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05. Send RCS messages in Zenvia Customer Cloud
12 min
Created by Leonora Alves on 2/15/2024 2:58 PM
Updated by Maria Malheiro on 9/27/2024 6:00 PM

RCS (Rich Communication Services) is a channel that offers additional possibilities compared to SMS, including:

  • Creating messages without character limits, featuring cards, carousels, images, audios, videos, and GIFs, making your communications more interactive and engaging.
  • Sending messages with a verification seal, sender's name, and logo of the originating company, ensuring the reliability and security of the content sent.
  • Identifying the delivery and read rates of the broadcasts.

⚠️ Attention: This feature is available only for users with the Operator or Admin profiles.

To send an RCS message in Zenvia Customer Cloud, integration and channel configuration are required. After this setup, go to Message broadcast > Broadcast and automation and select the RCS channel.

In this article, learn how to create and configure an RCS broadcast in Zenvia Customer Cloud.

Particularities

In Zenvia Customer Cloud, you can perform three types of RCS dispatches:

  • RCS Basic: Simple text messages without multimedia content, with up to 160 characters. If exceeded, it can be delivered as Notification/Single or SMS.
  • RCS Rich Text - Conversation: Allows receiving origin messages, opening an active conversation session for 24 hours or immediately if initiated by the customer.
  • RCS Rich Text - Notification: Unique RCS messages, allowing rich broadcasts (Rich Card), with billing at the time of delivery.

Difference between RCS Basic and SMS

The difference lies in the reliability of the message, as communication sent by RCS reaches the recipient with a verification seal, sender's name, and logo of the originating company.

The construction of the RCS broadcast consists of three stages, detailed below.

Create the message

  1. In the Message stage, name the broadcast.
  2. Select one or more tags to identify your broadcast. You can add or create new tags.
  3. Next, select one of the approved agents to perform the broadcast. The use case of the selected agent reflects the goal of your message;
    • An agent corresponds to a brand profile, a conversational entity used to exchange messages with users.
  4. The next step is to select the type of RCS you want to send.

RCS Basic

In Basic RCS, there is no multimedia content (images, videos, audios, etc.) or other features typical of Full RCS.

As it is a simpler option, it is only possible to send text messages with up to 160 characters, with or without variables.

To use Basic RCS:

  1. Click on Simple text message;
  2. Unlike the Rich Card, in RCS Basic, the fallback message is automatic. This means that if the recipient's device does not support RCS, the message is sent automatically by SMS;
    • Note that the option to configure a message as plan B appears disabled for message dispatches in the basic version of RCS.
  3. After filling out all the fields, click Next to move on to the next stage.

RCS Rich Text - Conversation

If the selected agent does not have the credential that defines the configuration of RCS Basic for your account, you can use the Simple Text Message option. This means that the message will consist only of text, with a limit of up to 5,000 characters, allowing emojis, brand identification, and Verified Account.

This option is called RCS Rich Text - Conversation. The process is similar to RCS Basic, but in this case, an SMS fallback is sent if the contact does not have the RCS app installed.

RCS Rich Text - Notification (Rich Card)

The Rich Card option allows you to send blocks of information, media, or related suggestions to the recipient. This type of message allows you to send not only text but also images, GIFs, or videos. It's ideal for visual and informative ads. Notification is one-way (it doesn't expect replies).

Rich Card Specifications:

  • The provided URL must point to an image in BIN, JPEG, JPG, GIF, or PNG formats, with a maximum size of 100 MB, or to a video in MP4, MPEG, MPEG4, M4V, H263, or WEBM formats, with a maximum size of 5 MB.
  • Remember that you can configure up to 4 buttons. The button's message (label) can have up to 25 characters.
  • If you create two or more Rich Cards, your message will be sent in a carousel format, with a limit of up to 10 Rich Cards per message.

💡 Tip: Check the best practices for sending RCS Rich Card.

To create a Rich Card:

  1. Select the Rich Card option;
  2. Click on Add Rich Card;
  3. Insert the Media URL, the link that will be used by the message, which can be an image, GIF, video, or audio. The link must be a valid and public URL;
  4. Indicate whether your message contains variables or not;
  5. Write the title and body of the message;
  6. Add buttons for interaction with the user. In the Button 1 Message field, enter the button name (up to 25 characters), and in the Button 1 Destination URL field, enter the link to redirect the user, if necessary;
  7. After configuring the Rich Card, simply click the Confirm button. The system will display a preview of the RCS.

If you need to inform your customers that this is a channel only for sending notifications, it is possible to set up an automatic response message for RCS messages. Additionally, there is also the possibility to register a fallback message. This functionality allows sending an alternative message to customers who are not able to receive RCS on their device.

⚠️ Attention: Automatic response and fallback messages are charged as one message.

Done! With the message content and recipients defined, let's proceed to the final process of sending the message.

Configure broadcast

In this step, define the recipients of the messages. You can send them to contacts from your database, imported from a .csv file, or added manually.

Next, we will detail each of these options.

Select from the contact base

To send to contacts from your base, it is necessary to select the list of contacts, specific contacts, or segmentation rules already added to the platform to receive this broadcast. After doing this:

  1. Click on Select from base;
  2. Select the list of contacts, specific contacts, or segmentation rules, and click Add;
  3. Upon completion, click Next.

Done, your users have been added!

Next, we will detail sending contacts imported from a .csv file.

Upload .csv file

To send to contacts imported from a .csv file, you need to upload a file in .csv format. All broadcasts that have variables must be done via .csv file.

The file must follow these standards:

  • Be in .csv format and UTF-8 encoding;
  • Contain phone numbers mandatory in the first column, i.e., always in column A of the spreadsheet;
  • The first line of the file must be the header. Enter the names of the variables used in your message and use a comma (,) or semicolon (;) to separate each field. In the example, the file contains, in addition to the Phone, the Name, Date, and Time fields, as the message text has the variables {{name}}, {{date}}, and {{time}};
  • Separate one contact number per line of the file;
  • Contain the contact number in the DDI+DDD format (e.g., 5551999999999);
  • Contain up to 120 MB.

In the example, we will send an SMS message with the variables {{name}}, {{date}}, and {{time}}.

Example to configure the file:

For the message 'Hello {{name}}! Your appointment is scheduled for {{date}} at {{time}}. To cancel the appointment, call 0800 400 1100,' it is necessary that the file contains the message variables organized in separate columns.

With the file configured correctly:

  1. Click on Upload .csv file;
  2. Drag and drop the file or click Select file;
  3. The next step is to associate the variable fields with the corresponding value, i.e., what each field in the table represents;
  4. If you want to review your file and check if it is ready for use, enable the Analyze .csv file option.
  5. Upon completion, click Continue.

Now, let's explain how to send to contacts added manually.

Add contacts manually

To send to contacts added manually, it is necessary to add recipient numbers using a semicolon (;) to separate the phone numbers. To do this:

  1. Click on Add contacts;
  2. Enter the phone numbers in the DDI+DDD+9 digits format, without using spaces or dashes;
  3. Click Add to complete the action;
  4. Upon completion, click Next.

Done! With the message content and recipients defined, let's move on to the final process of sending the message.

Send the message

After completing the recipients' step, check the broadcast summary. Next, you need to choose when you want to send the SMS message. To do this, click Send Now or Schedule.

Select one of the broadcast methods to complete the sending process:

💡 Tip: If you do not want to send messages to all recipients at once, you can split the message sending into batches.

Done! Now you know how to create and configure an RCS broadcast in Zenvia Customer Cloud.

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