Ever wondered how the future of messaging can transform customer experiences? Join us for an enlightening conversation with Jonathan from Cinch, a trailblazer in Communications Platform as a Service (CPAS). We promise you'll gain valuable insights into how Cinch is shaking up communication channels like voice, messaging, RCS, WhatsApp, and email. Discover their innovative approach to simplifying global customer interactions and integrating AI to boost engagement. Jonathan also shares why having expertise in both products and people is crucial, and how Rich Communication Services (RCS) is set to revolutionize the way we communicate, especially with Apple's upcoming support in iOS 18.
In this episode, we trace the fascinating evolution of RCS messaging. Hear about the limitations of traditional SMS and how RCS, backed by Google and soon Apple, is overcoming these challenges to offer rich, interactive experiences without the need for app downloads. Learn from real-world examples like Easy Park in Germany, showcasing the power of RCS in action. We also delve into practical tips for developers and enterprises on leveraging Cinch's Conversation API for global messaging success. Get a glimpse of Cinch's vibrant company culture, filled with young, enthusiastic talent, making it a thrilling place to be part of the future of messaging.
Ever wondered how the future of messaging can transform customer experiences? Join us for an enlightening conversation with Jonathan from Cinch, a trailblazer in Communications Platform as a Service (CPAS). We promise you'll gain valuable insights into how Cinch is shaking up communication channels like voice, messaging, RCS, WhatsApp, and email. Discover their innovative approach to simplifying global customer interactions and integrating AI to boost engagement. Jonathan also shares why having expertise in both products and people is crucial, and how Rich Communication Services (RCS) is set to revolutionize the way we communicate, especially with Apple's upcoming support in iOS 18.
In this episode, we trace the fascinating evolution of RCS messaging. Hear about the limitations of traditional SMS and how RCS, backed by Google and soon Apple, is overcoming these challenges to offer rich, interactive experiences without the need for app downloads. Learn from real-world examples like Easy Park in Germany, showcasing the power of RCS in action. We also delve into practical tips for developers and enterprises on leveraging Cinch's Conversation API for global messaging success. Get a glimpse of Cinch's vibrant company culture, filled with young, enthusiastic talent, making it a thrilling place to be part of the future of messaging.
More at https://linktr.ee/EvanKirstel
Speaker 1:
Hey everybody, happy Friday. Really intriguing discussion today around the future of messaging, in particular RCS, and unlocking better customer experience with Cinch Jonathan. How are you?
Speaker 2:
I'm very well, Evan. How are you doing? Loving the shirt today?
Speaker 1:
Thank you. It's Friday. Happy Friday everyone. We made it through another week and, Jonathan, I'm so intrigued by you and the team's mission at Cinch. Maybe start with introductions. Who is Cinch and tell us about your team.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, great Thanks, great to be with you, by the way. Yeah, cinch, I mean we've essentially been pioneering communications across the world since our inception in 2008. We're now a leader in what's called Communications Platform as a Service, or CPAS. To the lay listeners out there, this is really about delivering personalized experiences across every stage of the customer journey, across every communications channel. So we're talking about voice, we're talking about messaging RCS, whatsapp, we're talking about email, and whether you're, you know, doing that through an application or you're doing that and building something through one of our APIs or using our network connectivity, you know, essentially, we look at providing, you know, excellent customer experiences and helping our customers improve those customer experiences, compete on those customer experiences, wherever you are in the world. So, delivering about nearly a trillion customer engagements every single year.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, we've got a team of about 4,000 people now across 60 different countries, hundreds of thousands of customers in every single segment, from the largest technology companies in the world to some of the most innovative Soho-type companies there, and all are looking to do one thing. All are looking to sort of, you know, achieve one thing it's really to compete on customer experience, to give us, as consumers, you know, the best customer experience out there. So you know, that's essentially what we do and, yeah, I have a bunch of passionate 4,000 passionate customer experience fans, I would say working with customers all around the globe. So, you know, I feel very grateful actually to be working in such an exciting and evolving industry.
Speaker 1:
Exciting indeed, and I've been in the telecom and I could call it CPAS space for 20 years and now is the most exciting time, I think, in the industry, for a variety of reasons we'll dive into. But maybe talk about the CPAS landscape, your unique position therein, and how do you see yourself competing positioning with customers these days.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, I think you know communications is difficult. It's actually really really difficult today. There are silos of data, there are silos of systems, there are silos of processes within organizations. You know, and if you're a large company that's wanting to deliver a customer experience which is consistent across the world, that is a super, super difficult and complex thing to do. So, since you grow out of the messaging space, the SMS space, we have gone and both built and acquired some of the best teams in the industry across voice, across email, across different applications, and really one of our greatest strengths is serving and simplifying those needs across the entire globe.
Speaker 2:
So if you're a large company and you want to have a comprehensive experience, you know, across the globe, being able to deliver, whether it's a message via SMS or WhatsApp, whether it is an email and the deliverability challenges around that, or whether it is, you know, going across a top class voice network. You know, essentially, that's where we're told by customers that we stand out. And then, of course, if you layer on the new AI capabilities across our API layer, across our applications layer, you know it's super important in any communications world to be compliant, to be fighting the battle against fraud and then to be obviously bringing customers all of the latest opportunities across customer engagement with the use of AI, whether it be generative AI or knowledge-based AI or whatever we're talking about. So we could talk for ages about that type of stuff, but I think there's very few players in the world that have built the same type of scale as Cinch and so that we can deliver those type of experiences with the best quality but also the best cost across the world.
Speaker 2:
So, essentially, that's some of the things that customers say to us and I think also, as you're evolving any industry, I certainly look to this from my suppliers. It's also about do these people have the expertise in both their product but also in their people? You know, can I talk to this person about when? Should I be using X or Y channel in my customer experience? Can you give me some advice here? So I think that's where a lot of organizations are seeking when they're choosing providers.
Speaker 1:
Well said and you know. Talk about one particular development that's come to the fore around rich communication services RCS. It's been sort of bubbling beneath the surface and the standardization bodies for many years, but is now being supercharged with the addition of Apple's support. And explain the idea behind RCS and why it's so significant for customer experience in 2024.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, why don't we just before I will do that why don't we just take a step back and talk about messaging right and why messaging in general and SMS is, you know, so important? And I think you know, when I first came into the industry I came into the industry actually about five years ago. I'd been in the tech and SaaS industry before that and I thought to myself you know, this SMS thing, hasn't it been around since the dawn of you know birth? And isn't it going to, you know, die sometime soon? Are we still doing it? And the more and more I talk to customers, the more and more I realize that the ubiquity of SMS right everybody has SMS on their handset.
Speaker 2:
Everybody has that messaging inbox there. Not everyone has, whether it be a Facebook messenger or a WhatsApp or a KakaoTalk or a Line, wherever you are in the world, not everyone has that app that brands and enterprises have, you know, spent billions and trillions of dollars, you know, building and want to force you in there. Not everyone's using that. So I think that the real strength with SMS, you know, is really about the ubiquity of that channel and so that's. You know, what can you do with that channel? So the great advantage is that ubiquity. But what are the drawbacks? So the drawbacks with SMS are really around 160 characters. You know there's not much of a brand experience that you can deliver in 160 characters. You know the channel has been open to fraud, as a lot of channels have been. You know we have this issue with artificially inflated traffic and bots as fraud comes into the industry. And really, when you look at some of the other consumer experiences, if you're looking to put a customer experience together, you want rich media, you want buttons, you want video, you want, you know, analytics as well and data and SMS never had that. So it's been a long journey with SMS.
Speaker 2:
I think the journey started around 2007-2008 with the GSMA and and the various different carriers around the world and different players, and they talked about this next evolution. What would the next evolution of SMS actually look like? And that was this rich communication services. And really it's taken time for sort of you know carriers to, you know, fully understand this and get on board. You know, then, we've had, you know, the likes of Google coming in and helping with the platform. You know, then we've had you know, the likes of Google coming in and helping with the platform. And what's really held SMS back is that, you know, it was only available on the Android platform and only on certain carriers you know, around the world. And Apple, you know Apple has never sort of engaged with it or taken it on. And so in some markets right, you know it has been, it has certainly, you know, had an effect. But really, until you have that ubiquity point, until everyone can have it, you know, I think in the US, I think Android's around about 30 percent market penetration, right, you've got that about 15 percent of handsets sort of had RCS capability on it.
Speaker 2:
So as a brand, yes, rcs was kind of a little bit interesting. But if it can only reach a small proportion of my incidents. Why bother? And what was, you know, very, very important? This is why we believe this will be a game changing industry. We've worked on this for years, ever since I've been in the business over five years preparing for SMS, building up the industry capability for RCS, advocating for RCS We've really seen.
Speaker 2:
You know, apple announced that they are now going to include that. You know, a couple of weeks ago at the developers conference in iOS 18, that is going to be available and brands are going to be able to now engage through iOS. So every Apple handset will have that capability as well. So that opens up. You know, that opens up that ubiquity point for RCS.
Speaker 2:
One of the other reasons I think it is so important for our industry and so important for every brand is that even if you use, you know, this new capability for a super I wouldn't call it boring, but a oneway use case If you're just wanting to sort of communicate a verification code or just a simple message, you can have the ability to be that verified brand. You'll have that brand there, you'll be verified by your carrier and you can trust that message. That is absolutely critical. So you've got that point, the security point. Then the second point is you know, if you want to create a rich conversational experience, the platform is there.
Speaker 2:
That person, that consumer can be delivered on that, that channel of ubiquity, you know you can have an app-like experience, uh, in that messaging channel. So there's no friction, there's no app that you need to sort of go into or download or re-download because you last interacted with it, you know, three or four months ago and you know it's had several iterations. So you have the ubiquity, you have the conversational experience and then you know. The third thing is really the data and analytics. The data and analytics that you can pull from that type of experience as a brand is truly very, very powerful and up there, together with some of the other sort of marketing analytics, you add a layer of AI to it and you can really improve all the experiences for us consumers. So I think that's why we're super excited that RCS will become really the next evolution of messaging and that our lives might be a little bit easier next time we're getting a parcel or at an airport or doing some shopping or anything that we do.
Speaker 1:
Wow, so exciting, so much potential to unlock new scenarios and new innovations on top of this standard. And talk about what your customers are asking of you. Are there any use cases in particular that you're helping them enable in this early phase? You know what are the kind of interactions and engagement customer engagements that you're seeing to help businesses, help their customers.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, we have, as I said, hundreds of thousands of customers. So as a CMO, I hate to. We love them all right, but certainly I think you know the ones that stand out to me are the ones that I interact with, you know, on a daily basis. So you know I often, you know, park around the world. Right, I'm often using a company called Easy Park, which is a global parking vendor, essentially, and the fact that when they now can you know they've been trialing this very much in Germany they just do the simple, you know, verified, branded, sending you know with RCS, but it's not a fraudulent message. They've seen delivery rates up to 97%, which is super, super high, and customer engagement sort of increasing 40%. So that's sort of one you know use case. On the simple one.
Speaker 2:
Another thing we did just before Christmas this was a case we did in France actually, with the retail vendor, picard, and they do top class, very high quality frozen food and it was super interesting. Obviously, the Christmas period is super important. I think they do about 25% of their sales in that period and we talked about how could we create, you know, a great customer experience around, you know, creating a Christmas menu for people. So, you know, really looking at their customer base and engaging. You know, do you want? You know, do you want a very good value one? Do you want a luxury one? Are you really into meat? Are you into fish? You know what type of dessert are you into and really creating a, you know, ai driven chatbot experience using RCS, using the RCS channel, and not only was the experience great to use, you know, if you were a consumer.
Speaker 2:
It's a typical e-commerce case, but you know it had. You know, the customer engagement rates were up about 42% versus the SMS channel. There are a lot more redirections to the websites and we're seeing, on average, from, you know, rcs versus SMS. We're seeing, you know, about a 10% increase on actual cart purchases. So if you can say to every retailer, hey, do you want to up your e-commerce cart volumes by about 10%, I don't think anyone would say no. So, not only as a consumer, could I have really fun with this conversation and experience and just order my know, order my food in that way. But the brand is obviously delivering a better customer experience and it's, you know, generating profit at the same time. So I think that's a. You know it's exciting to see the potential.
Speaker 1:
The potential is huge. And talk about the opportunity to layer on AI, you know, for conversational AI on top of RCS and what that might unlock with your customers for truly natural you know conversational type interactions. That seems a pretty huge opportunity for consumers this year.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, I think if I step back and I look at, I sort of look at any marketing communication, so to speak it's still very much, you know, a one-way communication channel. We've talked about conversations and communications. Uh, you know, for, uh, for so long, um, but I do think, you know AI has given it the ability, um, to really leapfrog where we were even a couple of years ago. So, obviously, you know, chatbots in their, in their first form took a very, very long time to sort of learn. Quite frankly, they were quite dumb in many cases and a little bit frustrating.
Speaker 2:
Now, the experiences we're seeing with customers, really, that model that is learning on top of the experience, whether it is an RCS bot, whether it is a WhatsApp bot, whether it's, you know, a voice bot, you know those models are learning so, so quickly and being able to give the data back, you know, to the brand to improve. So I think that's really where we see, you know, customers and brands being able to improve the experience they deliver to the consumers and for us consumers. You know we're just getting a better customer experience. But I think the important thing with AI is are we doing it responsibly, you know? Are we doing it protecting both the consumer's data and the brand's data, and this is something we call intentional AI At Cinch. There's a lot of hype around AI. Call intentional AI At Cinch. There's a lot of hype around AI, but are we doing it responsibly?
Speaker 1:
And I think we have a very big focus on that A fantastic approach and talk about getting started. Maybe I'm a developer, an app developer, maybe I'm an enterprise and I want to start integrating conversational messaging or RCS into my services. How do I get started? What's the experience like? How quickly can I launch a service and what kind of tools do you empower me with as that?
Speaker 2:
uh, yeah I think I, yeah, I think it's, I think it's super important. I mean, if you're a developer, I mean one of the, the apis that we developed several years ago, uh, is an api called conversation api. Conversation api is an api, uh, that has all of the communication channels you could want on it, uh, and it's really an intelligent api that lets you, you enable um, you know, you know what are your consumers want to receive their communication on, and certainly you can send out a message on one channel and if it doesn't reach you on that channel, you can have a fallback channel. So I think, you know, simply going in and playing around with that conversation API and seeing what you can build on top of it if you're a developer is one thing, and then we have the app ecosystem at Cinch, which is super powerful. If you're a business that needs some UI enabled, go in and have a look at our apps and really look at getting going with that. And I think there does need to be a lot of hand-holding at the beginning.
Speaker 2:
What Cinch is actually really great with is actually talking to our customers and actually saying you know, what do you want to achieve? You know, tell us what you think is possible. We can maybe even inspire you as well as what other companies are doing, whether it's in the retail space or the, you know, the consumer space, whether it is in the last mile delivery space, whether it's in the financial services space, the healthcare space I mean, there's so much room for this. So we often find some of those best conversations are obviously reaching out to if you're an existing customer and there's hundreds of thousands of them, you know to your Cinch team member, or just, you know, contacting us on the website, and we can get going and hopefully give you the benefit of some of our expertise across these channels.
Speaker 1:
Oh, fantastic approach and you're a powerhouse in Europe and North America, but you have a global footprint. Talk about the global nature of this messaging uptake. Are we all going mad for messaging, or are there some markets that are leading the way globally?
Speaker 2:
So I think, yeah, I think it's a super good question, Evan, and I think, as I said, yeah, cinch is truly a global company. Around about 60% of our business is in North America. Around 40% of it is across EMEA and APAC, and I'm fascinated by just the differences in communications technologies and adoption for consumers. And I think it's something I've been sort of saying a lot when I, as I travel around the world and meet our customers, and actually particularly in North America, when I come and say we really need to be looking at Latin America, we really need to be looking at APAC and some of the innovations there, particularly on the messaging front, and learning from those use cases. Because as the kind of MarTech world rose up and obviously the social media world rose up, then North America was very in focus because that was where the leading companies were going. If you look at the mobile messaging space that really is, you know a lot of that is coming from Latin America. A lot of that is coming from APAC in terms of the best use cases. So I think what we've got to do is look at those markets. What do we learn from conversational experiences? We've been working for a long time in Latin America with some of the biggest food delivery companies and creating great conversational experiences at that time, very much on WhatsApp as well down in Latin America. India is a huge market for that channel as well, and we're a real powerhouse down there with RCS as well.
Speaker 2:
I think that ultimately, yes, there's differences in channels and I think you want to work with a provider that knows those differences and those markets, particularly the ones where they have very good experience of the conversational experience. Where do you deploy it in the customer journey? Hey, email is still going to be probably the most um used communications channel for most brands, right, um? And? And you need to deploy messaging where it's worth your while to deploy messaging where it has the biggest roi, because it has it's the biggest impact uh, channel. So I think that's that's very important to recognize and you need to deliver on the channels of your choice. That's why I talk about this conversation API. You know, if you're a global brand, you want to probably use one API, but you're going to be delivering across a lot of different channels dependent on on on market.
Speaker 2:
So I get inspired by by you know some of the, some of the other, you know countries around the world and you know, can't wait for RCS to sort of, you know, hit globally. But there will be different uptakes in different countries across the world depending on you know the carrier uptakes in those countries. I guess the good news is well, we're well placed to you know, serve. You know all of those countries and all of those carriers. So that's the good news is well, we're well placed to you know, serve. You know all of all of those, all of those countries and all of those carriers. So, um, that's the good news fantastic.
Speaker 1:
And I guess, final question uh, everyone I've come across at cinch has been very dynamic and high energy. Um, give us a little peek behind the curtain into the culture and the team, uh, your global company. Lots of young people, lots of enthusiasm. It must be a fun place right now. Lots of young people, lots of enthusiasm. It must be a fun place right now.
Speaker 2:
Lots of young people. I'll tell my wife and my kids that I got described as coming from a company like that. That's good. Yeah, cinch is a really unique company. You know. It was formed in Sweden in 2008. Six Swedish guys founded the company, um, um. They rose very rapidly, the company, and it ipo'd in in in 2015. Um and um. The next day after the um, the ipo, they they bought the the biggest competitor out there for them. That was double the size. It was north american based, so they've always been.
Speaker 2:
When we talk about pioneering, they've always been extremely pioneering. The other thing, though, is we've also been always very, very humble maybe too humble. Maybe that's why a lot of people don't know Cinch. We haven't been beating our chest and saying, hey, you know, we are the best in the world. Even though they were the best in the world.
Speaker 2:
Forbes once described us as the most successful company you've never heard of. For me, that was like a dagger through the heart as the CMO. But, but, but probably they're right, and I think that Swedish culture it's very flat, it's it's non-hierarchical, and we try and empower teams. Right, there's 4000 of us around the globe. There's 4,000 of us around the globe.
Speaker 2:
I think corporate cultures that are incredibly top down and stifle innovation and full of bureaucracy. Quite frankly, there's a lot of great companies in the CPAS space and we're building and evolving this market together. We think that the Cinch culture is one of our secret success factors because I think if you're a yeah, if you're an employee, but also, you know, if you're a customer and you're engaging with someone from cinch, you are engaging someone that's committed to your success. You're engaging with someone that isn't, you know, isn't too high up on themselves, realizes you know we're all in this together, um, and wants to deliver. So, yeah, yeah, I think the culture I hope that comes off when you talk to cinchers around the world. If any of your viewers and listeners ever engage with a cincher around the world, that's not like that. Tell them to ping me on LinkedIn or email me or whatever, because we want to keep that culture going.
Speaker 1:
That's good to know, and thanks so much for sharing just this insights and the unique opportunities that you present to customers globally. Really intriguing work. Can't wait to see more.
Speaker 2:
Excellent. Thank you and have a good Friday. Everyone Enjoy yeah.
Speaker 1:
Thanks everyone. Thanks for watching Reach out, Follow Cinch. They put out great content, really educational, insightful content as well worth a follow on LinkedIn and Twitter. Thanks, thanks everyone. Thanks, jonathan.
