time for a unified and trusted experience. 

Sinch’s clients have told us that maintaining control over Branding, Verification, and Security is top of mind when messaging their customers. It is time for technology innovators to step up and offer bridges to the digital and mobile realm for any business, to enable fair competition and the ability to reach those who love your brand. Adding core operating system capabilities like Verified SMS protects your brand and offers new opportunities for customer engagement. This is just what the doctor ordered.  

By leveraging the reach and performance of the largest and most trusted networks in the world (Sinch’s Tier-1 Super Network and Google’s Android), we enable a new opportunity for businesses looking to the mobile channel as a key area of investment for driving business outcomes. What’s more, doing so in a way that is a simple registration process has Sinch’s existing enterprise clients across the globe signing up as fast as they can.   

Sinch is offering brands the opportunity to pair Verified SMS with the delivery of what is called a "vCard" in supported markets like the United States where iOS remains dominant. Keeping in mind statcounter notes iOS has 58% market share to Android’s 42% in the United States at the time of writing (July 2020). By delivering a contact card in the SMS channel with your company logo and countless custom data fields for phone numbers, emails and links (Customer Care, Sales, Technical Support, Local Branch, etc), vCard delivery is a familiar experience and adds a touch of personalization to your conversation. It's as easy as saving a new contact your friend texted you. You want to be friends with your customers, don't you? ?? vCard is especially useful in customer callback scenarios for call center operations, or when you want to be proactive for your customers in protecting them from your fraudulent activity that may tarnish your brand image.  

Sinch is offering a unified solution for branded messaging on any mobile channel.  

With Sinch's Verified SMS + vCard branded messaging solution, brands can now integrate the new Sinch Conversation API just once and register their brand in any mobile channel as needed. This includes access to rich messaging channels that host app-like experiences such as: WhatsApp, Messenger, WeChat, Line, KakaoTalk, Viber, and more through a single API.

Have your developer integrate Sinch’s Conversation API for just 1 or 2 channels to start and achieve the benefit of future API scalability. It integrates with any backend system and we'll work with you to ensure that it does.

Minimize risk, cost, time to market, and overall investment by futureproofing your customer communications. With the Conversation API, brands now trust Sinch to manage and optimize rich messaging channel updates and transcoding and enable multichannel flows with branded messaging across channels. This allows businesses to focus on the real business of building customer relationships.  

What took so long for Verified SMS to become reality and why do we need it now? 

For over 20 years, text messages have been the most convenient and common form of communication on the mobile handset. Businesses found benefits with this early, sending text messages to customers now for over a decade. More recently, working with companies like Sinch in the CPaaS space, brands have been opening the mobile channel for 2-way conversations at scale across a foray of different apps depending on their customer’s preference or the dominant form of communication in their country or demographic.  

Times have quickly changed, and as humans do, we need to adapt to the economic and technological ecosystem our world now depends on to operate and progress. The SMS channel has been the wild west of customer communications for far too long. With new capabilities like Verified SMS, brands now have the opportunity to take back control in this channel which is still the best place to reach anyone (98% read rate) with a phone. SMS (and SMS 2.0) is the only pre-installed “app” on every mobile phone in the world and keeps users engaged with an intuitive conversational experience.

When you take control of your brand in the mobile channel, you’ll no longer need to worry about spam or phishing text messages that trick your customers into taking harmful actions. These scenarios harm people and while doing so destroy a company's brand value. Something businesses have invested a lot of time and money into building and maintaining. It’s the responsibility of companies like Sinch and Google to offer these capabilities, and we suspect they’ll become an expectation (if not a requirement) in no time. As we transition to a mobile-messaging and on-demand centric economy, it's important that businesses have the same opportunity to protect their customers in the mobile channel as they have on the web.

How are businesses tackling this challenge today? 

There are tools available to businesses today, but nothing really "proves" your brand is messaging a customer, and this poses a lot of challenges with less tech-savvy customers who may not remember they opted-in to receive your messages. 

Here are a few ideas to think about, then I'll show you the "revolution" happening in mobile messaging: 

1. SMS Short Codes (5 or 6-digit numbers) are a good start, as many consumers recognize that these are registered and legitimate. 
2. In the last few years, businesses have begun to text-enabled their toll-free numbers traditionally only Voice-capable. This trend is a good proxy and brings a ton of advantages as customers and support agents are already familiar with it. 
3. Regulations like TCPA (USA) and CASL (Canada) have helped immensely in North America, and similar regulations exist in many countries around the world. Recently, the FCC in the United States reclassified SMS messaging as "information services" providing more value to the channel and inspiring innovation in the mobile messaging industry. 

Despite the many benefits of using an SMS shortcode to ensure consistency and security, they don’t work across borders. When a business goes overseas, they realize that text messaging is not the same in every country. In some countries, having an "Alphanumeric Sender ID" (a word instead of a number to deliver the SMS message) is fairly common, and registration is quite normal for access to high-quality routes (such as those reserved for banks).  

Brands have been waiting for a global solution that puts the interests of both the end-customer and the sending business in mind. Who might have the ability to do this that ensures trust from all parties? The companies that make the software and hardware and work with the carriers to define new standards for mobile messaging. Then, companies like Sinch who connect all these pieces to create a more accessible environment for brands looking to harness their customer data and leverage multiple channels.  

Google's Android Messages app is evolving with every Android update. We now find several features built into Android devices that ensure a safe and thoughtful messaging experience. For example, I've received phone calls or text messages that Android can now mark as spam based on Google's data. If you go into your device's Settings, you can also have these calls automatically blocked from ringing your phone. This feature is a huge time saver and helps me feel more secure when using an Android device. 

Google is rolling out Rich Communications Services (RCS) for everyone. Here in North America, most people are familiar with iMessage, and the fact that it runs over the data network to enable a much richer messaging experience with friends. RCS works the same way, and it works between users, while Rich Business Messaging (RBM) is opening up the great capabilities to businesses in a user-centric environment of smart buttons, carousels, chatbots, maps, and rich media all within the native SMS app on every Android device. Think of an “app-like” experience in your SMS inbox. 

Now is the time to register for Verified SMS 

With Verified SMS, Sinch and Google have partnered to help your brand get a verified badge added into customer conversations on Android Messages. We just register the number you already use! As below, it's easy to see the benefit of this experience over the common short code, toll-free, or 10-digit long number you may be using to text your customers today. 

Why use Verified SMS? 

• Improve security and build trust 
• Adding sender verification to SMS messages makes customer communications safer and more trustworthy. Customers can be sure that messages are coming from an approved sender, and they'll be alerted when someone is trying to send fraudulent messages. 
• Enhance conversations by making them a bit more “personal” by representing your brand. 
• Verified by Google checkmark (?) for customer’s peace of mind and security. 
• Company profile at the top of the messaging window including logo, name, business description, and preview link. 
• Easy implementation – no technical work, just partnering with Sinch to register with Google. 

Security is built into the service. Here’s how messages are passed between parties: 

1. Sinch sends the client message body and originator number in an encrypted format to Google. 
2. Sinch sends the client message body to the end-user handset via our Tier-1 Super Network of 400+ direct-to-carrier partnerships – globally. 
3. The end-user handset verifies the incoming message against Google's registry if originator and country match to the list of registered combinations. 
4. If the encrypted content matches the content sent by Sinch in step 3, the message shows as verified. 

Ready to get started? Learn more about the Verified SMS Service provided by Sinch here.

Want to learn more? Or just want to connect? Please feel free to reach out to me! I'd love to chat.

-Aly Abji, Director of Enterprise Sales @ Sinch (Sinch.com)